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| While in Bali, we hadn’t seen such flooding since we lived in Minnesota, USA, many moons ago. We took this shot from the front of the villa of the house next door’s driveway. |
Today’s photos are from the post on this date in 2016 while living in Sumbersari, Bali, Indonesia. For more on this date, please click here.
It was four years ago while living in Bali, a harrowing five-hour drive from the capital city of Denpasar, in an exquisite four-bedroom, two-story villa with an infinity pool at the edge of the ocean, that we’ve experienced one of the worst rainstorms since the onset of our travels.
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| A rainbow after the storm. |
Certainly, we’ve encountered all kinds of weather and nature-related scenarios since we began traveling in 2012, from rainstorms, hurricanes, cyclones, snowstorms (when visiting family in Minnesota last November), windstorms, to even earthquakes. None of the areas we visited have been subject to tornados, although cyclones may generate tornados.
That stormy night in Bali, four years ago, was one we’ll never forget. It wasn’t necessarily a cyclone based on the lack of dangerously high winds, but the rain came down in a way we’d only seen living in Minnesota, where we had many destructive rainstorms every spring, summer, and fall. Of course, in Minnesota, blizzards and snowstorms were a common occurrence in the winter months.
It was difficult to sleep that night when we could hear the rain coming into the house, which ultimately caused water damage to the walls, which the owner had repaired a short time later. We gingerly stepped out of the bedroom that morning, fearful of slipping on the wet ceramic tile floor.
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| The road in front of our villa was flooded during the storm but had receded that morning. |
In no time at all, the staff arrived and began cleaning up the water and falling sheetrock. It was still cloudy and drizzling, but we stayed outdoors on the veranda in the covered cabana while the staff worked indoors. With the already poor WiFi signal worsened from the storm, we were left with little to do other than entertain ourselves under the cabana for hours, talk, watch the action on the beach, and read books on our phones.
We were all safe after the storm, but the floods in the area were devastating for many of the locals whose homes weren’t as secure as our holiday villa. During this period, horrific hurricanes and cyclones were occurring worldwide, and in no way could we compare our inconvenience of wet walls and wet floors to their losses from these storms.
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| View of the front lawn from the kitchen window. |
It’s the tail end of the monsoon season in India right now. From what we could tell, locked in this room day after day, it rained many days and nights. We could hear and see the rain and seldom heard thunder. In our room, to keep it cool and allow us to see the monitors on our laptops, we keep the drapes closed around the clock, only looking outside from time to time.
It took us a few weeks to realize this until we decided to keep the drapes closed. One may think it’s dreary for us with the lamps on with the drapes closed, but we find it soothing and more comfortable. Also, the view out our wall of glass is even more dreary. Keeping the curtains closed prevents us from looking at a construction site, parking lot, and an unappealing sizeable empty building.
It’s a good thing we’re taking supplemental Vitamin D3 in large doses. We are never exposed to any sunlight. When we finally can be outdoors, surely it will seem bright and unfamiliar to us. Then again, many workers are stuck in windowless rooms and areas all day, leaving at night in the dark.
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| Another view of flooding on the road into the next-door neighbor’s gate. |
On another note…For the past week or two, Tom’s dinner has been a frustration for him. New cooks have been brought in, and each night his chicken alfredo pasta is different than the previous night. But, there is nothing else on the menu that he’ll eat. And I mean nothing! I worry that he eats this same meal every night, as of today, the 200th time, and that it’s unhealthy.
, Each day, we asked if the previous meal was good, and we shared our opinions openly and honestly. But, a few nights later, it’s different again. The pasta dish has been either too dry, thick, buttery, thin, clumpy or an entirely different-sized portion. Today, I spoke to the head chef, asking him for consistency.
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| The two Ketuts, our cooks, walked bare feet in this rain-flooded road to the villa to make our dinner, leaving their motorbikes elsewhere on higher ground. |
These people in this hotel care about customer service and want to please their patrons above all else. But, the reality remains, we are in this hotel for 200 dinners. It’s bound to be different from time to time, but lately, it’s been excessive. We shall see what happens tonight.
I am still working on the fifth and final 2000 word post at a pace of 500 words per day. In this particular case, it well may go over 2000 words based on the topic of “medical issues for world travelers.” This is a broad topic. We’ll have the post completed by Monday and most likely upload it on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. It will be great to have these long posts done and be able to get back to a faster approach in making the corrections on the almost 3000 posts we’ve done since the onset of our travels.
Have a pleasant day!
Photo from one year ago today, October 9, 2019:
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| A cute little restaurant, the Cottage Cafe in Torquay, Cornwall, England. For more photos, please click here. |