Bali and other updates...

Hey everyone! Have you missed me?

My sleeping schedule is pretty messed up at the moment, and I have a trillion things to catch up on. My inbox has 300 messages waiting for me to respond to, my dog is seeing a surgeon in the morning (it appears he's injured his ACL-will keep y'all updated), I did a shoot yesterday, had a dr appointment today, I've got the Rose Bowl on Sunday.. so maybe Saturday I'll have time for me.. maybe a little anyway. I'm still trying to do the basics too - get groceries, oil changes, about 200 loads of laundry, lol (okay okay, probably 5).

I'm quite torn on what to say about my experience in Bali. The landscapes, statues, the art, the intricate designs of something as simple as a door was mesmerizing. The rice fields were picturesque, waterfalls that seemed like they could only exist in the movies. As for landscapes, it may have been the most beautiful place I've ever seen. However, the dogs wandering the streets - animals with severe injuries from being hit by cars, the small children trying to sell drugs to tourists and signs not allowing women into places if they are menstruating showed me that there is extreme religion and extreme poverty which were being masked from tourists but definitely existed if you paid enough attention. We were staying in incredible villas, and the workers will cater to you as much as possible because you are paying so much to be there (the average day's wage is about $5 USD there) so while an American can live like a king, it is hard to enjoy it if you pay attention to the struggles of survival. 

I had a wonderful time with my friends, but I do wish there was more I could do to help. The people seemed poor but mostly satisfied with their lives. I didn't see people starving or begging, but they worked very hard and would work long hours to feed themselves and their families.  Me being an animal lover was probably struggling hardest with all of the cats and dogs wandering the streets. I saw a few dogs with broken limbs, one with a torn-off leg, a dog with what appeared to be a prolapsed uterus, and my heart just broke-these aren't things you can un-see. I donated to treat four dogs with some of my patreon income for this month to the charity https://missionpawsible.org which works with a lot of animal rescue in Bali. If any of you are interested in donating as well, please let me know so I can shout you out. I know of 2 people volunteering for this organization and they're doing really great work. 

Anyway, to step away from the sadder stuff, I'll tell you more about the personal experiences. There were supposed to be 5 of us me, Lillias Right, Kristy Jessica, Carolyn Jean, and Almida Mae. I flew separately from the other girls as they were all coming from Seattle and I was flying from LA, so when I landed at my stopover in the Philippines, I was shocked to get a pile of texts saying Lillias couldn't enter Indonesia due to a passport issue (which should have been a non-issue). The poor girl had to sleep in the airport and fly all the way back to the US! What a nightmare. So 5 became 4. The four of us started our trip to an incredible villa. It was an outdoor looking reed space with an outdoor covered kitchen and living room, and then 3 private suites that were (thank god) air-conditioned (did I mention it was over 90 degrees and 100% humidity pretty much the whole time we were there?). The bathrooms were outdoor, so each day that I showered, I'd pay attention to all the bugs crawling around (including a 3.5 legged spider that you may see in my snaps), but fortunately, none of them seemed to get too close...except... I barefoot stepped on a centipede on accident, *insert every gross-out gag face ever.* We visited lots of cool places, waterfalls, went shopping, saw incredible rice paddy fields, visited hot springs, took photos along the way. Sometimes people would watch us, wondering why a bunch of girls in bikinis are taking photos of each other, lol. On our last day in the first villa, our driver warned us to check our bedding each night for cobras. He may have been messing with us, I'm not sure, but I was glad to leave that location which had so much outdoor furniture and low access doors for snakes to squeeze through and hide around.

Our second villa was even nicer than the first. 2 indoor bathrooms (Kristy had an outdoor one), the rooms were air-conditioned although the kitchen and living room were covered but definitely warm. The pool was really cool to shoot around-beautiful plants and even a little fish pond with our own turtle. We had a tall wall-about 8 or 10 feet high so no one could see in, but probably 4 or 5 days in, a group of gross frat dudes from New Zealand turned into peeping Toms that we had to watch out for. They thought we would want to party with them, but instead, they got a big middle finger. Girls only!

We visited more locations, did some decently intense hikes, went to some gorgeous beaches (and also a REALLY gross beach covered in trash which definitely was a sad dose of reality as to why we need to make our garbage more biodegradable), we did the hidden canyon tour which was so magical, and visited a neighboring island for a day as well. That was the only location we found a beach where we were given the okay to go topless. The rest of the sexier content was all shot within the villas. It is a pretty conservative country in general though, so we were expecting that.

I need to wrap up because it is 2:30 am, but I wanted to tell you about one more thing. The monkeys!!  I literally felt like I was watching evolution before my eyes. The first monkeys I saw were climbing on parked motorcycles and messing with the knobs-as if to try to turn them on and ride away. We went on to a park filled with monkeys so that we could see an "epic sunset" ... upon entry, we were warned to put away our hats, sunglasses, phones, jewelry, etc. We were told the monkeys steal. I was so sure that the monkeys were trained by people to do it, but that's not the case at all! The monkeys steal from people and then barter with other monkeys for food or other stolen items. They're attracted to shiny things like jewelry, and when I say they are aggressive, I mean they will jump right on top of you to get something. The four of us and our driver were walking along the pathway, and 3 monkeys were watching us. Two stayed, the third hopped down and started following us. I suppose they saw Kristy as the easiest prey-perhaps because she was the last person in the trail, and the largest monkey went for her sparkly sandal. It tried to yank it straight off of her foot! She wanted to kick it away, but the teeth are terrifying. She planted her foot firmly on the ground and with the rest of our yelling at it, scared the monkey into retreat. After that, we were all a lot more wary of the monkeys and decided to cancel our planned trip to the monkey forest. I think we got our fill and lots of photos and videos from that one location.

Okay, I better wrap up for the night, thanks for listening. I'll get a photo update up asap. 

xoxo

Carlotta

PS - this was supposed to post last night, but it didn't for some reason!