Daylight helps so much. Nothing looks quite as dire during the day. I woke up not happy, but not completely covered in bugs so that’s a plus. I hardly slept at all last night. It was so hot that I just laid in bed sweating trying to lay as close to the edge as I could so I got full effect of the fan. I’m still amazed how much my face can sweat. I noticed that I’m just holding all the stress of it all kind of like holding my breath, waiting until September. I can’t hold my breath until September. I can’t live like this that long. I still don’t know how to let the holding go. I tried to cry or get angry, but it’s not an emotional thing. I’ve done that work for years. Cognitively I understand that it’s an issue of seeing. None of this looks the way I wanted it to. The fairy tale I was fed as a child isn’t true. No knight in shining armor is coming to save me. I wanted a more comfortable life than this. I wanted to live in a different culture, but in a city with expats I could be friends with and the ability to get around easier. And then I wanted the next step in my process to present itself easily. And some how money would appear and I’d live happily ever after. It doesn’t look like that. I need to see differently. Last night as I typed that I was feeling broken, I thought maybe I need to be broken. Maybe it’s like losing all that muscle I lost a few months ago, where I felt that I had to lose it all to start over. Maybe I have to be broken, have everything I want not possible so I can let go of how it “should be” and really see. Maybe it’s already happening.
The janitor came over and finished covering holes in my house. There are so many he didn’t do because it would take a month full time to cover every hole, but I think we got the ones that mice and tokays could get through. Speaking of mice, I found the one living in my bathroom. We both chased him around for 5 minutes and then he disappeared. Like magic. I have no idea where he went. So mind boggling. There must be a secret trap door that only mice and frogs know about.
Now I’m sitting in the coffee shop in air conditioning and wondering how they can actually get that much sugar to dissolve in a latte. On my way here, I ran into one of the teachers, Pit. I don’t know Pit’s actual title, but he’s kind of like an assistant principle. He and one of the other teachers looked so happy to see me. They both mentioned the air conditioning. So, I will have air con in the future. As usual, I’m not clear on the full content of the conversation, but I think the air con unit will be here on the 15th.
So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to try putting tags in my blog so that they are searchable by others. Or at least, that’s what I think it will do. I’m not sure because the whole thing about hashtags has me mystified. I understand it makes things searchable, but I have no idea who is searching for some of the things I’ve seen hashtagged. I have no idea how someone goes about searching. And above all I have no idea why. So, if you get a bunch of emails in the near future saying I updated a blog, sorry. I don’t know if WordPress sends an email every time I make and update or only when I post a new blog. Also, if you have any good ideas of hashtags I should use, let me know.
I like this part of Chaing Mai that I’ve been staying in. Of course, I probably like this area because it’s a more expensive place to live so with nicer condos comes nicer restaurants, shops, etc. I’d rather be staying in a hotel than an condo, but it’s a real nice condo.
I found a language school near the condo. The shortest class they offered was 20 hours. I don’t have that much time. My brain would explode if I tried to do that many hours over a few days anyway. I went in and talked to them anyway and asked if I could do private lessons. I signed up for 3 hours Friday and 3 hours yesterday. My teacher was a wonderful, cute, young, energetic lady. She taught me basic sentence structure and gave me good worksheets I can refer to later. That is good because I have forgotten just about everything she taught me. She basically gave me everything I would have learned in the 20 hour class. My brain did not explode, but it was touch and go for a while there. Not much stuck. I think it will come back as I study the worksheets later. We went to lunch together the first day and then the second day I offered to buy her a coffee on break. She took me to her favorite coffee shop and made me order in Thai. Now, I just have to put in the time to practice.
I worked on some stuff for my engineering company. It wasn’t much, but every little bit of income helps. I spent way more on vacation than I made. I hung out in the pool. I hung out in the condo and watched bad American and Thai tv. Thai soap operas are horrible. Their game shows are hysterical. For American tv they had bad cop shows, Grim, a firefighter show, A Minute to Win It, the ScyFi channel and a movie channel.
I got massage almost every day. My fingers hurt. I wonder what’s going on with them. I wonder if I’m getting arthritis, but assume it’s something else. My shoulders are very tight. It feels like my muscles are burning, like a chemical burn, when they work on them. My hamstrings and IT bands are pretty flexible though which has never been something I could say. I got a body scrub one day instead of a massage. Unlike the one in Vietnam, it didn’t hurt. At no time did I think I might be bleeding or might need a trip to the hospital. After, she put on oil. It didn’t feel like massage oil or lotion. It felt like she was turning my skin into silk. Oh, I wish I had asked what she used because it was a marvellous feeling. Now my knee caps are peeling. With all the sun I got over the past two months, no part of my body has peeled except my knee caps. So weird and fascinating.
