Categotry Archives: Mention Monday
A Cemetery in Bali
There was a cemetery down the street from our hotel in Denpasar. We wandered down for a look. The first thing I noticed was that they don’t bother to manicure it the way we expect in the US. No lawn. What grass might be found seemed to be of the vacant-lot variety. Lots of the kind of trash that quickly builds up when people put out fifty or more offerings a day. Tombstones shaped a bit differently than I’m used […]
Dragon Bones
We stopped off at the Komodo Office in Labuan Bajo on Flores Island. In there lobby is a glassed in display of a dragon’s fossilized bones. This one died of old age – over thirty years old. It lived between fifty and sixty million years ago. it had osteoporosis. Though nineteen bones are missing, we can easily see that Komodo dragons haven’t changed much in a long, long time. The display includes a clutch of fossilized eggs. I have no […]
A Traditional Weave
We went to Cecer Village to see the whip dance. While we were there we wandered in and out of various homes. This weaver was working hard in one of them. Her loom was modest, but she produced their traditional clothing quickly. Cecer is home to many people in the Manggarai tribe. The village elders work hard to maintain the tribe’s traditional way of life. The weaving and wearing of a tube of cloth which is treated as a skirt […]
Dinner on the Docks
This particular travel company expects people to provide their own meals about half a dozen times through the course of a three week trip. This gives people a chance to explore on their own. Sometimes my mother and I opt to hang out in our room enjoying some down time and munching on whatever we might have brought with us. Cliff bars work quite well for this. While in Flores, we had two such nights, but our guides offered to […]
Offerings
When we got on the boat to visit Trunyan Village and the Bali Aga Cemetery there were a couple of trays of offerings in the middle of the walk way. When we came back they had accumulated, spilled down the steps, and crept out onto the dock.
Julia Robert’s Beach
This is at the very back of the farthest trail to the left at Uluwatu Cliffside Temple. they were very busy putting in a new segment to the trail when we arrived. I went just because I have a bad case of Down The Trail Syndrome. Though I like Julia’s acting, I feel no compulsion to visit a every place she’s done a bit of it. I don’t even know which movie that beach appears in. But if there is […]
The Lap of Luxury
The Girl is moving out! She signed her first rental agreement and is loading up her boxes. In a matter of mere…. Well, whenever she gets around to it. Considering the disaster area she calls a bedroom it could be a while. She tells me it looks worse than it is because of the packing process. I’m pretty sure there aren’t even available paths to get around. As the the pet spiders she was raising under her bed, I’d rather […]
Back to School
The totally random picture above is a bus stop on Rinca Island. It reminded me of the shelters built by ranchers for their children to wait in for a school bus.
Soda Drinking Bats
Tourists and tour guides feed Fanta to the bats in the Subek area. It was fun to watch, but I have mixed feelings.
Tourist Trap
On the way to Jimbaran we ran across the strangest tourist trap I’d encountered. It consisted of a way side pull out and this ram shackle tower. If you set foot on the tower, for instance, should you feel you need the extra height in order to get a good picture of the scenery below, then someone will run out and demand that you pay for the privilege. My thought was that they’d have to pay me to be willing […]
Dolphins
On the thirteenth day of the trip we were told to assemble on the beach at the crack of dawn for an unscheduled treat. This was an optional side excursion. After some effort on our guide’s part’s, we were divided up into sets of three or four, and sent off in catamarans to look for dolphins.
School
The Boy is finally ready to go to college. I told both the kids to take a year off after high school. The idea was to let them see what life will be like if they don’t get a degree in the hopes they would be serious about it. For my son, that was three years ago. For a while it looked like was would never go back. He’s finally come around and started the whole process. It reminds me […]
Playgrounds
Somewhere along the trip to Indonesia, I started noticing playground equipment. This is a pretty good example of what I saw around. Talk about a blast from the past. Generally speaking the equipment I used as a child didn’t have much paint, but it was that same kind of metal tubes. About the time my kids were the right age to play on it, all the equipment around me had been replaced with plastic. I’m not sure if it was […]
Sae Finneeeee
Say, “it’s finished”? I’d love to! But actually, there’s a bit more to go on my vacation posts. The only thing I did was get through processing all the photos. It took just short of a year. The posts will push me to over a year as I still have over twenty to go. If I only post about it twice a week that makes two and a half months of Indonesia left. That’s not counting about a hundred random […]
Windy Roads
If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see the road we were about to reach doubling back with a motorcycle on it. The road from Ubud to Lovinia was full of those kinds of twists and turns.
