Sometimes a bout of illness or a less
than sparkling medical checkup can be a good thing, a call to make a
few changes. I've mostly been in bed for the past three weeks with a
nasty flu bug that turned into pneumonia, and my wife's recent
checkup indicated that she needed to change her diet some and get
more exercise. As we were discussing what we were going to do to get
a bit healthier, I came across some advice on one of the medical
websites that suggested walking 10,000 steps a day as a relatively
easy way to get some exercise. Add that to my recent work in
translating a thesis on the origins of the Bugis people and the
development of Kampung Bugis (my home neighborhood), and I decided
that it was about time to get out wandering around the city on foot.
Generally, I travel by motorcycle, but with the traffic in Singaraja
getting worse by the day (or so it seems), I miss a lot of the cool
things around this city because I have to keep my eye on all the
vehicles on the streets.
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| Singaraja, Bali |
I love walking around cities. During my
youth in Chicago, I walked all over the north side and the downtown
area; I've taken extended walking tours of New York, San Francisco,
Singapore, Bangkok, Amritsar, Lahore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and
Manila. But I've done very little actual walking around my lovely
city of Singaraja. The city dates back over 500 years, and while a
lot of the old buildings have been torn down over the past several
decades, there are still plenty of interesting sites to see while
walking around Singaraja.
So, I've decided to get my exercise by
taking some extended walks through the many neighborhoods here that I
only zoomed through on my motorcycle. I'll be writing about the
city as it exists now, and I'll be adding some historical information
as well, both here and on my lifeinthetropics blog. So stop by and
see what Singaraja is like for a long term foreign resident.
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