Brown toothed Beggar

I flip my Bluetooth to "On" and allow my wireless keyboard to sync. It takes only seconds and I'm up. Ready to write about my adventure...the burn on my calf...the adrenaline that has yet to dilute. We'll start with the adrenaline thing I've got going on here. Jay and I had a fairly relaxed day. It's 3:32pm now and we spent the majority of the day on our booties. This is completely and fully warranted after yesterday. But the adrenaline, yes... Jay decided to head out to catch some waves. My brown skin enjoyed the booty sitting and therefore opted out of another day in the sun. So, I decided to walk to the nearest ATM. It only let's you pull out 1,500,000 Rupiah a day. Yep, I'm a millionaire. This is only $150 USD. We have been here in Kuta for a bit now and if we don't start pulling out money everyday we will not be able to pay for our room or motorbike when we leave. So, walked the short distance to the ATM and decided to stop by the market across the street for a pineapple before heading to a breezy place to write. I approached the window full of small pineapples and began pulling on their leaves to find a ripe one. After the fifth try or so, a winner. I brought it to the back of the store and asked a little girl that seemed to live there if she would (motioning my hand like a knife across the skin of the fruit) "cut for me?" She takes it from my hand and walks into the back. I wait a couple of minutes until an older woman walks from the back and motions for me to "seeet."  There is a little restaurant connected to the market. It has become Jay and my fav. We like to share the vegetable curry or he'll go for the Gado Gado (steamed veggies covered in a peanut sauce.) So, I walk into the restaurant area and immediately am approached by a young girl (maybe 8) and an older wrinkled woman with black teeth. "You buy you buy." This has become all too common here. It's really a shame too. It's such a beautiful place but you literally can't even walk onto a beach without getting approached by some innocent kid or begging woman to buy "brayycllleeete." The kids tell you it's for school. They all plead, "just one." It's heartbreaking. Especially when you realize that they're only asking for 50 cents. But it's the principle, right? Maybe. It's Pavlov's dog. It's a matter of properly conditioning. If I don't buy, they'll stop asking. Well...I gave in. After almost crying one night as the kids circled around me and I had to keep telling them no as they begged me to take responsibility for the bettering of their lives...I gave in. Only today. "Just one." She held out her cardboard strip with bracelets wrapped around them. "Just one" I told myself. So I handed her 5000 rupiah and unwrapped a green plastic beaded bracelet tied with orange string and brown wooden buttons. I didn't even get my purse zipped closed before three more kids were trapping me against the table I had yet to sit down at. I politely looked each in the eye, delivered a firm "no thank you," with a lowering of the chin, and did not look at them or their "brayycllleeete's" again. I decided the restaurant wasn't where I would enjoy my ripe pineapple and as I made my way back into the market, I saw the young girl I originally handed the ripe pineapple to, choosing a pineapple from the front window. She made her way to the back and I waited another five minutes, at least, for her to return with an unripe pineapple with no skin. I continued to ignore the begging children (and wrinkly woman), accepted the unripe fruit, and proceeded out the front of the wet, concrete floored market. One begger, a boy with a brown tooth, maybe 7 years old, kept some faith in me that I did not see. He followed me down the street begging. "Please, you buy, you buy." It's 50 cents Morgan. But he was following me. This kid. They won't stop. They're everywhere. I crossed the street. Back. And forth. He followed. "You BUYYYY!!" He starts yelling at me...I stop abruptly, turn around on one foot, and look down into his lost eyes. "I'm not interested, thank you." He closes his eyes, tips his head back, and yells "YYYOUUU BBUUUYYYYY!!!!!!!" What? Who am I? Who are you? Why are you following me child? I turned back around and ran across the street again. He follows me. I'm really not sure how to act. The idea of just giving him the dang 5000 rupiah was never an option. I walked into a hut that sold wood carved masks and salt and pepper shakers. I picked things up and waited for my peripherals to rid this beggar. To no avail. So, I walked out of the store and looked him in the eyes. I waited for a response. I didn't want him knowing where I was staying. The place Jay and I call home for now. That was too personal. This was all getting too personal. He's just a child. A part of me wanted to stuff him in my suitcase and give him a better life. Him and all of these little kids. All put on the streets to beg day in and day out. These kids that will likely never leave this ten miles radius in their entire existence. These kids that truly mean no harm. These kids that likely get nothing from the little they sell. It's heartbreaking. But what can I do? Bring everyone I know a bracelet home? Would it really make a difference. I would love to be a philanthropist, I love to think that I have a big heart. So what do I do? I look him in the eyes. Dead stare. I wait for him.  "You buy.         You buy three." I hold out my pineapple. "You eat my pineapple." He shakes his head. "Nooooo, you buy." "Nooooo, you take my pineapple. It's good. We'll, mostly. There is a lot left. Here, take my pineapple." He looks at the ground and shifts his weight against the pole the holds up a quarter of the little hut. "Buy." "Here, take it." "Buy." "Take it." He holds out his hand and I hand him the three quarter of pineapple. He scurries off.  So, my adrenaline has mellowed. I'm not sure this is how I would have handled the situation given different shoes, different eyes, or a different moment in time. But, I did what I did and at the very least the little brown toothed beggar got a free snack out of it.

