Apologies for recent moping

Checking in my diary, my innards have been in turmoil and my nights upset thereby for the last five days.

The nights are getting better and the innards less tumultuous; I apologise for being rude about entire Indonesian islands as a result of the defects of my stomach.

I'm at Kuta Beach now; I've walked along the beach at mid-day and at sunset, I've taken a taxi into Denpasar and visited the Bali Museum, I have bought great quantities of moderately attractive ethnic tat (a nice carved-wood recorder, a couple of quite attractive primitivist paintings) and posted some of it to friends as Christmas presents, and maybe in a couple more days of intense effort I can train myself to sit and relax on sandy beaches, watching the surfers floating around: I'm sure second-hand bookshops have an important role to play in doing this right. I have been comprehensively pedicured, manicured and back-massaged by four Balinese ladies - my toenails have never been so shiny.

Life is adequate. Tomorrow or the next day I aim to go with a tour-group to a load of the temples of east Bali which the Intrepid tour left out.