Bali

Seat belt signs turned off. IPhone’s turned on. We were here.

One step off the plane and the humidity hit me, right in the face. We were here.

Standing on the tarmac, I looked around, it smelt different but looked familiar, like we had been here before.

5 small men ran towards us, the biggest smiles you have ever seen, so infectious you just had to smile back. They were here to help we thought, Dad thought differently, they wanted money. We were here.

It took 1 hour to reach our destination. We passed city lights and streetlights, pastures and cornfields, this place was unlike anything, and everywhere was green.

I woke up to motorcycles zooming past, one man steering, three children piled onto the same bike, to me this was danger, to them this was normal.

The windy, weathered streets got to me, to my stomach that was. We gawked at the locals, and they too stared back, they were used to our arrival, we were not.

The car suddenly stopped, the security officer got his flash light out and pointed it within the car, we smiled and he continued on. He searched for bombs, I presume, under the car with a mirror on a stick. This was all before we got let into our sanctuary.

We were here.