the tropical island of Bali!

We started our adventure on Saturday evening, arriving in Bali at midnight. We hopped into an over-priced taxi and picked a town we wanted to stay in. Thankfully, we had an Indonesia travel book where we would pick out some hotel ideas and tourist options. After checking in a couple of places, we found ourselves at a comfy little inn, a kilometer from the ocean. We slept wonderfully, more because there was no mosque to wake us up! Bali is an island south of Java, and most people follow the religion of Hinduism. We can already see some of the differences in clothing and culture. There are many temples around with stone statues of their different gods.
Anyway, we woke up in the morning and got onto a boat to head to Nasa Lambongan. We heard about this island from other teachers and decided to check it out. It was on this boat that we were robbed. Our bags were "checked" on top of the boat, and we sat below. In this time, my bag was scavenged through, where they found $100 and our cellphone. We were quite disappointed but instead tried to focus our attention on the good, that our passports, visa cards, camera, and mp3 player were left in the bag. Praise the Lord! Our arrival to the island had our jaws dropped! Palm trees, crystal clear water, and bamboo huts were upon our horizon, with surfers and travelers accompanying the beaches. With our bags strapped to our backs, we walked around to find a place to stay. Bungalows were perched all around the shore where we ended up finding what we would call "home" for a couple of nights. The heat was incredibly warm and we couldn't help but go for a swim near after. The water was so clear, and shallow, we could have walked about a kilometer if we had felt like it! We discovered that this beach and body of water was the local "farm" community of Nusa Lambongan, where the Balinese harvested seaweed for cosmetics. In the afternoons, they would take out their small "canoe-like-boats" and gather in seaweed, where later it dried on the sidewalks. We couldn't help but take many pictures of the cultural day-to-day work. Tourists, mostly from Australia, were in many of the restaurants and lounge areas, where we would make casual conversation. So...as for our first two days, we felt a cultural change, a heat-change, and a security change. We adapted to these things as we could, but were ever thankful for what we were experiencing. Laying on the beach, reading a book, was so relaxing. The landscape was gorgeous and we were given the time to just think about nothing. amazing.