A week or so ago I made a few trips on my motorbike up the island to some other beaches and then inland to Ubud, which is a little bohemian (first time I've ever used that word, I had to google define it to make sure) town in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies. I've been pretty much in paradise out on the Bukit Peninsula, but the rest of Bali that I've seen was quite beautiful, too, and seeing it while driving a motorbike really topped the experience off.

I got a lot of surfing in, too, and did some fishing and snorkeling when it was flat. I'd forgotten how great fishing is, oh, and one of my several dozen ambitions for when I get home is to take up spear fishing.

The girls who work at my hotel started calling me Snapper (as in red snapper, the fish)partly because they can't say my name and partly because I came back sunburned one day. The nickname has grown on me.

An American expat I know got me a second one month visa with a connection he has at airport immigration.

I got hit by my surfboard at Padang-Padang and had to get stitches in my face, so I can't surf for another few days now, or even swim in the pool. Walking around Kuta with a large dressing on my face gets me a lot of double takes, which is mildly satisfying.

An Irish guy I know got a pretty bad cut on his foot, too, so we've been regulars at Legian Clinic in Kuta. I also got a sizable burn on the back of my calf from the muffler on my motorbike, and a nice accumulation of cuts and bruises on my hands and legs from surfing Balangan. Since I can't surf, I've spent a lot of time oggling surfboards at the several dozen surf shops in Kuta, and I bought a number of new t-shirts.

It's disturbing how many times on this trip I've seriously considered the possibility of terrorist attacks when making plans. There's a massive memorial for the 2002 bombing at the actual site of the attack on Legian, which is right next to several other popular nightlife haunts. I went out several nights in the last week with a crew from Dreamland, which was great after a few months of having a low key social life, but matter-of-factly discussing terror threats and levels of security at different nightclubs is a little hard to stomach. Indonesia is the fourth country I've been to with a travel warning from the US State Dept. - Lebanon, Syria, Israel being the others - but it's the only one I've been to where I feel like the threat has Westerners as the deliberate targets. That is supposedly the case for Syria, but there were so few Westerners there that it was hard to take seriously.

Anyway, sorry about the blogging hiatus, but I'm always somewhere between just writing about another surf session or wanting to write something conclusive about the last 9.5 months, but I don't know, it seems like everything is already there. I never had a definitive moment or period that resulted in a then-and-now thing. I was homesick and lonely for most of my time in South America and rarely felt that engaged, I generally kind of lacked direction or resolve in Europe, I loved every minute that I spent in the Middle East, India was a vivid little anomaly of big mountains, Thailand was truly relaxing and easy, and Indonesia has been, well, see the posts below. What I really wonder about is what would have happened if I did my trip the other way around - started in Asia, continued through the Middle East, Europe, and finished with South America. It's hard to imagine that I would have loved South America like I've loved Indonesia and the Middle East, but I think one of the reasons it's so easy to enjoy my time here is that the end is tangibly close. I think the fact that I had so much ground to cover and time to spend when I was in South America made it difficult for me to just relax and enjoy the scenery and experiences.