1/10/99: From the moment we boarded the bus, I had a weird sense that the driver seemed a shifty character, and I should have trusted my instincts instead of him… When the bus was loaded on to the ferry to cross over to the island of Bali, we were told that all the passengers had to leave the bus and sit in one of the passenger compartments upstairs… Other than our day packs, our luggage was piled with everyone else’s luggage in the back of the bus, and we thought nothing of it… After the crossing to Bali, and the rest of the bus ride to Denpasar, it wasn’t until we were getting off of the bus and loading into a taxi to take us to the village of Ubud that we began to realize that something was funny about our bags… Once we found a hotel, we looked through them and realized we’d been robbed… It was the only time we had dropped our guard on the trip, and it turned out to be the one time an opportunist struck… Not much of value was taken, actually, a few of the gifts we had purchased for people, but it was still a real icky feeling… They also took things we would not have expected, like a pair of flip-flops, and an old shirt of Ruth’s… All things considered, I have to say that our record is pretty good since that is the only time on this whole trip that we’ve had such a problem… We had dinner at a terrific little outdoor restaurant called Cafe Lotus, that had live Sundanese music in the background… The atmosphere up here in Ubud is much more low-key than down in Kuta, where we stayed upon our arrival to Indonesia a month ago… The day turned out alright in the end…
NOTE: The photo above shows a decorative pond in one of the public spaces in Ubud on the island of Bali, filled with colorful lily pads and koi fish.