In Reply to: Is Bali as terrifying as Filo suggests? posted by scaredycat on Friday, 22. June 2007 at 21:03 Bali Time:
The knowledge he has gathered is basically for a quickly accessed resource for people wanting specific guidelines - a little info on this or that - without having to trawl all the past archives of the forum.
Every country you travel, including your own, has traditions and cultural differences that it is worth knowing if we desire not to onconsciously offend our hosts. And every country has predators and opportunists - and outright thieves and liars. But the goodness of people, and a sense of humour, can be found everywhere too.
Every day - in your own town or city, or in some new place where you wake that morning in a tourist bed, you must live that day using common sense, instinct and enthusiasm. The truth is that nowhere in the world is 'safe' these days, so why not travel wherever you please. You just keep your wits about you.
I fully intend to be a little old lady in a rest home one day who leans back in her chair with eyes closed, dozing her way through fabulous memories of holidays and adventures.
Sure, you will be tricked into paying more than a reasonable price from time to time, and you will get the occasional bad-tempered reply, or puzzle why it takes three days of asking to get something as simple as a missing bath plug put in your hotel room - but the little treasured moments more than make up for it.
I have many. One day one of the hotel massage ladies turned up at my room with a pineapple deftly peeled, cored and sliced in a plastic bag - her thanks for one of the bag of bras I had given the ladies the day before. (She then lifted her top and showed me she was wearing one of them!) She looked astonished, then beamed, when I explained what a treat the pineapple was for me because they cost me about 20,000 rupiah at home. "Waaaahhhh!" she said, in disbelief.
My husband, Bruce, had one of those quirky little moments that still makes him chuckle to remember it. We were staying at the Lokha Legian, and relaxing poolside. One of the lovely room staff there came past the pool where Bruce was on a lounger. She was carrying some plastic toy guns, probably left in a room by children or someone's shopping. She talked to some other staff and then, still holding them, walked back past Bruce to head back inside. As she approached him he jokingly swiftly raised both hands in surrender. Well, she just dissolved into a fit of giggles, and he had a big grin too. This spontaneous little slapstick comedy, where no language was needed, was just one of those magic little moments we remember.
We have heaps of other memories too - five family members on one motorcycle; a woman carrying a huge sack of rice on her head out of the field while the men stood and watched; crates of baby chicks each a different colour of the rainbow on the back of a bicycle; watching the graceful movements of a Balinese woman making the morning offering at a street corner shrine; the shrieks of delight of happy children jumping into and out of a water canal; the sky blue lizard a hand-span long that visited the outdoor bathroom of our hotel in Amed; the weight, muscular strength and surprising warmth of a 35kg python draped over my shoulders; the serious concentration of the school child with the whistle at the head of the class practicing their Independence Day marching along the roadside - and the grins of the stragglers at the back; the absolutely perfect frangipani flower that falls silently to lie on the path before you like some precious gift.
Go...go....and make your own memories. Keep your eyes and your heart open, and your common sense with you, and 'let go' of anything negative, and your memories will be happy ones.