More road

I am writing today’s post at 230pm which is decidedly earlier than usual because I wanted to post today and yesterday as soon as possible. Before Mom thinks something tragic has befallen me. 

Remember what I said about monkey’s yesterday and how I had my fill.  Well, I was wrong.  I stopped at a really nice temple this morning that was crawling with them.  Here is what I liked about this temple as opposed to Pura Tannah Lot – this temple was actually for the devout.  Tannah was surrounded by souvenir stalls and tour bus parking and while there were quite a few Asian faces, they were all tourist Asian faces.  This morning’s temple Pura Agung Pulaki had roadside parking, not a vendor in site and I was the only cracker in 15km radius.  The temple itself was beautiful and it was interesting to watch a service  and see how as different as things are here they are also much the same.  There may be monkeys stealing the offerings (they were little scamps), but there were also little kids having a hard time concentrating in church. They were speaking Hindu prayers, over the backup PA system because they were having AV problems.

After that I was in search of an ATM, a post office, and a backroad up a mountain.  I found all three, but not with as much success as I would have liked.  The ATM was pretty easy, though I did have to go to two in order to find one that took Visa.  The post office was right next door as promised.  It was also closed for the day.  The mountain road?

I had a pretty long drive today, made longer by the fact that I missed a turn and had to cover some ground twice.  I never claimed to be a perfect navigator and I never will.  That being said I have decided the lesson of the day is that I do not give myself enough credit for when I don’t screw up.  I was really starting to get frustrated at one point thinking I had missed another turn and was headed in the wrong direction when I caved and pulled over to consult the map.  I was not only going the right direction, I was a lot closer to the target location than I thought. Hurray for me.  Considering this was in part of the steep twisty turny bit of the drive even if I were going in the wrong direction there was no way I was turning around.  Onward and upward.  Excelsior. 

And that is about all for now.  I plan on hitting the market on the way back to my hotel but that is a story for another day.

xoxo