Hello everyone from Bali!
Time is just flying by: the last six weeks feel like 2, and in Cambodia especially the time seemed to go by so quickly. It seems unbelievable that we are in Bali. Things have been fantastic, and we feel like we are now starting off on the second journey of our trip (Indonesia and Malaysia) having come full circle from Bangkok.
Cambodia was an immensely rewarding experience and is a country that I wish we could have spent a lot more time in: 10 days was not nearly enough. After being in Vietnam, coming to Cambodia was a bit of a shock when it comes to the people. In Vietnam we met a few friendly people, but on the whole we didn’t find Vietnamese particularly welcoming; however, this is the complete opposite in Cambodia. Cambodians are full of huge sincere smiles and often seem willing to talk to you. Cambodia is also a country that makes you think and question and throughout my time there my impressions seemed to be always changing. So to backtrack…
We arrived in Phnom Penh on March 16th . On the way to Phnom Penh, while still in Vietnam, we stopped at a floating village and fish farm. There were about 1000 houses built on the water. Under the houses are fish tanks. Each fish farm will have about 150 000 fish. Most of the fish are for export and they are very expensive to breed. They eat about a ton of food per day and cost 500 000 dong to feed a day, which could be the same as someone’s monthly salary. They are starting to have problems making ends meet because they mainly export to America and now they are starting to breed their own fish. It was interesting to see: it’s a way of life that so different and isolated.
After that we went to a minority village called Cham. The Cham are actually Malaysian. They have been in Vietnam for over 500 years. They keep to themselves, speak Malay, and are Muslim. They are extremely poor. You wouldn’t have been able to distinguish it from some of the villages we saw in Laos if it weren’t for the Arabic writing, mosques, and women wearing headscarves. Then it was on the boat and bus to Cambodia. It was super hot! We were starting to be in the hot season and it was already unbearable: you get out of the shower and 2 minutes later you are already sweating! The bus ride to Phnom Penh was fun (although only because it was only for an hour.) The roads were atrocious. We spent all of our time trying (and missing) to get around the huge holes that are on the ground. I felt like I was on the school bus in elementary school. On the way to school, there was this big hill, and at the bottom of the hill there was this huge bump. As kids we wanted to go over the bump as fast as we could so we got the bus driver to drive fast. When we went over the bump we would fly high in our seats and usually some of us would bang our heads on the ceiling. So much fun!
When we arrived we didn’t know what to think of the city. We were shocked by 2 things: the poverty and the westernalization. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia; you can tell by the houses, the streets, and the ruined buildings. Yet, you saw English everywhere, 4 star hotels, fast food chains etc. It is such an odd mixture, and as my friend Pam noted, it really disillusions you that the government has money for hotels, but not for feeding its population.
Then we got to the budget guesthouses and I felt like I was in Bangkok again, where there is this street that is made for tourists. Yet, I liked it and I am ashamed for liking it. Everything is easy for you at the guesthouses: a restaurant with western food, travel agencies that take you everywhere, so convenient. The area is really nice by the river so it’s really peaceful and relaxing. However, shouldn’t traveling be difficult, at least a little? If I want to see Cambodia and how Cambodians live staying where I stayed should not be the way to go, yet I liked it there. And, shouldn’t traveling be about relaxing too?
Although we took the open tour ticket in Vietnam, I feel that Vietnam is better for this. You never feel that there are more tourists than locals or that little sections are made for tourists, aside from Hanoi or one budget hotels streets. I don’t know why this is such a conflict for me, maybe because I don’t have a lot of time. I don’t like the thought of staying in the tourist loop the whole time I am traveling, but I don’t seem to have time for much else….
The next few days we weren’t very busy because we decided to sleep in. On both days we rented bicycles. Renting bicycles to see the cities is the way to go! You have so much freedom, it’s cheap and you get to see parts of the city you wouldn’t usually see. The first day we took our bikes to the National Museum. I loved it! It displayed all these art pieces from the 9th to 11th century. They were so interesting: the guardian monkeys, the elephant Buddha etc. These art pieces seemed different from the ones that we’ve seen. I felt in awe in that museum. The Cambodian culture is so old, and looking at the art pieces you feel like you were there during that time. You can vividly picture how it was. Then we took our bikes to have some happy pizzas. Then we went to find a couple of bars, but as my book is 2 years old the bars we tried to find were closed so we ended up at a bar called Picasso. There we spent some time watching the locals dance to old hip hop music and talking to a couple of waitresses. They were so friendly. We didn’t talk about much, but it was fun: all of us wanting to talk, but not knowing what to say. It’s hard to know what is appropriate, and obviously there is the language barrier.
