The Jungle is Winning- Mon 12/15/08

Dear All,

Ari is gone. Back to NYC. Back to Winter. Back to the holidays, which I completely forgot existed until he reminded me. I'm going to go buy a Wok tomorrow so I can feel like a consumer.

As usually happens when Ari decides to come to visit me in the 3rd world, someone ends up going to the hospital. Last time he got off the plane in Thailand he found me half delirious with fever due to a badly infected kickboxing injury and as his first in-country act, had to drag me to a Bangkok hospital. This time, though I mercifully escaped serious medical treatment, some other friends of mine were not so lucky. In fact, they have been having a somewhat impressive string of bad luck.

Leah and Kate, the teacher friends mentioned in passing in my Thanksgiving e-mail, have been doing pretty well for themselves here, minus a few small motorbike incidents. Recently though, Leah had been feeling progressively lousier and lousier. On the day Ari arrived, she woke up feverish, weak, and with strange bruises from old injuries that had already healed. As they made their way to get a taxi to take them to the hospital, another teacher friend of theirs stumbled into their house ragged and bloody. He had gotten into a motorbike accident near their place and not only sprained his shoulder, but was also covered in friction burns. Meanwhile at the hospital, two more teachers from their school had also felt sick enough to seek help. It seems that Leah had picked of a few parasites and was given a full complement of Cipro and Flagyl.

Using Balinese logic, it seems clear that Ari's arrival has caused this to happen.

We tried to help the situation by taking a fast boat to one of the more famous SCUBA sites in the world; the pristine beaches of the Gili Islands, near Lombok. We ate a lot of seafood, dove with Devil Rays and giant sea turtles, and when not under water, endeavored to move a little as possible.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, while Leah's butt was being kicked by the powerful pills, Kate began to exhibit the same symptoms. That was when Leah found a snake in her toilet bowl, Kate was woken up by a pair of geckos mating inside of her pillowcase, and since then a steady stream of other jungle creatures have been encroaching on their sleeping areas. There was a small clan of fist-sized spiders, and now there is something large patrolling the rooftops above their bedrooms. It's bad mojo. Someone must be practicing black magic. They need to go get water from the ocean to douse their place with. Or maybe they just need to move out of the jungle.

Even with Ari safely home in New York, their trials continue. Yesterday, as they were sitting in their living room chatting, a six foot python slithered out of Kate's bedroom to check them out. For some reason, they called me, perhaps thinking in their panic that I would know how to wrestle a large muscle-bound reptile into submission. I called the bartender Poleng because I had a hunch he would know how to capture the thing and either eat it or sell it on the black market. Before he could get there though, the landlord showed up with a guy who beat the snake to death with a stick right before their eyes. A sad end. It's hard to tell which event traumatized the girls more, the appearance of the snake or its violent demise.

This is all very interesting given that I just moved into a jungle abode of my own for at least the next month. It is a beautiful, large house (1000 sq/ft), perched high above a jungle ravine. It is quiet, clean, and most importantly, has a nice kitchen for me to practice my recipes. Also, it comes standard with a pembantu (a private maid) who comes three times a week to clean. Still, it is somewhat open to the elements. I have an open-air bathroom that invites creepy crawlies and a unique infestation of flying termites that swarm the kitchen if I decide to cook in the evening. There are so many of them that they knock their own wings off as they fight to get closer to the lights, showering the counter space. It is fairly unsettling and I'm not sure I need wing protein in with the vegetables. My solution is to turn off the kitchen lights and cook using my camping headlight. Once the counter and stove are clear of wings, this seems to do the trick. I guess I can't complain. I'll take flying termites over pythons any day.

Now I have to tackle three small spider bites that just don't seem to want to heal.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Now that I have this huge place, does anyone want to visit?


Love,
Alex

Here are some photos of my new place:

My Doorway.
The garden path.
The living room.
The kitchen seen from the living room.
The view from the porch.