Am I in australia?

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Week one... Its been quite the week! So, after leaving Hong Kong (which has a huge airport. You have a subway station taking you from one terminal to the other), we arrived in Denpasar, Bali. Walk off the plane, and immediately you notice the slower pace here. The locals are so nice and seem pretty casual in their everyday life. Every morning and night (from my observations), they place offerings in front of every building or on alters. It is normally a little box made from banana leaves, with food and coins in it, with an incense stick burning. I accidentally stepped on their offering box.... oops! But, as you walk down the street, there are so many of these little offering things. Apparently its not disrespectful once they have said their prayer and set it down, but I try not to step on their religion (literally). ha. It also keeps the stray dog/cat/monkey population up, because everyone puts out food on the street.
So, since AnneMarie and i arrived a couple days before Becky, we are just waiting around in this city. And the area we are staying in is mostly tourists and mostly australians. Its only a 3 hour flight for them, so they just all come here to vacation and party. I really have been so turned off of australians, sorry to say, since being here. I suppose it is because the majority of them are 18 to 23 year old kids with only thought of getting totally drunk and going wild. Not my idea of traveling and experiencing the wonders of Indonesia. So, needless to say, I cannot wait for Becky and phil to arrive (which is in 5 hours!) so we can get the heck out of this part of the country.
It certainly is not all bad though! The 2nd night here, we met a guy named Matt who lives in seattle (originally from australia...shocker), and he takes people all over the world to go paragliding. So his group arrives in a couple days, and he had some time to kill. LUCKY for us, he offered to take us. What a rush! There is no feeling like being suspended over huge cliffs and the ocean with only using the wind to keep you alive. Incredible. I was lucky enough to go for the flight right as the sun was setting. Annemarie went first, and the wind died, so he had made an emergency landing...in a 5 star resort.
The people are really nice, but the vendors do hound you. As in any market type of place I suppose. I was laying on the beach, and a lady came up asking if I wanted a massage. Repeatedly saying no obviously didn't help, because she just put some cream on my back and started massaging my back! haha, and once they see one person being hired, man o man, we get swarmed! But really, it costs about 5 dollars for a 40 minutes massage. Can't really go wrong there.
The paraglider took us to a place where its a whole strip of restaurants with boxes of seafood in the entrance, you select your fish, they grill it up and you eat right on the sand on the ocean. Soo good and such a fun experience! So, tomorrow we want to head up into the island of Bali and go explore. The plan is to go to a monkey forest, rice patties, and a volcano with a lake in the top crater. I'm really looking forward to seeing the wonders of this country and getting out of the tourists traps!

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Comments

[Corine]

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Hi Darci Love to read your blogs. Can you make them go to Facebook?