On the way home, we were struck again by the fact that there seemed to be no middle ground between the rich and poor. On our bicycles we saw lots of destroyed streets, and cyclo drivers sleeping on the streets. At the restaurants, there are severely deformed kids being pushed in wheelchairs, girls with babies, and pregnant women asking for money. It’s impossible to know what to do. You can’t give to everyone, but you want to, and here you don’t know if the money is going to the child or an adult who is working them (or if some of the deformities were made to get money; sadly that happens too). You feel powerless.
Yet, after my first day there, I really loved Phnom Penh, and I still do. It’s really beautiful: lots of temples, the river, cool ambience, and friendly people. But you see all this beauty and right beside it you see all this poverty. What is Phnom Penh really like? In some ways, it’s kind of like Vancouver. Go to Robson Street or even Gastown and you think, Wow! What a beautiful city; then you go literally 2 streets down (from Gastown), and you see total poverty. What realistically represents Vancouver? What realistically represents Phnom Penh?
The next day we went to the Presidential Palace and the Silver Pagoda. The grounds of the palace were beautiful, with different temples and small well kept paths. The Silver Pagoda was really impressive as well. The floor is made with 1000 silver tiles, and inside there was a Buddha made of 90kg of solid gold, and another smaller emerald pagoda. We couldn’t take pictures and it’s too bad because it was really impressive. After that, we rode our bikes trying to find other pagodas and we found only one and stopped to talk to a monk. I can’t really look at monks the same way now though…After that we had some more happy pizza and went back to the guesthouse for the sunset.
The next day was a really productive day and a one. We went to the killing fields. The killing fields are where Pol Pot and his soldiers executed many of the 2 million Cambodians who died during 1975-1979. Here’s a little history…Pol Pot wished to create a "farmers’ country". As a result, anyone who was an intellectual, foreigner, couldn’t work (old, young, with disabilities) or showed signs of wealth (glasses, soft skin) were either sent to the farms to work (re-education school) or were exterminated in the over 100 killing fields that exist in Cambodia. There, at the farms, they worked in concentration camp conditions, 14 to 16 hours days, while getting almost nothing to eat. The result was that over 2 million Cambodians died in 4 years from starvation, disease, torture, exhaustion, or execution. This regime was a regime of total secrecy. Pol Pot killed anyone (including his own soldiers) who knew too much. As a result, Cambodians themselves knew next to nothing about wh at was going on until several years later. All they knew was fear and what was happening in their own villages or cities. During the regime, almost all of the cities were forcibly evacuated (some left willingly trying to pass themselves off as farmers). If you were a farmer or laborer you received better treatment. The regime was one of complete fear because you never knew who could turn on you, or when you were being spied on; you only knew that it could and would happen.
Many of the children of the intellectuals also were killed, but many were taken from their parents, brainwashed, and then made to kill their own parents. During this time it was truly a "kill or be killed" mentality or "do what you’re told or be killed".
So we saw one of the biggest killing fields. 17 000 people died in this one. There were 142 mass graves, 43 of which have not been exhumed. In all of the graves that were exhumed, over 100 bodies were found in each one. Over 9000 bodies were exhumed and all of their skulls (17 stories of them) are displayed in this large building. All the skulls show heavy traumas. Because bullets were considered to be too expensive most people were bludgeoned to death with farm tools, such as axes and hammers. Children were grabbed by the feet and slammed against a tree. In 1980, stains of blood and teeth could be found in the trees. People with deformities were burned alive and used for fertilizer. People were rounded up, thinking they were going to a better place, tied to trees and raped (the women and girls) and beaten to death. Others died by having soldiers cut out their livers while still alive (livers that the soldiers later ate). I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.
All that is left of this horror are dug-out graves: everywhere you look, there are holes and holes and holes; like Eva said, it looks like the area was bombed. And on the ground, you still see bits of clothes and many bones. What makes all of this so shocking is that Pol Pot did this to his own people! Personally, what seemed to me as the worst was the separation of families. Husbands and wives, young children, siblings, all worked in different villages, alone with no support or anything. That and the continual fear seems the worst. As soon as you think you have heard about the worst horrors, you hear about more. I finished reading a book written by the children who survived this time and they all say, as adults, that they hope people learn about the atrocities so history is not repeated.
