I did not realised that my blog was featured in Digital Life yesterday until I opened up my email to find a message from Melissa Lwee.

Hi,

My name is Melissa and I write the blogs of the week column for the Straits Times Digital Life. I would like to feature your blog as one of our blogs of the week next week as we’re featuring blogs that talk about the bali bombings.

If possible, could you drop me an email with your name, age and perhaps a quote as to why you wrote about the issue? It’s perfectly fine if you want to remain anonymous though. However, if I feature you, I’d take an excerpt or two from your blog for print as well. I hope that is alright.

If you absolutely do not want to be featured by us, please send me an email telling me so by Thursday afternoon (16/9/2005) 3pm. If not I will go ahead and use your blog. I know it is abit of a rush, but I have a very tight deadline, I hope you understand.

If you have any queries, don’t hesitate to drop me a mail ok?

Cheers!
Melissa Lwee
The Straits Times

I thought it was very responsible of her to send me an email to ask for permission. Some media do away with this process all together. However the strange thing is that I received this in my inbox dated Oct 6, which is already way passed her deadline! But I had also missed this email and of course did not get to reply her at all.

Anyway, Bali was one of the places I had travelled to on my own. So in a way, it held a special place in my heart because it reminded me of my youthful recklessness. I had very interesting encounters with the locals because I went about in the local way, taking their local transportations, chatting with the people and even went trekking with two Balinese men who volunteered to accompany me without obligations. This is very rare in Bali, and I was really lucky. In most circumstances, they expected to be paid in money, or in kind! Before this trek with the two guys, I actually did another climb at Mount Batur. I met a few other climbers and we had wanted to trek on our own without engaging any trekking guides. But guess what? To make us engage their services, they blocked all the paths to the entry and we had no choice but to pay and use their services.

In addition, throughout my trip, I was being accosted and was literally hounded from the moment I stepped foot in the airport until the moment I left. I was often mistaken for a Japanese and was harrassed to the extent that I had to set up some *ahem* non-explosive booby traps in my room! In retrospect, it was actually quite scary but, exciting too. And it was during my conversations with the two local men I went trekking with that I found out what they really thought about the tourists. My personal experiences with most of them also showed that they were out to get something, one way or the other. With me, it was either sex or money.

This was why I wrote that they’re out to squeeze from the tourists. Even though many years have passed, I imagined that this mentality has not changed. If anything at all, it might have worsened especially with the situation now.

Alyson was very nice to have scanned this article and emailed to me. Hey, thanks a million!