get back to Rote for 24 hours, so that Steve could see where I live and work. It was really great to see everyone again at the hospital. The island is just beginning to loose the luscious green it had when I left. Some of my neighbours started a fire of rubbish which got a little out of hand – thankfully it was the other side of the road to my house.
mberan to meet up and have dinner on the beach as the sun set. This is a fishing village and had the most extensive range of fish and shell fish I have ever seen.
y port, with lots of places to eat. We all went to a small beach resort where we all relaxed, ate excellent food and drank the local spirit moke, Teresa makes a cream liqueur – ala 
Baileys with it.
t days when I am in Sanur I go to Warung (somewhere to eat that is less formal than a restuarant) KKN for one of my meals. When I first a
rrived in Sanur it was operating from the same premises as a garage did during the day. The garage site is being redeveloped and the warung has the sole use of larger premises and is now open for lunch and dinner. It serves a good variety of Indonesian food at very reasonable prices. It also serves some excellent fruit juices – avocado with chocolate condensed milk is one of my favourites. It is frequented by Indonesians and tourists alike.
– official photographs are taken against a red background. The whole process took about 90 minutes and involved 4 offices and 5 officials plus our agent. After all this my KITAS was still not ready but will be issued in 3 or 4 days – fortunately Sam is in Kupang and can pick these up on my behalf. This was a very expensive trip for VSO but they have had much more expense associated with a change in the immigration legislation where every foreigner has to report to the immigration office where their social visa is extended within 90 days of arrival in Indonesia. This meant over 30 volunteers having to be flown from placement to Jakarta and back – for most involving at least one overnight stay – this close to the end of the financial year it must have been a nightmare. In future volunteers will fly back from Singapore via Jakarta – unless they have a VITAS so will not be quite as much additional expense. Amazingly one of the women I have got to know at church – because she works for an Australian NGO she speaks very good English and had been sent to befriend me – was staying in the same hotel and talked to me over breakfast.
ou will know I am not over keen on snakes. I had almost convinced myself that there were not any in Indonesia, then had four encounters in quick succession. The first was some sort of very large constrictor kept as a ‘pet’ at Tanah Lot. The next was a water snake which had the audacity to block my way off one of the jetties on Sanur beach. There was one in a pile of wood on a neighbour’s porch during my last trip to Rote. This was very swiftly dispatched with hatchets and thrown in pieces to the dogs. Then again today I was sat at the Bonsai Café on Sanur beach with a group of volunteers when a sea snake decided to move up the beach in the direction 
of our table. I moved even quicker away from the sea. One of the waiters came and grabbed it by the tail and after swinging it round his head threw it back into the sea.
er to welcome and appease both ken and kin, ancestral temples are cleaned, special offerings are made, and dances are presented to humour the hearts and bring contentment to those members of the family, now deceased, back for a brief reunion with family and friends. Lots of bamboo poles are erected outside homes with temporary temples attached and other decorative effects. In the local supermarket all the staff were wearing traditions clothes.