After going to the killing fields, we went to the Tuol Sleng Prison or S-21. This is where the Khmer Rouge detained individuals for "questioning". It used to be a high school but it was converted into a prison. Over 10,000 prisoners were kept in this prison and only 7 survived from being tortured and killed. Every movement, from when to go to the bathroom (in small pots in the cells) to changing positions while sleeping had to be given permission for or you were beaten. Something that is really sickening is that most of the guards were children, some as young as 7 years old who were trained to kill and torture.
In the prison, we had an opportunity to see a movie which was about one woman and her life during that time. Both she and her husband died. The movie describes the times in the villages (only 10 families survived in her village). Some of the guards in the movie were interviewed and it was really appalling. I suppose none of us can judge because we weren’t there, but it was really sickening hearing some of the guards talk. They totally justify their behavior (I’m talking about adult guards), and all say they did what they had to do. Apparently, after 1979, many of the guards were put in menial jobs or as security guards as bribes so that they wouldn’t run to the forests, and you can still see them now.
What was the most disturbing were the photos. Everyone who was sent in the prison was photographed and in the museum all the photos are displayed, from 6 year old children to 70 year old grandmothers. The pain and suffering in their faces is heart-sinking. Their eyes all seem to say, "why me?" "what else will happen?" "just kill me and get it over with". Those that didn’t, had hardened faces, masks. It’s no surprise of course.
What was also eerie was walking in the prison. It hasn’t been changed at all; it looks exactly the way it was, except with no furniture and the pictures of the prisoners.
Well, after that heaviness, we went to the guest house to eat and went to see the Shadow Theater. It was really interesting. It is a traditional form of drama and involves the projection of light on a white screen, on which performers use puppets to produce shadows. The puppets are made of leather that, in and of themselves, are really pieces of artwork. The performance is a combination of dance, puppetry, and song and tells different stories. There are big puppets and little puppets and usually they are not combined, but this time they were. The big puppets are called Sbaek Thom and follow strict rules of stories and movement. The little puppets called Sbaek Touch and follow less rigid rules. The performers, while telling their stories, move in front of and behind the white screen. It was very entertaining.
On March 20th, we took a "share taxi" to Kampot in the south of Cambodia. A share taxi is an ordinary car and the driver takes in passengers going in the same direction. He waits until there are 7 adults (including him) before taking off. So, there we were, four of us in the back, going 100km an hour over bumpy roads with no air-con, one broken window that couldn’t open and about 35 degree weather. It was still more comfortable than a tuk tuk though! And that was nothing compared to our next ride. In Cambodia, motorcycle drivers all concentrate in the same area and when you arrive they are all over you like flies. So when we arrived we had like 10 drivers come up to us and try to convince us to go with them. We finally picked one and went off to Bokor Hill Station, part of a National Park. We then experienced the worst road experience ever in our whole trip. We took one motorcycle, so the 3 of us went up together to the hill station. It is only 40km away, but it took us an hour and half. It was the worst road ever. We were in so much pain because with the 2 of us on one motorbike, we weren’t sitting properly and as a result ended up being in a lot of pain the whole way up to the top. I felt like knives were slitting my back and Eva actually got sores! A painful 2 hours later, we arrived in Bokor Hill Station. It is an abandoned town, a ghost town. It’s in the middle of the jungle and when you look from the cliff, you can see vast amount of trees that seem to go on forever! Eva and I sat there and relaxed. We really felt that we were in the tropics because there was mist, humid air, and the sounds of different animals, especially birds. We sat there for awhile enjoying the view and then we walked to the old hotel, old church, and other abandoned buildings. A few people seem to live there, though probably because they work there. It was fun to walk around – kind of eerie. Walking around, you could picture the small town when it was livable. W e had thought to spend the night there, but it was 5$ for one bed in a shared room with loads of mosquitoes.
We decided to pass, so we stayed there for 3 hours and then headed back with 2 motorcycles (we got a friend of his to come up). The way down was a lot better for me and I had a good conversation with the driver. We started talking about smiles and he said, "if everyone were to try to make everyone happy, we would all be happy". It was such a strange coincidence because I have been reading a book written by the Dalai Lama who says that the key to happiness is to show compassion and concern for others. It didn’t sink in until this driver told me the same thing. From there we went to Kep, a beach-side town, and spent the night. It was a really expensive day though and although we don’t have any regrets, it wasn’t quite worth it.