Jake and Dreamland Beach, Bali Indonesia!

We arrived late at night to Denpensar international airport in Bali, around midnight...eventhough Jake told me not to get the cab drivers out front, I was overwhelmed by their persistancy and succombed to their plight. I payed 4 times the going price for a ride to Balangan beach...he said it was over an hour drive away...we arrived in 20 minutes....after speaking to a little boy on a scooter who was driving next to the cab. I was nervous at this point, asking questions and the driver couldn't seem to give me a sufficient answer...I took my seatbelt off, and was ready to protect Morgan at the slightest sign of dodgy business. Next thing I know, we are driving down this dirt road, scrapping the bottom of the rickedy old blue cab with worn out seat cushions. "Ohhh Whaaat" I hear Jake call out from behind a fence...we arrived!

I was grinning ear to ear, or I thought I was. I was trying to smile, but so exhausted I might have just been giving Jake a lost look of content that maybe didn't satisfy his hopes for an esctatic reconnecting of unparalleled friendship.  My brother from another Mother, "Coob" the kid who got hurt at my house while growing up together.  At least that was one of the stories that spilled out as we reminisced on the porch with some cocktails (I got JD from duty-free). The girls, probably bored out of their minds and rolling their eyes I'm sure, didn't raise a single fuss and let us two have our moment of inside jokes, onesided conversations, and historically driven  contextual phrases that only satisfy our humor.

Jake picked the perfect Bungalow village in Balangan on the Bukit Peninsula. Dreamland beach, not an exageration either, was a two minute scooter ride down the hill.  We lavished in fruit salad breakfasts, nasi goreng specials, and our sweat from the humid climate. It was exactly what I was hoping for.
We spent the days, all four of us, on the beach in a cove that had a shallow wading pool which constantly changed from the tide. We got sunburned, had cocktails in paradise, and ate plate after plate of fried rice and noodles.  Bali baby! 

