Wandering the island of Bali

Beachside waves of humanity cruzing by my eyes at moped speed. Signs of commerce streak like lines in the road. a golden old man sits at a corner i'm stopped at for a moment. Dopplering horns, bells, voices and whistles echo in my ears. I just passed a market where people buy their food from tables on dirt and concrete. It's the merchandise that moves with services here though. Tourists, tourists, tourists paid for this paved well beaten track. Batik, Silver jewelry, masks and incense- Massages and spa's for facials and pedicures and pleasures. Wood carvings, stone sculptures, paintings with the national geographic girl with the eyes next to stacks of other paintings rest in the shade. But there's more that this in the hustle. I'll tell you my wonderlust. . It's Temples crowning corners of every road with people who seriously pray at them. It's White sand beaches stretching for miles with children playing. It's that strange hypnotic music that seems to play everywhere (maybe it's only in my head) It's the food! It's Monkeys tugging at your pockets when you walk in the jungle that WILL bite you if you let them get too close. It's the Jungle itself. It's crusty Leather bodied mangy dogs that you don't want to touch your skin. It's Hawkers working their best Aussie accent to impress me because they don't know that I'm a Yank. It's the way that everybody wants to stop me to look at my tattoos and sometimes take pictures with me. It's this road that plays like a movie changing titles at every corner or street light even if were driving on the wrong side of the road. It's a parade of weaving mopeds down closed pedestrian paths. It's rice field after rice field and mosques and churches and the little Hindu offerings that people burn outside their shops every morning. IT's the stranger animals that I've never seen before. It's the smoke from grilled ocean grouper mixing with an ocean breeze. It's what I saw in Bali Today!

I took some really cool pictures today of a massive fruit bat(that I held- they call it a flying fox), a "turtle sanctuary", some temples, an awesome sunset, Sneaky little Monkeys and their newborns (never ever trust a monkey!) and some other random stuff. I didn't cross any major cultural lines today and was pretty much the model tourist with the camera. I'm flying to Flores tomorrow which will be a jumping off point for the island of Komoto, I hope to have some good trekking time there to play commando photo (my favorite game) and to find the komoto dragon. Hope to have the pictures up soon. Some of these I really enjoyed working on.