The Well-Traveled Stroller: The Good and Not-So-Good

This morning, we woke, enjoyed our fabulous breakfast at our hotel, and then Dewa picked us up again for our morning in the Monkey Forest and a little shopping. We heeded some great advice and made sure not to bring any food in our bags into the forest, but a few of the monkeys were pretty aggressive anyway- one jumped up onto the Backpack when my mom got too close with her camera, but Aliana was cool with it- the rest of us freaked out a little, though. We did have a great time exploring the forest- it was beautiful.


Aliana loved the monkeys!

We do some monkeying around of our own...

Sharing Backpack duty

Aliana and I enjoying our fabulous lunch.

After that, since Aliana was still pretty good to go for about another hour, we stopped and did a little shopping at a beautiful boutique- I could have spent all day in there- after much deliberation, I ended up with one dress and my mom with three. My mom wasn't so sure at first if she was going to be able buy her three items when the lady told her she would not be able to use her Visa card because she "needed the cash". My mom and I were very confused about this and they went back and forth for awhile about cash vs. visa until we figured out that what she needed was for my mom to pay for one of her items in cash because she was the first customer of the day and she had to bless her store with this cash "for good luck!" So my mom handed over the cash and the lady proceeded to go all around her boutique blessing her store with the first cash of the day by touching the cash to each garment hanging on the rack.

The hostess at Nomads who took Aliana while Mike and I enjoyed our lunch

Bags in hand, we headed back to the hotel so Aliana could nap. My parents then headed off to go white water rafting. Following Aliana's nap, we headed back out in to Ubud for a fabulous lunch at Nomads- if you are ever in Ubud, go there! The food and drinks are wonderful! And, bring your babies- the wait staff in Bali will take your baby away while you eat- we took full advantage of that.

....a few hours later....

so, I have learned first-hand the truism that is the balinese phrase “the good and the not-so-good”. In Bali, people never say anything is all good or all bad. Instead, life is at once good and not-so-good, so you should plan for it and not be disappointed when things turn out “not-so-good”. I had thought that our ‘not-so-good’ had been covered with the bite on ALiana’s ankle that had swollen to worrysome proportions, which we are pretty sure was either a spider bite or a very bad scratch that may have started to become infected. While the bite/scratch looked like it was getting better, I had thought we were in the clear.... I was wrong. It was all going great at first- we spent the afternoon having a great time in the pool until my parents got back from a fabulous afternoon of white water rafting. Then, we all got ready to go out for an evening at a Balinese dance show. As I was getting ready, I put my left contact in my eye and immediately realized that I had placed it in my eye after dousing it in contact cleaner. It started burning terribly right away and I desperately tried to get it out. When I finally got it out, I realized I had scratched my sclera. It was terribly painful and even after rinsing it like crazy I still feel like I had a piece of sand in my eye. I went straight over to my parents’ room since my mom is a nurse, and well... she’s my mom. She immediately had me cover it, found out where the closest clinic was and organized someone to take us there. When we got there, the dr. (who my mom said looked all of 18 years old) checked out my eye and told us they didn’t have the equipment to really assess the damage to my eye in Ubud and that I should go straight to the hospital in Depensar, an hour and 1/2 away. My mom quickly nixed that idea when she found out he could prescribe certain eye drops with steroids that could hold me over til the next day (or the day after, when we’d be heading down toward Depensar anyway...) So, my led me around while she picked up the drops and some eye patches and we headed back to the Mansion. Aliana burst into tears at the sight of her hideous monster of a mother with a huge patch and medical tape covering half her face and who was being led around by Gaga... She quickly figured out it was me, though, and she was all smiles again.