We stopped in at a local religious institution to buy cookies. It’s located on a side street, with no sign to indicate that this is a business. They buzz you through to a courtyard, where there’s a lazy susan turntable set up in the wall. A nun on the other side piles up some boxes of cookies on the turntable and rotates it around so that you can see it, and send back payment. At no time is the nun visible. Seems like a tedious lifestyle, but the cookies were excellent - almost heavenly.
Notice of longevity
The following photo contains an example of a metal plate that is inserted into the pavement in front of a store in Spain when it has been in continuous operation for at least 100 years, and in the same line of work for the entire time. In this case, the business started in 1725.
Airbnb protest in Madrid
We passed a building in Madrid where the locals were not happy at all with the presence of a flat being rented out to tourists, as the signs in the following picture reveal. This type of protest takes a certain amount of coordination!
Zodiac diving in Indonesia
The following photo shows one of the two zodiac dive boats used by the Pelagian liveaboard, which visits dive sites in the Wakatobi area in Indonesia. Each one can take up to six divers. In our case, there were two snorkelers and three divers, so we had a lot of quiet dives.
Aboard the Pelagian
…and this is what it looks like in the main dining area of one of the best liveaboard dive boats in the world, the Pelagian. We spent a week diving from it in the Wakatobi area in Indonesia. And yes, that is a spiral staircase in the background - OK, it’s a really small one, but still…
Fish for lunch
Our dive boat was tied up north of the Wakatobi resort when this local fisherman in a dugout canoe stopped by to clean the fish he had caught that morning.
Temple by the lake
While quite pretty, what the following photo of the Ulun Danu Beratan temple complex in northern Bali does not show is the incredible number of tourists (including us) clogging the roads to and from the area.
Fire dance time!
As if it wasn’t hot enough in Bali, then they turned on the fires. The following photo is from a wildly over-subscribed fire dance near the coast, where the audience was jammed in right next to the performers, with another 500 people waiting to get in.
The monkey forest
One of the local townships on Bali maintains a monkey forest, which is quite a well-run area containing a massive number of well-fed monkeys - and well-fed tourists. Here is a photo of one of the former:
Shaving coconuts
We stopped off in a local market in Denpasar to see where everyone actually shops, and found this extremely popular vendor who made lunches - including a topping of coconut shavings. Here, she is grinding down a piece of coconut against a grater.
Cute Bali kids
One day, our guide on Bali took us to his sister’s house, where these two young ladies were kind of interested in getting their picture taken - while still text messaging, of course.
Rice harvesting time
Here we are at a UNESCO world heritage site where they are taking in the rice crop. The farmers show up on motor bikes, stop periodically to check their cell phones, and otherwise work incredibly hard in the fields. In the second photo, a local rice merchant has set up a portable scale in the field to weigh rice.
Dispensing gas in small parcels
There are a few normal gas stations on Bali, but also many thousands more portable ones. In the first of the following two photos, we have a portable unit that dispenses very small amounts, mostly to motorbikes, followed in the second photo by a more informal approach, where they fill up old liquor bottles with gas and sell the gas in units of 3/4 of a liter.
Fighting cocks by the roadside
Cock fighting is a very big deal in Bali, so the owners of fighting roosters keep them in wicker baskets by the side of the road - not sure if that is to show them off, but you will see them all over the island.
Singaporean cloud forest
The Singapore government has built a couple of air conditioned (!) conservatories, of which the following cloud forest bio-dome is the most dramatic. It’s all concrete underneath, but you’d never know it. There’s a footpath that takes you past a waterfall and up to the top. The views out the windows are pretty incredible, since the supertrees are next door.
Supertree light show
Singapore has a twice-a-night light show for its supertrees, which are metal structures that look like trees, but which are actually used to generate solar power, collect rainwater, and vent heat from adjacent conservatories. As you can see in the photo below, there is also an aerial skyway that links the supertrees. Touristy, but also quite awesome.
Perhaps it's a bit humid
Singapore is a great city, but it’s also incredibly hot and sticky, as the following photo of air conditioning units barnacled onto the side of a building can attest.
No durians allowed
Durian fruit does not smell very good (at all), so they are banned from the Singapore subway system, as noted in the following warning sign on one of their trains.
Night lights in Singapore
We just completed a massive trip that routed through Singapore, then Bali, then the Wakatobi dive resort in the Bandu Sea, and then a week on the Pelagian liveaboard dive boat. The return was 44 hours, including 2.5 hours just to get our luggage in Denver at the end of the trip. The following photo is the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, from the helix footbridge that leads to it. Amazing city! Incredibly well planned, with a massive subway system and immaculate streets. The only problem is the weather - hot and humid.
The New Orleans Experience
We just attended the wedding of a friend’s son in the New Orleans cathedral. Great party town, though the calorie count was questionable. Here we are in our finery, and, yes, those are Cafe du Monde beignets, drenched in powdered sugar.
