My first few days in Bali were lovely. I was soaking up the sun, reading, relaxing, cycling, and eating delicious Balinese and Padang food. This is my second time in Sanur and coming back to a place I'm familiar with felt so comfortable after the whirlwind of a trip I had in Taiwan. Unfortunatley, however, I managed to get the roasting of a lifetime and a week ago burnt myself to a crisp. Now I've had my fair share of sunburns over the years, but for the first time in my life, I had turned so purple and swollen that I could barely move, let alone walk. This resulted in me spending the better part of the last week on bedrest, only getting up for cold showers and a fresh layer of aloe vera. If I've learned anything from this whole experience, it's that I should never take my health for granted and that SPF 30 does absolutely nothing for an albino like me. Now that I'm peeling and on the road to recovery, I've managed to tour around some more and was absolutely delighted to be contacted by a University friend of mine, Jeff, who is currently in Sulawesi (doing research for his Master's thesis) and wanted to hook up since he's taking his first vacation since arriving in Indonesia.
I'll be flying out of Denpasar to Makassar, Sulawesi tomorrow to meet up with Jeff. From there, we're thinking of going 'up the country' to Toraja where the Toraja tribal people live. Hopefully we'll be able to catch an auspicious ceremony or dance and I'm sure we'll have loads of pictures by the end. We'll be travelling together for over a week at which point Jeff will be returning to his field site and I'll be coming back to Denpasar for a few days before taking off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before the Balinese holiday of Nyepi. Sorry for not having anything too exciting to report due to the sunburn but I promise to have some fabulous stories for the next post!
