All week, the tourists have the run of the beach, but come Sunday, Balinese families descend upon it in droves. They roast corn over makeshift fires and set up a picnic meal while their kids frolic in the surf. Everyone knows each other, and the camaraderie is tangible. A relaxing day building sand castles & flying kites. Two men, excited about a piece of driftwood that washed up on shore, puzzling over how to bring it back to the wood shop. A tug of war contest, amidst raucous laughter & cheering. A teenager, being buried under a mountain of sand by a group of friends. Groups of women, deep in conversation. People-watching at it's best.
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| Bonsai Garden |
On the way to the beach is a fabulous Bonsai garden. Dozens upon dozens of trees neatly pruned & trained. A study in miniatures, these small trees lined up in rows. They exude discipline & order, their arboreal existence corseted from the age of sapling. A few different species of trees seem amenable to being trained in such a way. Upon closer inspection the wire used to guide the growth is visible. We've seen the gardeners, young men spending their work days in a green oasis of calm. However, they trim & clip to a soundtrack, not of traditional gamelan music as one may expect, but rap. Travel dismantles cliché after tired cliché, things never being quite what you expected them to be.
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| the millipede |
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| At the edge of the water |
Take this millipede as an example. With an entomologist's curiosity, we watch this arthropod trundle toward us as we relax in the pool, elbows on the ledge. (While this has always been Aron's approach to insects, it has not usually been mine. Yet I'm trying to view things with open, child-like eyes.) A substantial enough insect to us, but not even close to the fellow who made it into the Guiness Book of World Records. That one was an African giant black millipede measuring in at 15.2 inches! Our rust-colored guy was about the length of my pinkie finger and a little thinner. Tiny legs propelled him forward in a waving motion, like a flamenco dancer's full skirt rippling. His antennae were tapping the ground on the right side, then the left, a blind man with a cane. He reached the water, hesitated, dipped his head in, then turned back. How many legs did he have? Our guess is around a two hundred or so; despite the name "millipede", most only have been 36 and 400 legs.
Are there any poisonous insects in your vicinity? From the looks of your bedroom pictures you aren't using mosquito netting to protect yourselves from insects - with centipedes that are that plump and sizeable, i'd personally be worried about waking up with one of those roaming footloose and fancy-free all over me.
ReplyDeletetake care, mom & dad
p.s. Do you see a lot of Brahmi script or do they use mostly our type of alphabet lettering in their writing?
Wow, I'm impressed, Sue - you've come a LONG way with the insects. I remember years and years ago you freaking out and hysterical when you found a little microscopic millipede in the basement. It was classic.
ReplyDeleteThe bonsai garden looks cool. Diane.
Hi mom & dad, yes, there are probably poisonous insects here... scorpions and so on, but we haven't come across any. Not to worry, we haven't needed our mosquito net in a while! I would say we're mainly seeing the Roman characters, as the Bahasa Indonesian/Bahasa Malaysian language uses the same letters as us for writing (that I know of). I'm sure we'll start to see them once we head to more temples, etc.
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