I went on a few google maps adventures. Some of the restaurants I asked it to lead me to didn’t exist. Some of the routes were impossible. Still, how did we ever do anything before google?
I had a session with my teacher. He thought the hurting fingers might be a diet thing – too much starch. That might explain the burning muscles too. That or I have a rare horrible burning muscle disease. It’s probably diet. Nothing monumental happened in the session, but that’s not unusual for me. It did come out that I’m just not in a place where I have a bunch of emotional processing to do. I’ve worked through so much of that. It seems that now I’m down to Muscle Zero, that what I need to do is rebuild muscle while rebuilding my center. So, how do I rebuild? DSE exercises! In the past I did these exercises regularly and they usually put me into process, helping me work through the stuff that came up. I’m excited to see what the exercises will do now as I try to rebuild my body and energy system. So, I’m ready to go home with a new resolve of doing this conscious movement, finding a way to work out/lift weights, and seeing if I can eat better. The eating better will be hard as I can hear ice cream taunting me from somewhere off in the distance as I write this.
Strange food experiences of the week! I think this will be a regular feature of my blog. I went out for ice cream one afternoon. I found a place that advertised snow ice. It could be ice cream. I couldn’t tell from the pictures. I’m more adventurous with dessert than other foods so let’s see. I ordered the watermelon snow ice. It was gigantic. I couldn’t eat it all, but I tried real hard. The best I could tell is that it was like a snow cone except they used sweetened condensed milk instead of ice. Then they put water melon balls and ice cream on top. And they gave you a red syrup on the side to put on the snow ice. It was a bit much, but I’ll probably forget that in the future and do it again. The other food adventure was one morning I went to get breakfast. I found a couple coffee shops that had coffee and cake. I didn’t want cake for breakfast. I found a place that had bread. By now, I was starving and decided garlic bread for breakfast would have to do. They put syrup on the garlic bread. How on earth is that a good idea? Why can’t there just be food that is savory without having to be sweet too? Not every food has to have every flavour in it. It was edible, but I wouldn’t rush out and try to re-create this food concept. This I won’t forget, but I suspect it will happen again not by choice.
On a similar note I had a weird restaurant experience. I saw a restaurant near my condo and went in. They didn’t have a menu out front so I asked to see a menu. They asked if I wanted whiskey or beer. The place was called a café. I wanted a menu. They gave me a menu and then seven of them stood by my table and watched me look through the menu. This has happened often before where the waiter or waitress stands by the table waiting to take your order while you look through the menu. But it was seven women. I felt like an animal at the zoo. “What will it do next”? I’m not sure what was going on, but I decided I didn’t want to eat there.
I tried Tinder. It’s a dating app, but less intensive than most websites. It’s a weird concept to me. It shows you a picture of someone nearby and you either “like” them or not. If you hit the X or swipe to the left they go away forever. If you hit the heart or swipe right they go into your likes category. You don’t get to see the next picture until you’ve decided on the first. If you like them and they like you then you can send messages. There can be few photos and a short description you can look at. It tells you their age too. It only shows people that are physically nearby you. You decide what radius to look at. I messaged two guys, but didn’t meet up with anyone. I don’t think I like this app, but I am extremely curious to what comes up in the app when I get to Sam Ngao. And it might be a good way to meet people to have dinner with in the future when I go to other places for the weekend. We’ll see.
I’m feeling drawn to write a book based on my blog. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if I need to get my blog out to more people first or if I just write the book. I don’t know how to go about getting a book published. Maybe it’s just a matter of advertising on my blog and getting it out to more people to make money, but it feels more like a book to me than a money making blog. If any of you out there have ideas of how to make this happen, please let me know. You can email me at rrainefiore@gmail.com. I might try putting hashtags in my old blogs so they can be found easier by people I don’t know that may be interested in reading. If you haven’t subscribed to my blog, but are following it regularly, please do so as I assume the number of followers I have will be useful in marketing to a publisher. If you are not interested in subscribing to my blog, that’s fine too. I don’t want to pressure anyone. I know how annoying it can be to receive emails you don’t want. I may try advertising on my blog too. If I do and you find it takes away from the blog, let me know as I’m still figuring all this blog stuff out. I don’t mind advertising that’s off to the side, but if it highjacks my blog or gets in the way of readers enjoying my blogs, then it’s not worth it.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
3 headed elephant statueSnow IceThis penguin made my snow ice, I thinkI think he likes me
Yesterday I left Singapore and flew to Bangkok and then to Chaing Mai.
The Singapore airport is amazing. There is art everywhere. There are at least 2 gardens in each terminal. It’s easy to get around. They have reclining chairs in case you want to relax. They have lounges, tv rooms, a pool, and a movie theater. . I heard they had free massage chairs, but I didn’t find them. One of the gardens was a butterfly garden. I went early just to see the butterfly garden.
Bangkok airport has no gardens.
