Bewitched, Beach Bothered & Bewildered

Let’s start positively… As every day should… Happy birthday 🥳 Monica! It’s great to share this experience with you! And I think you have enjoyed your birthday 🎂 which is the main thing! ❤️❤️❤️ A little hot 🥵 at times but weather can’t be changed 🤷🏻‍♂️

We grabbed a ‘Grab’ (same as Uber) ride and headed down to Legian to check out the local shops and the beach… Low and behold there were umbrellas and comfy looking beanbags set up all along the beach 🏖 there… We thought we had struck gold so we took up residence at ‘Joseph’s beach bar’ Joseph himself, a striking Balinese businessman (of sorts) arrived to take our orders… Fantastic, we got some Bingtangs and a coconut 🥥
We were a bit hot 🥵 but happy with our lot…

All was going well until another astute fellow arrived and unrolled their ‘handmade’ paintings… Surprisingly, these paintings were the same ‘originals’ that were offered by another man 5 minutes later. We politely told him we were not looking for any but thank you… Just as he was rolling up the canvases along comes “Wayan” (…how did we know she was Wayan? Because it was written across the brim of her visor!) She was garnishing arm and ankle bangles which were extremely cheap …according to her… 🙄😝 Wayan didn’t take “No” for an answer. She placed her bangles in between my legs and proceeded to push them towards my crotch…”No thank you Wayan… “ But poor Wayan persisted… The next frequently common marketing gimmick was implemented when Wayan put her sad face on and finally grabbed her bangles and said “…thank you for not buying from me.”
Poor Wayan 💁🏼‍♂️🙄🥺 🫶🏻

Meanwhile Mon had willingly succumb to Wayan’s friend Rhonda giving her a beachside manicure and painting her nails with a special shade of birthday 🎉 orange 🍊
Another friend of proprietor Joseph came along and told me that I had very rough soles on my feet by touching them and rubbing her fingers across my toes. She informed me they needed to be filed down while preceding to produce a file which was already covered in someone else’s dry feet residue! 🤢🤮

Meanwhile at the other end of the beanbag row ‘Wayan’ had decided to work on Adrian who, thankfully, purchased a couple of her bangles. As you could imagine, Wayan now had a smile 😊 on her dial! Hooray 🙌🏿for Wayan! 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

Look, I absolutely understand these people are simply trying to get by and, believe me, we have all contributed by supporting them in one way or another across our time here in Bali. There just comes a time when you just want to make use of the many designer bumper stickers being sold in the street-side markets:
Is it,
No root, no ride…
no money, no honey,
I ❤️ cock
Or, the ultimate:
Fuck off c##t!
🙏Read more