"That crunchy thing was, maybe, a hot dried pepper." "No no, that thing was HARD." I had to stop eating. For the sake of keeping my back teeth. Jay and I sit here at an outdoor restaurant. The menu items have been consistent everywhere we have been. Nasi Goreng, Gado-Gado, and this new menu item that we decided to attempt "Pelecing Kangkung." "What is it?" "Watttterrr, Speeenachee, Sprout. You like." "Yes, one please." I nod my head and smell the dish at least five meters before it reaches the table. Fish. Mashed, red hump of fish. So...I wrap the "spinach" (it's no spinach i've ever seen) around my fork and go for it. "Umm, that's not really ok." "I'll try it." I feel the crease in my nose as it turns up at the thought. So Jay tries a bite, and I try another without fish on my fork. "O, babe. That's bad. That's terrible. What is that? That's rotten. O, that's definitely rotten." Some bad dishes are consumed for the sake of the gamble. This one is the first we decided to let stink up the section of the table the furthest away from us. We went to a market yesterday. Picture this. You hop on a motorbike, buckle the worn helmet under your chin, and merge into the left lane. They drive on the left hand side here. In Singapore, in Bali. There were no roads in Trawangan and the hilly curves of Senggigi on Lombok follow suit of driving left. We proceed about twenty miles, going around slower bikes and horse carriages. Everything is dirty. At different points in the ride you are consumed with the fragrance of decay or the rain. You see locals surrounding random little carts that sell Petrol (gas) in old Absolut bottles. 6,000 Rupiah a bottle. Gets you about half of a tank or so. Anyway, these locals gather randomly to sit around and drowned in the heat. By three o'clock they have at least one arm hanging closer to the ground than their feet. It's the heat. The humidity. The boredom. It's been raining here though. The last two days have been a big change getting used to not sweating the entire day. The beads of sweat just drip off of everyone and many of the locals smell worse than the bums in San Diego. OK, focus. Jay keeps showing me places in Bali. We're heading back there in the next couple of weeks. So we're motorbiking...past these people falling off of their chairs or laying on random bamboo or wood pallets...past the lush green...past the rice fields...past the heaps of trash and the random cows and chickens feeding off of it. Past the half built buildings that have become abandoned...past some people's everyday lives. We decide to stop at what could be compared to a strip mall. A very old, very dirty, run down strip mall. Think of the garmet district in LA. Times ten for dirt and twenty for lack of air flow. Now, enter the building...and walk endlessly deeper and deeper, darker and darker...smellier and msellier into what seems to be an entire underground world. I would have looked for Splinter had I been gutsy enough to bring those brownies with me...so we pass the clothes for sale. The locals reaching for my arm, letting jibberish fall from their mouths...we proceed to the food. O, the food. The bowls of dried fish, filleted open. Placed so conveniently next to the bowls of rice and heaps of brown eggs. They do not refridgerate eggs here. Or milk. Ever. You can only imagine the smell. The lack of air flow. The humidity. These people. Then, one local woman, sitting cross-legged on a platform of some sort, caught my attention. My entire existence tunneled in solely on her. She grabbed a piece of brown waxed paper, shoved her hand into a bowl filled with inch ish sized gummy balls, grabbed, threw, and covered with white shreds. We meet eyes. She picks one ball from the pile and hands it to me. I accept, hold it in my hand and let our eyes meet again. She motions her hand toward her mouth and back again. So, I eat it. Squirted in my mouth. It was delicious!! I came to find it (after later google research) it was Klepon with coconut on it. Somewhat similar to mochi with a brown palm sugar in the middle. The things had to just be terrible for you but the entire market threw rose colored lenses over itself. It was life and it was beautiful. It was smelly and dirty and ugly and fun! It was broken down and trashy and fully filled with life. It was where the locals would come everyday to grab the local produce (covered in flies) to feed their families. It was real. Life has been this adventure. I have moments where I find myself considering panic. It only lasts seconds and it only comes about once a day. When I'm squatting to pee while standing in water or who knows what. Or when the transportation I'm sitting in seems as safe as a three year old driving my Dad's little Miada. I am thoughly enjoying the adventure. It's the moments when you connect with a local with no language at all, or the incredible sunsets that literally take your breath away. It's the moments you remember how thankful you should be and moments when you realize that standing in pee just doesn't really matter. Ok, ok. Jay is getting anxious here. (He's made himself out to be quite the partner in crime. I feel safe with him and that is really the most important thing living life this way. I get to know him better every day and falling him makes me smile even typing it.) Bye for now. Enjoy your hot shower and clean bath towel! Not everyone is so priveleged. Sorry for any grammar/spelling errors. Some people don't even have the privelege of written language so please don't judge me. ,-)