The strange food story of the day…..Mochi. I like the gummy mochi candy you can get in the US at yogurt places. I love mochi balls (ice cream wrapped in mochi). I saw this mochi dessert on the airplane menu each time I flew. Then a video of it appeared on facebook on someone’s page as clear cake (it resembles cake in no way at all). So, it was time to try it. It is a clear tasteless jelly. Then you pour a brown uneventful syrup on it and top it with crushed nuts. It was good enough that I ate it all, but there is no reason you should ever pay money to eat this.
I got to my hotel in Chaing Mai, only it wasn’t a hotel, but an apartment complex. The guards had no idea what to do with me. I had no idea where to go. I called the number on my reservation, but it said “this number is not available right now”. I sat in the guard’s office for a while trying to figure out what to do when someone called me. He said his wife emailed me (I didn’t receive an email). The key was at the guard’s shack. So, it appears I rented a 2 bedroom apartment. I’d actually rather have a hotel, but it is a real nice apartment. There’s air conditioning which I won’t see for 5 months, a gym and a pool. The location seems good – near a mall, plenty of restaurants, and massage places. I ate at a restaurant that only serves made to order salads. That made me feel a little better. Then a massage. I was going to do a massage and a body scrub, but if I ordered two services, they would tack on another 50 baht in addition to the regular cost of the two services. This marketing approach is backwards and didn’t work. I gave up on the body scrub.
Today I signed up for private Thai language lessons for tomorrow and Saturday, 3 hours each. I’m not sure if my brain can handle 3 hours each day, but any new Thai I can learn will be helpful. All of the classes I looked up on the internet last night were longer – weeks or more so that is why I did the private lessons.
I went to the hospital. I had to do the health certificate again since the one I did in February is now outdated. This is for my work permit. The first hospital I went to was a mass of people and no English anywhere. I couldn’t tell if I was in the emergency room, the general hospital or what. There were many windows and steps to go through, but I couldn’t figure out where to start. I knew there was a more foreigner friendly hospital somewhere so I found it on google maps and went there instead. Within 30 seconds of being there, I was pointed in the right direction. Then began the game of move Rraine from seat to seat to room to seat to room. Overall, it didn’t take very long. They actually took blood which was more than the last place I had this done did.
I had to wait 2 hours for my tests to come back to get my certification. So I went and got lunch. There was a mall with a pizza hut and another pizza place. I opted for the other pizza place. My pizza looked and tasted suspiciously like pizza hut though. I was able to find the phone store and get my internet issues resolved (in theory – haven’t tried it out yet). I got my certification. I didn’t look at it because it was in a sealed envelope. I assume I’m healthy enough to work in Thailand. The blood test was for syphilis. I think you have to have sex to get that so I should be good to go.
While I was waiting for the certification, I got a message from the owner of the condo. He wanted to know if I could move to the room I actually rented today. Huh? With all that confusion yesterday, this isn’t even the right room. Ok, not a big deal I guess. I told him what time I’d be back and he said he’d have the maid change keys with me. This didn’t go so smoothly either. The new room hadn’t been cleaned. It was a mess and had no clean towels or sheets. I went to the pool hoping the problem would solve itself. A lot of messaging back and forth and now someone is cleaning my new room.
Thoughts of the day though: This morning when everything went so smoothly with the language lessons, hospital and phone store (the three main things I needed to do today), I felt good and thought I might accomplish everything today . I wanted to finish blogs, do some engineering work and finish lesson plans too. Ha – too ambitious. Then the dirty room dashed all of that. Now I’m cranky and grumpy and have a bit of a poor me thing going on. Such a little thing. So, I know this is no big deal, but the old nervous system pattern is getting triggered that makes me feel bad when things are out of my control and not going the way I want. It’s not panic, but a dulled down version of panic. The new learning of the day is I’ve never been a person to panic. That’s rarely, if ever, a reaction I have. I realize that in the past I couldn’t actually panic because then there’d be no control over the situation I already have no control over. I can keep from panicking, but I can’t seem to let the dulled down reaction go either. Of course, the bigger issue is that I don’t actually have control over anything and I’m in the process of letting the ego’s control go and learning to go with the flow of life. Another tiny layer of the onion can now fall away as I see the dulled down panic as a control defense.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
One of the airport gardensMore airport gardensAt the airport – yay!
Mochi Series – Picture 1 – packaged for airplaneMochi Series – Picture 2 – Add the syrupMochi Series – Picture 3 – Add the nutsMochi Series – Picture 4 – EatI have no idea – just found it at a coffee shop
First order of business of the day was to check out the East Shore Park. It looks like a long boardwalk along the beach. I got a cab down there and it let me off at one end where there were a bunch of restaurants and shops. It’s Monday so most of the shops and restaurants were closed. It looked like a ghost town. There were no cars in the parking lot. I did find a place to have breakfast. To my surprise, my french toast had peanut butter in it. Unnecessary.