The next day was fabulous: a day for noticing things. We slept in and then we went walking along the sea-side. The beach isn’t that great, but it was full of Cambodians swimming, all with their clothes on. In some ways, it kind of reminded me of Vancouver with the sea-wall; however the Vancouver sea-side is much cleaner. We went by this market and it stunk of putrid sea food and because of the heat was full of flies. We decided to go to Rabbit Island, about ½ hour away, because we heard there were nicer beaches there. It was amazing: like a movie on a deserted island! This island stretches out and out and is filled with palm trees. We stretched out and smoked some pot. Then I decided to go swimming and had the most wonderful experience. So as to not offend the locals we wore sarongs instead of bathing suits and we went swimming in them as well. It was the most incredible experience. The water was like bath water and when you swim in the sarong it swishes around you, liftin g you from the water. It was surreal: pure happiness, empty thoughts, totally enjoying the moment of being in the water. It was so relaxing. That night we came back and had some sea food that wasn’t very good. The worst is that they charged us for water and bananas, but they never asked if we wanted it. We though it was service, but it wasn’t.
Then the next day, we were off to Phnom Penh again. On the share-taxi back, I all of a sudden noticed so many little things that I had stopped noticing. We were in the back of the car and I started thinking about how many different types of roads we’ve been on with so many different means of transportation. From highways in cabs to highways in rapid tuk-tuks in Bangkok, where all you can breathe is the exhaust from all around you. From a 9 hour ride for a 200 km road in a sawngthaew (a truck with two rows of seats in the back) in Laos, to a 2 hour trip on one moto for a 40 km ride, all covered in dust in Kampot. From motorcycles in Hanoi that make you want to cringe, to bicycles in Phnom Penh that equally make you wonder how you manage not to kill yourself; from a jeep in Sapa, going over rugged roads with no space, to a shared-taxi in Phnom Penh that goes over 100 km an hour on a dirt road. And I can’t forget the cyclo drivers, over all kinds of surfaces.
Then while we were in the car, I watched as this little girl was riding a bike 2 times too big for her (if she sat on the seat, she couldn’t reach the pedals), and another filthy little girl of 7 holding a baby in her arms and 2 boys sharing a bicycle and I though how resilient and strong these kids are. They make do with what they have and many have such grown-up responsibilities. We spoil our children to death thinking they can’t handle anything by themselves, and giving them everything they want. Obviously these kids are handling things you would wish no child has to see, such as destitution and disease, but our children can’t handle it when they don’t get the lollipop they see at the supermarket.
Then further along the road I started noticing all these physical aspects of Cambodia. Cambodia is filled with palm trees, more than in Thailand or Laos. And I realized how much the towns resemble each other, especially between Laos and Cambodia, but also Thailand. All the houses are straw shacks made of bamboo and held off the ground by stilts. Animals are running around everyone, children wearing no clothes are playing together, and everywhere, dirt roads. And of course, the constant working. Or maybe commonality is not the towns per se, but the poverty. Laos and Cambodia are among the poorest countries in the world, so maybe it’s no surprise that the villages resemble each other. And the heat! Since Saigon it has been between 33 to 40 Celsius everyday. So, my car ride (oddly enough, there are more cars in Cambodia than Vietnam) was spent with a lot of time reflecting.
We finally arrived back in Phnom Penh and rented bicycles again and took the long way around the river and had some food. Then we went back to the Picasso bar, but we were getting really strange vibes, so we left and the next morning we took the boat to Siem Reap to finally go to Angkor! The view on the boat was spectacular: the river is huge and all you could see in front of you was the river stretching out for miles and miles. Occasionally you would see some solitary boats with a family in them, in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what their life is like. It would be so lonely and boring for me. To get to the nearest town probably took 3 hours and with 5 or 6 people living on the boat, there isn’t a lot, if any, space.
