Life in the Jungle - Ubud by the light of day

Ubud by the light of day

Matt shows up, bright tailed and bushy eyed mumbling something unintelligible about the house that his Balinese wife is having built. "My wife finds the only builder in all of Bali that can’t build a second story. Look at that building, they have a second story". He looks at me. "Well dude, what are you up for?" My plan is simplicity itself. Hang around Matt and Bali will come to me. Sure enough a pleasant ‘old’ hippie named Rick Adams saunters by in need of some help and a modem for his laptop. It seems he has damaged his own, breaking the cable off at the card. Matt graciously offers the loan of his (as long as he treats it like Matt’s, NOT his own ) and Rick is on his way. Shortly thereafter, an attractive travel/tour agent named Seleena shows up with some questions about her new Powerbook. Matt’s reputation for being helpful with Macintosh’s and his former employment with apple is well known throughout the area. (My plan is working perfectly, this is much easier then taking flashlights from monkeys. ) Soon she heads off for parts unknown and we set out for lunch.

Now the streets of Ubud are a lot busier. More like I remembered. Tourists walking up and down the streets. Some of them women who are quite striking in appearance wearing thin cotton clothing because of the heat and humidity. Now this is the Bali I remember! We begin to speculate on what kind of underwear they are wearing. (Not much speculation is involved really) French cut bikini, she really shouldn’t wear blue with those white shorts, boring straight white cotton – usually Japanese, mm thong, nothing? Yup definitely nothing, that one is easy to spot. We run out of sidewalk (and fortunately not into it) and head for a different part of town. We sit down, get most of the way through lunch and Matt spies yet another miscreant of Macdom. "Hey Val!" "YOU! Where you been! I Keel you!" "It would be a little hard to help you Val if I’m dead. Don’t you want to ask me a question first?" Val is a thin fiery lady from Brazil who is making shoes in Bali. Another colorful individual in jungle land and I’ve only been here a day. It seems that she too has some problem with her Mac with which she would like Matt’s assistance. So we go to Val’s office for a look. (This could go on for days).

Some more errands, this and that, god knows what, and its time for dinner. Hey, let’s go to Naughty Nuri’s. It’s the local ex-pat hang out. There are some people there I want you to meet and I know you will enjoy talking to them. "You haven’t steered me wrong so far." So we pile into Matt’s Kijang and swerve around dogs and tourists and the ever present motorcycle and head for Nuri’s.

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