Welcome from Gili Trawa, a tiny Island in Indonesia with amazing snorkeling and
diving. Jemini and myself have been having a wonderfull time meeting some of
the locals playing music and exploring this tiny Island. We are going to stay
here for about a week before heading back to Bali to meet up with a bunch of
friends from the West Coast in the mountain town of Ubud. We will be meeting
up with some amazing people, musicians, fire performers and circus freaks, a
total of around twenty magically freaky creatures to dance in the essence of
sacred Bali.
There is much poverty here in Bali, so much of the economy is based on tourism
but there only a few tourists. Unfortunately many of the Indonesian people
become desperate to have money for their family and have taken up trying to
force tourists to buy with agressive sales tactics that end up making a bad
situation worse. There seem to be a lack of creativity and inginuity for
coming up
with inovative ways to make money here. What we see is hundreds of people all
trying to sell the same crap to the hundred or so tourists that are in town.
Of course non of the indonesian make any money so they get more desperate and
try to sell harder. Its a stupid cycle, I see so many ways to make money here
but the people are too locked into old paterns to see it themselves.
While in Kuta, a particularly unpleasant tourist trap town, we went and saw a
dance caberet show at the top club, it boasted the best lighting system in
Indonesia which was impressive, the dancing was very impressive too, for
caberet dancing, they were really good. The club had about 5 people doing the
job that took one but I could see that they were providing as many jobs as
posible which is cool. We had a funny moment when we decided to explore the
club and went upstairs to the 'Kareoke' room to find ourselves in a large room
full of 30 or more beautifull indonesian women dressed to the hilt, we could
only guess what was going on in that room... You should have seen Jemini's
face when we first walked in. :)
We were happy to leave Kuta the next morning taking a flight to Lombok Island
where we charted a private taxi through the moountains, seeing monkeys on the
side of the road waiting for peole to give them food because the fruit trees
that they used to feed from were cut down for building material. Fortunately
the government has made laws preventing future cutting of tree's without a
permit. It was a very beautifull drive through the mountains after which we
took a private boat over to Gigi island. The people here are super sweet once
they get over trying to sell you something. Every where we go on the island the locals are playing music, guitar drums and didgerdoo are the local favorite. We have had several lovely music jams. The people here are especially fasinated with the mouth harps that I play, most have never seen metal mouth harps, traditianal Indonesian Harps are made of bamboo.
We went snorkeling today and say many beautifull fish in the reef that surounds this island. We even saw a sea turtle gracefully swimming through crystal clear waters the temperature of bath water. I love you all and will let you know of future adventures as they develope. Love, Forest