We arrived in Siem Reap mid-afternoon. When we arrived, I was struck with the class divisions. We were on the bus going to the hotel and literally it went from dirt poor to super rich. At the boat pier, the people were so poor: loads of children begging for food, money or empty bottles and really small run-down bamboo houses that looked like they would fall apart. Then we moved closer to the village and the bamboo house started to get a lot bigger and better kept, and then when we got really close to town and we saw big cement houses for the richer people; finally, we arrived in town to the 4star hotels. The division was so obvious, so side by side. It was appalling. Like I said before, you feel really impotent and worse you feel complicit and guilty. You feel like you are participating or perpetuating the problem by being there. Or you feel embarrassed for liking the beautiful areas of the country because you feel that you are ignoring all the bad parts, and pretending th at they don’t exist. There are some things you can do like going to a restaurant that helps kids off the streets for example. We went there twice. It’s supported by an NGO and trains street-kids on how to be cooks, waiters etc, and later most of the proceeds of the restaurant go to help the kids as well.
The next day it was off to Angkor!!
Angkor was magnificent. It is truly one of the most impressive pieces of history that I have ever seen. My first impression was that I had entered another world. The monuments come from the 9th to 12th century and you can only feel awe when looking at these temples. The work they involved…Something curious, and I still don’t know it exists is that there is a lot of Hindu art in and on the temples with several Hindu goddesses playing a really important role in the spiritual protection of the temple. I never learnt why though.
We went to Angkor for 3 days and with 2 moto drivers we took off and saw over a dozen of the many many temples that exist. We spent our time wandering through long, narrow passage ways with engravings of Buddhas, Goddesses, and daily life; climbing up extremely steep steps where you have to use your hands to climb; making our way through several rooms several of which are in total ruins; and going through narrow doors. You feel like you are an archeologist looking for artifacts, or a child going through a maze. The only thing that dampens the magical effect is the presence of others like us! It could have been an option to rent bicycles, but we decided to opt out mainly because of the heat. It was between 35 to 40 Celsius, and just being there climbing the temples was hard enough, let alone having to bike ride from temple to temple. As well, the drivers are more knowledgeable and so we didn’t bother frustrating ourselves with trying to find temples and not being able to.
It doesn’t matter how much I describe our time there, I won’t be able to do it justice. I keep writing and erasing and re-writing what I wrote to describe it, but I’m still not writing as I would like. You will all have to wait for the pictures! I’ll describe some of the more notable ones though: For 2 of the 3 days I got up for the sunrise at 5 in the morning. A good place to see it is from Angkor Wat, which is in and of itself a series of temples. You walk through a long, long outside bridge that is lined with cobras (or something else, I can’t remember), and then you enter the first part of the temples. Then you cross another passage way and you see these 4 immense stupas which you can climb on. (Stupas are tall dome like structure that end with a peak.)I watched the sunrise from there. Another really amazing one was Ta Prohm. It was decided to let this building go to ruins and it is truly special. The walls are green and purple and trees have grown through the ruins, t he roots shaping the doorways or the sides of walls. It makes you realize how old the temples are. A truly remarkable temple was Bayon. It is huge and on the top of each stupa (there are several) are the carvings of faces etched in the rock. In Bayon, every little corner you look at, you see more bas reliefs. They are stunning. Finally, we went to Phnom Bakheng, a temple on the top of a mountain to watch the sunset. It is really majestic with steep, steep stairways lined with lions. The sunsets were incredible.
Our third day deviated a bit from the first 2. I woke up and saw the sunrise in an air balloon to get a view of Angkor Wat. It was really beautiful; the only problem was that it was foggy so the view of the temple wasn’t that great. Going for the sunset would have been better. Then we decided to go the land mine museum. It was really interesting. This museum was made by a man who used to have to set-up land-mines and now has made it his life mission to find and de-active them. So far he has de-activated over 20, 000. These 20,000 were on display as well as information about land-mines. Apparently a person can set up over 500 mines a day, and it cost 2 dollars, but to de-activate one mind it costs like 300 dollars and takes a lot more time. I had a piece of paper that had more stats, but I think I lost it.
After going to a few more temples, our drivers ended up being very nice and taking up really, really far to West Mebon. There, there was a beach where you could sit on hammocks and watch the sunset. It was great because we were the only white people there! There were tons of Cambodians swimming. We sat there and just relaxed. It was great. Then Tula and I (my driver) decided to go out for a couple drinks. It was great because I got to see a side of Cambodia that would have been impossible to see without him. Cambodians sit on the side of the street and drink beside the stalls. There are rows of them. They also put ice in their beer, which makes beer taste totally disgusting! Then he took me to a local discotheque in the country. It was really cool. All there was an empty space with music playing and everyone dances going around and around in a circle – all pretty much dancing the same way: Cambodians traditional dance. It was fun to watch, even if everyone seemed to look a t me a bit strangely. After that we listened to some Kareoke (it appears all of S.E. Asia loves Kareoke, especially Vietnam and Cambodia), and I went home.
