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Yesterday we literally spent the entire day in transit. Bus to the train, 4 hours on the train to the bus, and 7 hours to our hotel here. I didn't sleep much, even though I was exhausted, but I got really into my book on tape. At one point on the bus I looked over at my mom and realized that we were in the
exact same position, with our lips pursed (because our books on tape were making us mad), and head to the side and knees bent and to the side and staring ahead. It was really weird to see how similar we looked, but I guess that makes sense...we ARE related after all...

We arrived here around 7:30 and it was pitch dark. For some reason it was super cloudy so we couldn't even see the moon, or any stars. Our rooms are really nice though, maybe the best yet! It's modern meets nature... It got dark really early around 5:45 and I remember near the end of the car drive looking around and realizing that we were definitely far away from the city and going into very sparsely populated towns. The less people there were, the more trees, and the faster my heart started beating. I remember realizing that I was actually really scared of being in this village in the middle of nowhere when it was SO dark.

Today we woke up around 9 and basically walked around the perimeter of the island with Andrew and Jenny looking for a place for breakfast. Around 11:30 we finally found one on the beach. There were stores and restaurants everywhere and
everything was closed. I was so relieved to finally have found a place to eat, but the omelet was half cooked, and I've never had worse coffee in my life - it was half sludge and I coughed it up after one sip. But we made a friend with a local who wanted to practice his English.

At 3pm we went on a jungle walk which turned out to be more exciting than I thought it world be! We saw lots of monkeys - the guide made a calling sound and they all appeared out of the trees and came toward him, like a magic trick! Then he had whoever wanted to sit and have the monkeys climb on us. The monkeys got a little excited and accidentally scratched my neck. Later, he caught a scorpion and I got to hold it and pretend I was eating it - I was actually really scared because the guide was kind of crazy, and there was nothing protecting me from the scorpion at all! We went into a cave and when it was pitch dark he called over porcupines, which I've never seen before. They're quite ugly, and really intense looking. There was also an abandoned bunker from the Japanese from WW II that we climbed through. A few times bats flew out and almost ran right into my face, and I screamed out loud. While we walked through the jungle water monitors came out of no where and hurriedly ran across our paths; 6 feet long and huge! I've come to the devastating realizations that I would not be very good on Lost :(

We missed the sunset on the west beach because it was too cloudy but we came back after showering and had a bonfire on the beach! There was red snapper fish and grilled calamari and ice cold beer and an excellent way to get to know our new group.

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