The fat, neon-colored beetle of a bus bumped along the narrow highway as I struggled to keep from falling into my neighbor’s lap. The Indonesian guidebook warned there wasn’t a straight stretch of road on the island of Flores, crumpled as it was by its many volcanoes, and I was ready to believe it.
I had […]
I have fooled myself—as I must—that I am safe. But a dog and a sleepy man in a drizzly dawn prove me wrong.
When I come in to breakfast a little before eight, my interpreter looks worried. He scowls as he scrutinizes his cell phone, as if he doesn’t use it often. And he paces up […]
It is dawn on the day of Nyepi, Balinese New Year, and the only sounds I hear are the sounds of the first morning of the world.
Light barely delineates my window, but roosters already call to each other up and down the street. Doves coo-coo-coo in the plumeria tree next to my porch and small […]