Deviousbali
When you travel, there’s what you expect, what you plan for, and reality.

Our expectations in coming to Indonesia during “these unprecedented times” were fed by friends who live here. “It’s empty,” they said. “Everything’s even cheaper than normal,” they said.

So we leaped through the necessary hoops to get here, and planned to stay in a nice place because, as Airbnb confirmed, it was way cheaper than normal.

Reality set in when we arrived and the “nice place” smelled like it’d been sealed tight for months during the one of the wettest wet seasons in recent memory. (Because it had.) Musty is an understatement. We also didn’t plan for stained sheets, ants on our pillows or flat motorbike tires. But there they were, welcoming us to Bali.

We figured it out, as you do when you travel, and tipped scales of expectations / reality into equilibrium. That’s when the engine really starts to hum (and motorbike tires get fixed).

To celebrate, we rode our now-working moto to pick up a couple of beers, and then to the cliff above Bingin to catch the sunset. The one in the photo above. A few others nearby also enjoyed the sun’s colorful plunge into the Indian Ocean, their dogs exploring the bluff. Look closely in the photo. See that sweet pooch? Soon after sunset, it peed on Dana’s sandals.

taylor