Tuesday, October 6, 2015

In Kuta

After dropping Katrinka off at airport, had taxi drop me off in Kuta, the busy, commercial center of Bali tourist trade. Walked down small busy street past shops and young women beckoning massage (yes actual massage mostly - this isn't Thailand - mostly). Been sitting in a Starbucks uploading Apps on iPhone to drown my sorrows. We haven't been apart for more than a few days in almost two years.
Katrinka asked me to get What's App so I did and we've been sending messages back and forth while she waits for her 5hr 15min flight to Taipei with a two hour layover (don't want shorter or greater risk of missing) then an 8hr 20min flight to SFO. That's actually pretty quick - only 15:35 from Denpasar to SF though she left home at 1pm here so that makes it ten minutes short of nineteen hours. She's being picked up at SFO by night manager of the Panama Hotel in San Rafael where she worked for years. Maybe get there at 10pm which would make it 21 hours door to door. We'll see how it works out. I guess this is boring but that's me - constantly counting, adding - time, money, little simple private unchallenging math games. No math whiz. Just enjoy it. Oh yes - steps, breaths.

That's the new airport. Every time we're here they've added to it. When Elin and I came in 1992 it was like a little Greyhound Bus station. I talked to a woman who came here in the early sixties - they landed in a bumpy field and needed a parachute. Cattle had to be shooed off.