Day 9 - First World Problems

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One thing about travel is that it forces you to look through a different lens from time to time. I was sitting in one of the pool cabanas and complaining about the fact that my green juice was more froth than juice when I started to think of the orphanage that we are going to visit later in the week. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind the froth!

But that was late in the day. Let's look at how we got to that point in time.

Resort life is as little strange really. Every blog entry could simply read. Wake. Swim. Breakfast. Swim. Lunch. Swim. Dinner. Swim. Bed. Then rinse and repeat for the duration of the stay. It's great if you like sitting by a pool and sunbathing - but that's not really my thing.

The way around the repetition is to get out of the resort and look around the local area to see what you can find. After breakfast we headed down to the local shopping mall to get a massage and look around. We ended up staying quite a while and having lunch there before heading to Pacifika Museum to look at some of the local art. There was a lot of Dutch and French painters in the late 19th and early 20th century who were very influential in the art scene. The museum that Pamela and Emily went to when Tom was sick was actually the most influential artist of the era. He was friends with the president and trained many local artists at the time. His art was also influential in developing the storyline in the Tin Tin comic series and the comic set the final exotic destination for Tin Tin in Indonesia as a result. All in all some very interesting art, sculpture and history. What surprised me the most was the open doors and ridiculous humidity that the art was housed in. I'm sure it's not good for the preservation of the pieces.

Tom and I headed back to the resort to try to organise some water activities but, unfortunately, the tide was out too far to do anything today. Not to worry, three more days to organise the activities (I'll post more on that when we do the activities) so we went to the pool instead. Again, not really my thing but we had fun anyway.

In the meantime, Pamela had missed us at the pool and ended up on the beach where she managed to bargain a couple of sarongs and some jewellery from the local vendors all for less than the cost of a glass of wine from the resort. We met up again and headed to the pool to watch the world go by.

It was sometime around here that we ordered the juice along with some fries and spring rolls. Something small to fill then gaps was the thinking. We then found a vacant cabana that we moved to which nearly ruined the system around the pool. I saw one of the waiting staff approaching random people to find where I had gone. Obviously all non Asians look the same to Balinese because most of the people that he approached looked nothing like me! Anyway, we ended up with the food and drinks and settled back in comfort to watch the world go by.

Later that night, after showers and a freshen up, we went to the beach, sat on beanbags and watched the ships sail past. It was a beautiful night and very peaceful listening to the waves lap at the shore. Tom is back to full capacity now so he had the all-you-can-eat buffet just to keep him going. Nice to see people healthy again.

After a couple of drinks, some ice cream and some time spent listening to the live music we turned in for the night.

This is one day that I won't mind rinsing and repeating.

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