Last week all the volunteers were in Bali for the annual conference. Two others & I took advantage of being on the island & went up to Ubud for the weekend before returning to South Sulawesi. This is a tourist destination about an hour's drive north of Denpasar - apparently some of the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" was filmed here.
Then, on Tuesday I had to take the 2.5 hour flight to Singapore & back on the same day to renew my temporary work visa - Indonesia requires those on short-term visas to leave the country every 60 days to renew, & VSO hasn't been able to get our year-long visas approved yet. So, Cordelia and I wandered around downtown Singapore for the day.
The white lotus-like building on the left is the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.
Wednesday it was a flight back to Makassar and a minibus to Jeneponto. Those 3 days certainly emphasized the glaring contrasts in lifestyle all within a relatively small geographic area.
And now, for all the tree people - this (below) is a cannonball tree in a park in Singapore. The flower-bearing branches grow out on the lower trunk. All stages of flower & fruit occur at the same time, year round.
Latin name: Couroupita guianensis
Family: Lecythidaceae
Flowers are fragrant, used by adherents to Hinduism for worship. The fruit grows to about 20 cm in diameter, but is not edible. The hard shell is used to make containers & utensils.
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