Step back 100 years in time, when horse drawn carriages ruled the streets and open markets vendors fight for the right to sell you a simple days food. We have been on a different island called Sumbawa where the sunsets rule the sky, and the ocean and the land hold no pollution.
It is really eye opening to see such a place. The main source of income is rice, everywhere you see people stomping with dirty feet on rice drying on mats on the street, finishing in filling up large bags that you would see in any supermarket back home. I think of rice a little differently now. Salt farming . . .hmm, I never knew exactly where our salt came from. Indonesia contains some of the best salt farms in the world. I did not believe this until I had a margarita here with salt on the glass. It was wonderful, and I don't even like salt! Down every side street hangs a rainbow of drying clothes and naked kids running about, their white smiling teeth sticking out from their brown skinned bodies. One thing is more prevalent that any other, there are a lot of people just "hanging out". Apparently, there are not many jobs in these parts because nobody was in a rush to go anywhere fast. The only time that we had the honor of being engulfed in the true society besides the surf camp was a visit to the ATM machine. Did we stick out like sore thumbs! Eric is twice as tall as the tallest Indonesian, and blond. Our Muslim driver friend said it was ok that I did not wear the Muslim head scarf, my highlighted hair drew quite a stir as well. The camera attached to my neck is worth a life's savings to the people that surrounded me, but they were not interested in it at all, they just wanted to practice their English with the strange looking people. I could not let the opportunity pass to take a photo of the approaching school kids dressed in uniform or the old lady begging Eric for money. Eric only had American money and tried to give her a dollar. It was quite a scene, finally a nice lady in the line tried to explain in broken English that the lady would not even know what to do with it, these are remote parts! I am not able to upload photographs for this post at this time, check the next post for photographs from this story
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