I walked around the park for awhile. It doesn’t seem like a tranquil island beach when you look out to the water and see nothing but a solid mass of cargo ships. The park overdid itself like I imagine all the parks in Singapore do. It had benches, exercise equipment, bbq grills, separate walking and biking paths along with a lot of other amenities. It was spotless clean too. I did walk by an area of tents, boats and roll away garbage bins. Not sure what that was all about. I’d have thought it was homeless if it wasn’t for the fact that the garbage bins outnumbered the tents.
It was getting too hot for humans to survive outside. So, I decided to do the shopping I needed to get done. Oh, crap, how do I get anywhere? I’m at the ghost town beach and the only taxi is the one that let me off hours ago. I actually did see a few taxis, but they all went by me. I ended up going through a highway underpass to another part of town which was half a ghost town and getting a taxi there.
Orchard Road is the big shopping area, but it’s very high end and probably very expensive. Judy had suggested that I got to Mustafa’s. It’s cheaper and it’s a madhouse that needs to be experienced. It is one store that is 5 or 6 levels tall and has almost everything ever made in it. The isles are too small for two people to be in them at once and there are already 4 people in every isle. There is a small order to things such as all the cosmetics are on one floor, but if you want perfume, it’s in 6 different places on that floor. I was looking for perfume that Pat wanted me to pick up. I also wanted to buy some cosmetics for myself. Everything in Thailand has whitening agents in it because they think light skin is pretty. I’m now darker than most Thais and am happy to pale naturally over time without whiteners. I also wanted to get a gift for Judy for letting me stay at her place. After wandering the first floor, I decided I was up for the challenge of the other 5 floors. It was like a maze – just when you thought you got to the end of the store, there was another room on that level. After 2 hours I gave up on tackling the whole store. It was not possible and people are so rude and pushy, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Last night when Judy asked what I was going to do today, I told her I wanted to see Henderson Waves. She hadn’t seen it, looked it up and wanted to go so we decided to do it after she got home from school. From what I had seen on line, it looked like an undulating bridge, but I couldn’t figure out how you would drive or walk on it. Andy decided to join us. It was a foot bridge between two really big parks. It is the highest bridge in Singapore. The wave part is off the side of the walking part. It is stunningly beautiful with great views off either side. It is a serious piece of art, in my opinion. Bravo. We stayed up there for quite awhile taking pictures.
After Henderson Waves, we took the train to Sentosa. Sentosa is a landfill island, meaning, the island was made from the extra dirt of other construction projects over the years. It has a huge park, Universal Studios, beaches and who knows what other wonderful things. It was almost dark when we got there. We went to the shore and I put some of Scott’s ashes in the water! So, now he’s in Singapore too.
Off to dinner and then Judy’s neighborhood bar. She introduced me to a guy named Ian who works with or runs or owns a company that teaches English for hospitality industry workers. She was hoping he might have some future work for me. He was with family that was visiting and was not the least bit interested in talking to me. Oh well, it was worth a try to make a new connection.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Facinating – poles for laundry built into building
We got up this morning and found a place for breakfast. It wasn’t very good. Then we hung out at the Best Western pool until it was time to take Carly to the airport. They had a really nice pool.
I drove the POS for the last time and was so excited to drop it off. That might have been the highlight of the day. I said goodbye to Carly and got a taxi to my new hotel near the beach. I’ve heard that Kuta and Seminyak are both dirty and over touristy and that I wouldn’t enjoy them. From my one night in Kuta, I didn’t find it to be that bad, but I didn’t find it worth going back to either. My hotel in Seminyak is great.
It was a 13 minute walk to the beach. The beach wasn’t crowded at all. I got there in time for sunset. There was a beach bar that I hung out at for dinner and sunset. I was hoping to meet some people and have a nice conversation, but that didn’t happen. But as I sat there, I just felt how alone I was and then for a while, I didn’t even exist. I could have stayed like that all night, but I had to go to the bathroom and that kinda broke the not existing experience. Now, note, I said “alone”. Did you read “lonely”? Did you put a negative story on the word “alone”? Did you assume that if I had met people and had a nice conversation that that would have been the “better” outcome? “Alone” is not the same as “lonely”, not even close. Now read it again without judgement, good or bad, or should be. Do you get a different picture?
So, this is the right way to do a beach bar. Put on some music, have a bunch of bean bags to sit on, put out some pretty lights, serve drinks and food. This is as simple, brilliant and perfect as it gets. Naysayers 0, Seminyak 1.
