Pandangbai is not a bad little beach town. The tourist section is just west of the town itself so it is quiet. There are several restaurants within a 100 meter area. It's a very small place so the people trying to sell you stuff get to know you buy name. This is quite nice.

"Snorkeling today, Mr. Eric?" she asks.

"Not today Ibu, maybe tomorrow. How is your husband?" I might reply. (Ibu means Mother, which is their way of saying Madam, or Ma'am).

There's also a lady that walks around carrying a tall stack of colorful sarongs on her head. She's quite the bargainer too.

We went on a photo safari the first morning in Padangbai. We wanted more photos of people. Our strategy was to go to the main road, sit down and wait for interesting people to walk by. We got a few pictures that way, but not many.

Joan didn't feel well so we only spent about two hours on safari. Then we hid out in our bungalow and I managed to spend all afternoon tuning up the bikes.

The safari had not satisfied Joan's quest for photos. She really wanted one of the women selling sarongs. The next morning we tracked her down She offered a sarong for 20,000. Joan offered her 10,000rp for a photo. She laughed. Joan took out the camera. She said 20,000. It got complicated. Joan only wanted a picture, but the vendor wanted to unload a sarong. After a while they agreed 10,000 for photo, 10,000 for a sarong. Joan had her put big stack of sarongs on her head for the photo, she laughed and rolled her eyes but did it. I thought maybe the bargaining made her mad but when the money changed hands, she appeared to be very happy. We were happy too.

We caught a shuttle bus into Ubud to develop photos and mail something. Coming back we used the Bemos. We had to ride three different bemos to get back but it was easy. The drivers try hard to fill their vans so each one takes a keen interest in where you are going. They took good care of us. At one point we had to wait ten minutes while the driver tried to get more riders. When we started again, we went just about five blocks and one of the passengers that had been waiting with us got out. Inevitably there was someone on the bemo with a bird cage.

The next day proved to be the hardest we had on Bali. We took a back road that goes around the eastern most point of Bali from Almapura to Amed. We found out later that this road is so bad that you can't even hire a taxi to take you there. In the morning a Balinese man warned us not to go that way.

We stopped in Almapura for lunch at a warung next to CFC (California Fried Chicken - a KFC clone. They also have Texas Fried Chicken). We ended up spending two hours talking to a man named Konang. He works for the government as sort of a social worker. Normally his wife ran the warung but it was his day off. We learned a lot from him.

He had started his warung six months earlier for 25 million rp. His government job earned about 200,000rp a month but the government also gave him 22 pounds of rice for each person in his family (up to four) every month. He lived in his father's house so had no rent to worry about. So although he doesn't earn much, his expenses are very low.

All government employees get the rice benefit he said.

As a social worker he originally taught people in the country side about contraception. He provides free birth control devices of just about any kind. In recent years his job has expanded. Now he also helps communities establish businesses. To keep people from leaving the countryside and moving to the cities, the government provides a little money for the small towns to develop cottage industries so maybe people will come out of the cities to buy things.

We told Konong our plan to ride the long road around the east coast. He didn't show the least concern.

The road was not hard for the first 10km. In fact, it was mostly downhill and easy. After that we climbed pretty steeply for about 5km. Then the hard part started.

The road disintegrated into a line of rocks. We climbed in and out of steep ravines. The road went on and on and seemed to get worse and worse. We had to get off the bikes many times either because the road was too steep or too bad.

We saw fewer and fewer people and cars. Somewhere we passed some tourist in a 4wd jeep with the windows up. They gave us the thumbs up and stares of admiration and marvel. They probably thought they were on quite an adventure driving this remote road in their air-conditioned 4wd.

The road fords several streams. People bathed at many of the streams--at one ford it would be all men, at the next it would be all women. We had seen people bathing in streams and rivers before usually far enough away from the road to be inconspicuous. Somewhere far back on this road however, we forded a stream where a dozen young women bathed immediately to our left. To my surprise they stood up in knee deep water and enthusiastically waved to me (Joan too, I guess) without any embarrassment. They were completely naked. I resisted the urge to stare. I just waved politely, careful to look them in the eye, then went down the road.

Occasionally we also had good views of the valleys and the ocean.

At one point we had to wait while a bemo performed a 30 point u-turn on the narrow road. While we waited an almost toothless man tried to communicate with me. Finally I figured out he wanted a cigarette. When I told him I didn't have any he appeared upset. I don't think it occurred to him that I don't smoke and therefore don't carry cigarettes. He just thinks I'm terribly rude.

We kept asking people "How far to Amed" in Indonesian. We got wildly different answers. We were actually heading to a hotel called "Good Karma." About 5km away, it started to rain really hard but we had to keep going because it was getting dark.

At 2km away we saw a sign. At 1km away it was pitch dark and raining even harder. Finally we saw a sign at the top of a stairway that lead down into the darkness. I stayed with the bikes and Joan went to scope it out. After walking though a bunch of back yards of several beach bungalows, Joan found someone the told here we could get to the main entrance further down the road.

Finally we rolled into the parking lot. We parked the bikes and walked into the Good Karma restaurant like two towels just pulled out of the ocean.

Good Karma turns out to be sort of a compound of westerners like the bar in "The Year of Living Dangerously" where all the reporters hung out at.

We dried off a little and sat down. Everyone had watched our soggy entrance. When we then told them that we had just ridden the back road from Almapura on bicycles I think we earned a lot of respect. Despite staying at the edge of the road, none of them had been over the road because the taxis won't take them.

Next: Good Karma

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