And that is it for Cambodia! My e-mails just seem to be getting longer and longer don’t they? And I’m not finished yet since between the time I have left Cambodia and now, it’s been about a week and many interesting things have happened that I would like to share.
So…On the 27th of March we arrived in Bangkok The way to Bangkok was really tiring. We left at 7:30 in the morning and didn’t arrive until 8:30 in the night. The roads in Cambodia are horrible so it takes a long time to get anywhere. While we were still in Siem Reap we got lots of delays: first there was a problem with the wheel, which kept us for 45 minutes, then there was some construction and the bus couldn’t cross so a bulldozer had to make a road for us to get through, and then there is the traffic and the bad road. We finally arrived in Poipet and we were stuck in immigration for over an hour with 40 Celsius heat waiting to get through to Thailand so we could carry our backpacks to another bus for 20 minutes. The last 4 hours, thank God weren’t as painful and we found a cab driver who took us to find some cheap hotels.
Then we had one of the funnest nights that we have had our whole trip. Fun and totally shocking. Eva had heard about this (pardon my language) "cunt show", where women do all these crazy things with their vaginas. We asked a cab driver and he knew what we were talking about and took us there. It was incredible. You had a woman 1) blowing out candles with her vagina using a pipe that she had put in there 2) pushing out a banana about a meter in the air 3) stuffing about 3 meters of plastic flowers tied to a string in her vagina and then pulling them out 4) OPENING A NON-TWIST TOP BOTTLE WITH HER VAGINA 5) putting about 6 meters of string in her vagina and pulling it out 6) popping out balloons using a blow pipe that she had stuck in her vagina 7) directing ping pong balls into a small glass using her vagina 8) STUFFING A STRING OF RAZOR BLADES WITH SHARP ENOUGH EDGES TO CUT PAPER INTO HER VAGINA AND THEN PULLING IT OUT 9) blowing a whistle 10) smoking! 11) and finally writi ng. ALL WITH THEIR VAGINAS! I am sure that none of you believe me, but it’s true. It was one of the most shocking things that I have ever seen in my life! However, the working conditions aren’t the greatest. One of the women came and talked to us and she told us that they aren’t very well paid and that they work 7 times a week. However, the women get along well between themselves or seemed to: there was a lot of joking and friendly banter. I was pleased to see that because in those kind of jobs it’s important for the women to support each other. And of course, the woman told us that it’s hard to find boy-friends who can accept the work they do.
The next day was uneventful. We walked around and didn’t do much. I got myself some cute rastas (don’t laugh everyone, it’s something fun for awhile) and then we met a Peruvian guy and went dancing for a little bit. It wasn’t really fun: the typical over-crowded, bad music, " I am better than everyone else" kind of crowd, so we left pretty early and then next day we were off to Jakarta and ran into a tons of problems.
We got to the airport all excited about finally heading to Indonesia, when the woman checking our baggage told us that we needed return tickets out of Jakarta or we couldn’t board the flight. All we had were our tickets going back home, but unfortunately I had left my ticket in a hotel in Bangkok along with some other stuff. Finally, another woman told us that those tickets would be fine if I could get the hotel to fax a copy of my ticket. This was done and we were so grateful for having to foresight of grabbing the card of the hotel. We finally started breathing again.
Then 5 hours later we arrived in Jakarta and I was told that I needed a visa! Starting in February many countries that didn’t need visas need them now. Luckily I was able to get one on arrival, if I hadn’t I would have had to go to Singapore to get a visa. Another close call, which made our day fairly stressful.
And now we are in Bali. However I think I will save the rest for later as this e-mail is way, way, way too-long. So far, I’m not quite sure what to think about Bali. We went to Kuta, which I found so heavily commercialized that it was hard to enjoy, and now we are in Ubud, which I like a lot more. It’s one of these places where all you see are foreigners or Balinese people trying to sell you stuff. So…I’ll let all of you know what I think once my time in Bali is over.
You are all in thoughts and in less than 2 months I will be home again and see your faces. I miss you all.
Love, Carolyn