I stayed out too late last night. The alarm was hard to take this morning. But, I managed to get up and get breakfast. I had signed up for a silver smithing class. I’ve done a couple of college level courses in metal smithing and the guide book talked about Bali jewelry as if it is unique to this part of the world. I thought it would be fun to learn some new skills and who doesn’t want some new jewelry? The class wasn’t that great. They barely let me do any of the work and the “teacher” kept trying to redesign my work. The examples of types of things we could make didn’t look unique. I’ve seen similar jewelry everywhere. I decided to do a wire work piece since I never did wire work in other classes. The class cost around $30 which is not a bad deal for a new ring and necklace even if I didn’t learn a life changing new skill.
I went to lunch after the class. One of the things I like about Ubud is you can get a salad! There are a lot of healthy restaurants here. Ubud is like a bunch of people from Boulder created a town in Bali. There are yoga places, vegetarian restaurants and art shops. There are more guesthouses than tourists even though it’s a town of tourists and expats. Most of the restaurants have communal tables that are low to the ground and you sit on cushions around them. I love these. I sat at one of those and met a couple expats that are just hanging out in Ubud. How do people afford to just move to another country for a year or two without having to work? Obviously, I’m doing it wrong. Then it started to rain. I didn’t have my computer or book so I didn’t want to hang out and wait for the rain to stop. I debated how long to wait and gave up and just started walking in the downpour. At some point, a nice man gave me his extra umbrella. I saw a spa and gave him his umbrella back and ducked in for a foot massage. Massages here are almost as cheap as in Thailand, but not quite as good. This was a pretty good massage and a great way to wait out the rain.
My hotel here is awesome. It has two pools, beautiful gardens and the people are nice. After a little pool time, my friend picked me up and we went to an ashram a little outside of town for a yoga class that a friend of hers recommended. I haven’t done yoga in years. One cool thing that happened is when we were sitting the instructor had us lean forward and hold our toes. My initial thought was, I can’t reach my toes. My hamstrings are always to tight and after not working out for over 7 months, there’s no way. I could reach my toes. I have this feeling that losing so much muscle weight lately is actually like a reset. I’m thinking that a lot of the stuff I’ve been holding in my muscles just left with the weight loss. Now I can touch my toes. I have no idea what I was holding in my hamstrings before, but it doesn’t matter, it’s gone.
The yoga class was in an open air pavilion. At some point it got so hot that I thought I might die. Then a minute later it rained and I felt a huge relief. I hadn’t realized I was feeling the humidity build to the breaking point. Once it started raining, the humidity in the pavilion went down to something more tolerable. I’ve been thinking I might want to live in Bali next, but I’m not sure I like humidity enough to be able to live here. It’s so hot and humid. We had to ride motorbikes in the rain to dinner and back to Ubud.
Today I had booked a tour through my hotel. It didn’t turn out to be a tour so much as it was a 15 year old kid leading me through the jungle to see a waterfall. I wanted to see the waterfall and some rice terraces and that’s what I got so it was ok that it wasn’t a tour. The waterfall didn’t seem to have any way to it other than the tiny trail we took and there was no tourist parking lot and no other people so that was cool. The rest of the walking was beautiful too.
I can’t remember if I wrote about this before or just thought about it. When I was in Vietnam and got sick, I didn’t want to eat. Part of it was because everything made me feel bad, but part of it felt like my body wanted to fast. I’ve never fasted before and I know that if you fast for more than a few days your body starts to heal things and it becomes like a full body reset. I felt very strongly like my body wanted to reset, but because I was traveling, I felt scared to fast. Since I didn’t have time to exercise for a few months before I left the US, I haven’t exercised since I moved to Thailand, and I was sick for so long, I’ve lost a lot of weight and it’s mostly muscle. My arms and legs are super tiny. For whatever reason, I’m still holding some fat in the belly just in case? I don’t feel overly concerned about it though. It kind of feels like a reset, like I’m down to muscle ground zero, and when I start exercising again, I’ll start re-growing muscle from a reset place without all the old stories I use to carry in my muscles. I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but that’s what it feels like. I count the tiny walk I did today as the first day of new muscles.
After hiking I went to the pool. It was sooooo delightfully cold. I tried to work on lesson plans and some engineering work, but the wifi here is so spotty, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped. I changed into the room I booked. It’s huge. There is a queen bed and a twin in here. The balcony is bigger than the entire room I had last night. It overlooks the rice fields and has a rushing creek behind it. It has a roof that is open where the roof meets the wall so I’ll be one with the bugs again!
I took a class at the hotel in making offerings. They weave intricate baskets and decorative things out of palm leaves, then put flowers and other things in them and use them as offerings. It’s like paper cut out snowflakes meets origami. So, one lady who didn’t speak English tried to teach me how to make them. Another lady joined in. If I didn’t get it right immediately, the second lady would take it from me and do it. I’m not sure if it was really difficult or if they were really bad teachers. Considering I am quite artistic, I’m going with bad teaching. It basically became an exercise in watching them make things and then decorating them with flowers.
