I didn’t do too much on Thursday. I woke up to a nice sunny morning.
For breakfast, I got a pastry for 4000 IDR, which is 30 cents. It was good, very light. It was hard to pick because they all looked good and it was cool to see him making them in the back.
Thomas also drove me to Padang Bai and for a while it was silent, because I love window watching, but we somehow got on the topic of my adoption. I think it started with us talking about Chinese movies and music. I can’t tell if he was shocked or sad or what, but he didn’t like the fact that I was given up. He kept saying “even if you’re poor or ill… You don’t do that to your daughter…”
He was really adamant about me trying to find them through social media, the orphanage, the police, etc. When I told him Katie was also adopted, he said it would be nice if Katie and I were to visit China together.
When I arrived at the hostel, I just walked around and then went to the beach. I didn’t stay for long because it started to rain but I had a milk tea and enjoyed the scenery.
It started to really rain hard when I was back at the hostel, true monsoon kind of rain, so I stayed at the hostel for about 3 hours reading my book and learning some Chinese.
I met a fellow solo traveler, Elias (I think that’s how you spell it, pronounced like El-ee-es) from Austria. Interestingly this is the first person I’ve met who is around my age. Everyone else I’ve met was above 35. By met, I mean talked to, I’ve seen a lot of tourists of all ages. He’s the first foreign solo traveler I’ve met too, all the other travelers have been in tour groups or are couples. I should add that the people I had interacted with up until that point were locals, I hadn’t actually interacted with any travelers up until this point.
We got some food and just did a lot of solo traveler talk (where we’ve gone, where we’re going, what each place is like, what our hometowns are like, food, politics in our country, politics in other countries, etc.). I personally love how often I get to talk about politics when I travel since most American travelers are left leaning and most European travelers are more left leaning. And conversations with locals usually involve them bringing up Trump or gun violence in America at some point.
I actually just had a conversation with Mario, one of the fastboat operators, and when I said I was American he laughed and said, “Oh Trump.”
The next day I had a free breakfast from the hostel. They had this homemade bread that was some of the best bread I’ve had. Then I left for Gili Trawagan by fastboat. I’m still not on a decent sleeping schedule. I’m not jet lagged or anything but I just naturally have been waking up at 4-5 in the morning. Not too much now that I’m at Gili. I’m maybe going to snorkel today!
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