Hello!

I'm in Kuta, Bali, at the mo. Site of the infamous Bali bomb. All seems fairly normal and touristy to me... I have just got here after spending a few days on a little island just to the south of Bali, Nusa lembongan.

One thing that struck me about this island, and in fact most of bali, is how obsessed the local men are with their cocks. It's not unusual to see a man sat stroking his cock on the front porch of his house. They are very competative about their cocks, and one guy was explaining to me how he massages his every day to make it stronger. Then, once a week, they strap razor blades to their cocks (I kid you not!) and hold a "cock-fight" at which all the men bet money on who's cock will be the first to have it's head cut off..... oh! you didn't think I meant??... oh you silly things!.....

Another thing about their being so many cocks on this island is that there is a pretty much 24 hour chorus of "cock-a-doodle-doo", which peaks at about 5am, making sleep completely impossible. I've never heard quite so many cocks at once before.. if only they could learn to crow in a round and get some harmonies going....

Well, I'm off to Oz tonight. I can't quite believe it. My time in Asia is finally coming to an end. 2 years in sinagpore, then india, nepal, thailand, singapore again, and now indonesia..... and tomorrow I'm gonna be back in the land of sitting toilets, fast food, expensive restaurants, and above all.... white people! Arrrghhh! It's a scary thought you know. Most people in the west are scared of coming to aplace where theirs is the only white face, but for me now it's the opposite. It's like, if mine is the only white face, it's much easier to identify myself, like yep, that's me, Billy the ang mo/farang/buloh etc etc, but when I arrive back in a western country, especially in a city, my face just blends into a sea of similar faces and I suddenly become annonymous again... perhaps i should dye my hair blue....

Anyway, aside from theorising about how Oz will affect my sense of self, I am also looking forward to having heaps of fun and meeing loads of ppl and trying to meet the "locals". I have already started practising the local language, which I was already fairly profficient at, having spent many a fruitful day at uni watching "neighbours" and "home and away" (ozzie soaps), sometimes twice in the same day! I have learnt that the local way to deal with persistent taxi touts and rickshaw wallahs in the major ozzie cities is with the phrase "Rack off mate!", which roughly translated in english means "Piss off mate!". There are in fact many similarities between "australian" and english. I think maybe at some point in the past they may actually have been derived from the same language...

The only problem with my current grasp of this language is that due to the nature of my studies, I can only really speak like either an angst ridden adopted teenager with intimacy issues, or a grumpy 55 year old shopkeeper. "Aw Streuth Elsa!"

I went diving yesterday by the way. It was a rather lax company, with old equipment and almost non-existent safety regulations, but I survived, and saw some seriously amazing shit. Not real shit you understand, although that wouldn't have been that surprising, as just before getting in the water, tim, the instructor, jumped in saying he needed to go to the toilet. We all assumed he was going for a piss, but after 30 mins when he still hadn't returned, we started to wonder what had happened to him, as we were in the middle of the sea. Then we saw him, swimming back from far away on the horizon. Turns out he ate too much chilli the night before and had had to go and let it rip, right over the reef we were about to dive!! Grim huh?

ok, better go now. See you down under! :)