Now it’s dark and I’m sitting in my giant room. The amount of things out there calling to each other is ridiculous. I assume the really loud ones are frogs, but I am not sure. This is the noisiest place I’ve ever been. I grew up in Florida on a marshy creek and there was never this much going on at night. There are at least 20 different bug/frog sounds, the stream behind my room, a cat with a lot to say, random motorbikes, and off in the distance, a gong. But, so far, no tokay!
Today I went diving. I had almost private diving again. There was another guy diving and since we were different experience levels, they gave us two dive guides so that I could do deeper and longer dives. Wow, I’ve never had a dive company do that before. It was shore diving. They drove us 20 minutes to the next town. The shore operation was fascinating. It was a 5 minute walk from the parking lot down a trail to a rock “beach”. There were quite a few other divers. There were porters that brought all the stuff down. Woman would carry bags or bins of gear down to the beach on their heads. I saw some carrying tanks on their heads as well. Then there were guys that rode motorbikes down while carrying 4 tanks and weight belts. I’ve seen a lot of things on motorbikes, but four heavy tanks of air balanced in front of them was just nuts. Then, the whole process would reverse itself as they brought stuff back up to the parking lot.
Getting in the water was tricky as there was no sand, just rock and the rock moves as the water and your feet connect with them. The rocks are all black and when you swam out to the sandy part, it was all black. I’ve never dove blank sand before. It looked so alien. Because it’s so rocky, there is very little coral as it’s difficult for coral to attach to rock. There is a wreck not far off shore which is full of coral and fish life. The ship was the USAT Liberty which was a cargo ship that was torpedoed in 1942. They were able to beach it on Bali and get the cargo off. It stayed beached until 1963 when the tremors from a volcanic eruption caused it to slide into the water and sink. This area is known for what is called muck diving. Not a ton of big fish, but lots of tiny things hidden in the rocks, sand and the little bit of coral that has managed to grow. There is a small royal blue fish about 1 to 2 inches long that I’ve seen on almost every dive everywhere around the world. My favourite part was seeing schools of these swimming above the black sand. The black background made the blue so sharp it looked like the fish were glowing with blue light. I’m not a huge fan of wrecks, but this one was pretty cool. The amount of coral and fish life was amazing, probably because there isn’t much else around. The wreck was very large too. Saw another sea turtle. The second dive was like Easter egg hunting – swimming from one tiny bit of coral reef to the next looking for tiny creatures. My dive guide was good at finding them. He found an itty bitty sea horse about a quarter inch big.
After diving I ventured into town. I think ‘town’ might be a big word for where I’m staying. I think it was small enough that I actually walked the length of two towns. There is basically one street and that is all. It is lined with guest houses and homestays, restaurants, and dive shops. It’s mostly still a fishing village. I got a massage. They use oil so now I’m just hot, sweaty, covered in oil and sand. Everything is sticking to me. I had dinner at a different place and wanted to stay out and check out the place with live music, but I couldn’t stand the oil anymore and I love the place I’m staying so the thought of a shower and then camping out in my wonderful bed won over live music.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Downtown AmedDowntown AmedThe porch of my roomOh, this is a good ideaWow
My experience with making a plan is that 90% of the time nothing goes according to the plan. Still, we make plans. Today was no different. The first beach I chose was supposed to have the blackest sand on this side of Bali according to the guide book. I got there and it was a construction zone. Machines were moving large boulders around. The tide was in so there was no beach. I could tell that if there had been a beach, it would have had very black sand. So, back into the POS to find the next beach. I got to see rice fields on the way to and from the beach so, check! – Picture of rice fields. Now, one of the side roads I was going to take later to see rice fields didn’t need to happen. The next beach was supposed to have a ton of mica in the sand so it’s extra glittery. I like glitter. There was a parking lot and some Bali restaurants and not much else. Since the tide was still in, the water came up to the wall. I could tell from the parking lot, that, yes, this would be a glittery beach, but not right now. I tried to order lunch, but all they had was fish. How do you have fish, but not shrimp? Then again, Google Translator could be lying. It does that often. I gave up and decided to eat lunch at the next beach. The next beach was not part of the plan, but I was determined to get a beach. No, not a beach. It was a harbor for a very large ferry and more dive operations than I’ve ever seen in one location. I did find a restaurant for lunch though. So, that’s the end of the beach portion of the plan and we are 0 for 3.
At many points of the day I am sweating so hard that I think water is pouring out of my face. I didn’t think a face could sweat that much. I grew up in Florida, but I don’t remember heat and humidity like this.
I decided to head to the place I’m staying tonight. The road goes more inland. There is a water temple on the way which is the next part of the plan. Google Maps decides to not work so we are going by signs and the map in the guide book. It shouldn’t be an issue to get to Amed without google maps, but the water temple is probably a loss and hopefully the resort is easy to find when I get to Amed.
I’ve finally figured out what the white stripes on the road mean. If you see a white stripe on the road, there is a driving lane to the left of the stripe, a driving lane to the right of the stripe and a driving lane straddling the stripe. At some point the road narrowed and buildings lined both sides of the road so there was no way to pull over, stop and check the map. The road wound up and down with huge curves. Often, the buildings would go away on one side of the road revealing stunning views. I couldn’t take pictures of any of it because there was no where to stop and I need both my hands to drive. The signs did not lead me astray though. I only missed one turn – the one to the water temple.
I saw an area with about 20 cars parked so I assumed that might be the temple. I had to drive quite a distance before I found a place I could turn around. I wasn’t going to miss everything on the plan though so I went back and it was the parking for the water temple! Actually, it wasn’t a temple, but a water palace. Taman Tirta Gangga was built in 1948 and has two swimming ponds, and a bunch of other ponds with fountains and koi in them. My favorite had stepping stones at water level so it felt like you were walking on water. They led different paths through the water like a labyrinth. As I headed back to my car there was a guy with snakes you could pay to pose with for pictures. He also had a bat and tiny owls. OWLS. My distaste of animal tourism out the window. Hell yea, I’ll pay you to hold a tiny owl and get my picture taken.
After that I headed to Amed by way of sign instead of electronic map. The road got smaller and smaller until it was slightly larger than one lane. Yet from the signs advertising guesthouses and scuba diving, I knew I was on the right path. I almost missed the sign that pointed to the place where I’m staying, but managed to hit the brakes and turn at the last second. I parked near the entrance and a guy asked if I was Kim.
This is no five star resort, but I’m in love with it. The dive shop is at the same place as the hotel so I was able to check in and I don’t have far to go tomorrow morning. There are a row of rooms on either side of a courtyard. Almost the entire courtyard is taken up by a pool. There’s a restaurant and a short distance from the restaurant and the pool is a black sand beach. You can see huge mountains when you are in the ocean. Each room has a covered deck looking out to the ocean and the decks all have bean bag chairs on them. My room is large, very yellow and has a bed built into the middle of the room. I can hear the ocean from my room. I stayed here for dinner because I’ve had enough venturing out for today and because I love this place. The food was great and I got to catch up on yesterday and today’s blogs.
I checked in with Mom. My brother is there again. They were getting ready to go to the funeral of my cousin’s son. The funeral for my Mom’s husband is Saturday. I wish I could be there. I’ve been struggling with feeling like I should go back and feeling very strongly that it isn’t the right decision. There’s a huge part of me that doesn’t want to go back to Sam Ngao and teach. That part is telling me to move back to the US. To stay in Sam Ngao would be the more difficult choice. I don’t feel that it’s the right time to go back to the US. I’m stuck again in the place of what “should” I do. I’m thinking of the future instead of being here. I’m feeling like I need to have a plan, make a decision, control the situation. But, I know that this is all part of the learning. The truth is that I don’t know the right answer, I don’t have to make a decision now and if I control the situation, it will not turn out happy for me. So, as uncomfortable as it is for me, I wait. I wait for life to unfold and happen the way it should.
I also had the thought on the dive boat yesterday that I would love to be on a boat and diving every day. Then I had the thought that I don’t have the money to get my dive master certification and it would be a hard life financially. I see that I took something wonderful that I was enjoying and in my head made it impossible to have that as my life. Instead, my life will be teaching in Sam Ngao, moving to Wisconsin which I have no desire to do, or some unknown other thing that is also ok, but I don’t love it. So, the belief that there’s not enough for me is still in operation at a very subtle level. I can never really have what I want. This has been one of my core issues. I want to love my life. I want to love my work and have it be enough financially. I want to put an end to drama and the need for there to always be some hurdle to get over. And it’s tied to doing and planning. And it’s tied to what’s going on with Mom. And it’s tied to the dissolving of the ego. So for now, I have no plan and I don’t know what I’m going to do in a couple weeks when vacation is over. I have no idea how I’m going to get that job I love or what that job is. I’m just watching what comes up and noticing it.
I got up early, had breakfast at my hotel. They have a cute open air kitchen and made me a fried egg and toast. I love this little hotel. The dive shop picked me up, thank god. I need a day off from driving that horrible vehicle on tiny roads.
A lot of buildings here look like temples with ornate stone entrances, but they are just homes or businesses. In fact, I’m not even sure what a temple looks like at this point. The dive shop was the same. I large stone wall with a grand entrance. Inside was a stone pool that looked like a temple in it’s own right. It’s so hot here, maybe it should be a temple. There were a lot of people and it had a wonderful feel to it. It looked like a higher end dive shop. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I’m thinking of getting my dive master certification and working as a dive guide as a possibility after teaching. I chose 3 dive companies based on their dive master internship programs. This one is off to a good start.
I had requested to dive Nusa Penida which is an island nearby. So, they put me on a boat with 8 dive interns, their instructors and my dive guide. So, basically, it was private diving with a boat full of other people. It was neat to watch the dive intern class too. I read later on line that my dive guide, Wayan, has over 10,000 dives in Bali. Holy crap. I have 156.
I did my back roll into the warm water and felt at home immediately. After adjusting my gear and telling Wayan I was ready, I looked down at the sandy bottom with a reef off to our right. As we decended, I felt like I was in an aquarium. It was clear and there were tons of fish. The coral wasn’t the brightly colored coral I remember seeing other places, but it was alive and moving in the current. Most of it looked like long shag carpet. There were others that looked like gardens of giant cabbage. We hit a mean thermocline. It went from summer to winter in an instant. This was hopeful as the Mola (Sun Fish) are found in these conditions. It’s not Mola season, but still possible to see them. They are huge getting up to 14′ tall and 10′ long. We went to the point of the reef and held on against the current (current another good sign) and waited. No Mola today. Still, this dive was great and I’m relieved that not all the reefs of the world are dead.
The second dive was Manta point. We got to see a manta ray, many sting rays and 3 different octopus. The Mantas are huge and beautiful to watch, but 3 octopus in one dive during the day? That was the highlight for me. Just watching them change colors over and over is fascinating. The third dive was wonderful too. It was a drift dive, meaning that the current is strong enough that you get in, go for a ride past all the coral and then the boat picks you up farther down the reef. At first there was no current. Near the end of the dive, it kicked in. It’s kinda fun just whizzing by and I find it very relaxing. The highlight of this dive was a large turtle. We grabbed on to some reef and watched him chow down on something for almost 5 minutes.
So, for those of you who don’t know Scott’s turtle story, you get to hear it now. One time Scott and I went diving at a small resort in Belize. We were the only ones staying at the hotel and the only ones diving all week. The first dive, the dive master said we might get to see a turtle. Not only did we see one, it came up to Scott and swam around above him in his bubbles. We saw a turtle on every dive that week. Every one we saw interacted with Scott or his bubbles. One came straight for Scott. He dropped to his knees in the sand to avoid touching it and spread his arms out wide. It was almost wider than Scott’s outstretched arms. From that point forward we joked that Scott was the King Turtle. It must be his bald head and big nose – they thought he was a turtle. A few years later when I was researching the memorial tattoo I wanted to get in honor of Scott, I knew it would be a sea turtle. I wanted the symbol of a turtle, not an actual picture of a turtle so I googled Seat Turtle Symbol. What I got was Seat Turtle Symbolism. In a couple different cultures, the sea turtle is the communication link between this world and the next. I remember being stunned. I figured that turtle had been telling Scott to get ready because his time in this world was almost up. I took a bunch of images to my tattoo artist, but didn’t tell him the story or even that it was a memorial tattoo. A couple days later he had his design. While he showed me the design he showed me how he had symbolized past, present and future, the sun, sky, water and earth and gave him a third eye to see beyond this world. Again, stunned. Of course, I cried and shared the story with him and he cried.
My mother’s husband, David, died yesterday morning. I wonder if the sea turtle was bringing me a message from David. In reality, I don’t see an actual direct link between the turtle and death, but I’d like to think it was David saying goodbye.
After diving I ventured out to the beach walk. It’s a sidewalk that runs along the beach for quite a distance in Sanur. It has hotels, restaurants, and shops along it. I saw people doing Falun Dafa on the beach and was reading the information they had posted because I had never heard of it. It’s a Chinese “Traditional Self Cultivation Practice to improve Mind and Body”. A a lady asked if I’d like to try it. Sure. We sat cross legged and she showed me some hand positions that we would hold for ” a minute or so each. I closed my eyes and listened to the waves and the people walking by. My favorite was the sound of the bicycle bells as people rode by. They sounded like little chimes. It would have been relaxing except for the fact that my foot fell asleep and I couldn’t walk for a minute or two after we were done. It was fun to experience and I’m glad I tried it. I went looking for the night market and got sidetracked by a pedicure and ear candling. The pedicure wasn’t maiming like the ones in Thailand – Yay! I got to see my first religious parade. I read in the travel book that it is common to see a parade of people all dressed up carrying offerings to a local temple. They were all dressed in white playing drums and gongs. I found the night market and then decided I’d rather eat dinner at one of the beach side places I saw so I did that.
Then I went back to the cute little hotel and made a plan for tomorrow. I’m going to drive east and stop at a couple beaches along the way, then see some rice fields, go to a water temple, and then arrive later in the day in Amed at my next accommodation. Hey, Sharon, Look – I have a plan…..
Rraine Drops 