Western Influence

This morning we noticed new people at breakfast. One guy, Ron, an Aussie, who fancied himself quite the playboy started talking to us at the pool.

G- How long will you be in Bali?

Ron – I've been on Bali for almost a month. I'll go home soon.

P- You're here alone?

Ron- No, I've got a 24 year old Balinese girlfriend. I'm 53.

G- Oh, congratulations. (looks at Phyl and we roll eyes at each other)

The next morning at breakfast...............

P- Look at Ron's girlfriend. She always has a look on her face like she wants to vomit.

G- Yes. I noticed. Trouble in paradise.

That afternoon at the pool............

G- Ron, where's your girlfriend?

Ron- She's taking a nap.

G- Yes, the young ones do require a lot of sleep.

Ron – Oh, I make sure she needs a lot of rest.

G- (thinking) Touche'.

P- ( under her breath to me) He's a dirt bag! He probably needs to buy pills from the hawkers to make his banana strong.

The next morning at breakfast he told us about his daughter. Then made reference to his wife. That's when we noticed his wedding ring.

P- No wonder his 24 year old girlfriend looks revolted by the sight of him.

G- I wonder how much he's paying her for the week.

Rob couldn't look at Ron without shaking his head.

“It's just wrong.” He'd say. “You shouldn't have to pay for sex. Did you ladies get propositioned?”

Us- What? For sex? Um, no.

Rob- I barely made it out of the drive way when some dirty bugger asked me if I wanted sex.

This same day saw the arrival of 2 brothers, Asland & Askar, from Kazakhstan. Having only a general idea of Kazakhstan's location on a map, we looked it up. Kazakhstan is huge. Askar told us it was the 8th or 9th (I can't remember) largest country (based on land mass, not population) in the world. These boys were very smart!! They spoke a few languages, English, of course, & Russian was considered their mother tongue. Askar was extremely knowledgeable about world affairs and was clearly a history buff.

We asked him many questions about Kazakhstan and his life there. He joked that he had seen the movie Borat, that it was not even filmed in Kazakhstan, but that everything most people think they know about his country is from that movie. He asked about the American politics and why it was controversial for Obama to push for health care for all. He's obviously been following US news.

Their family consisted of an older sister who was studying at Columbia University, Askar who was studying at a University in Singapore, and Asland who was studying in India. They had a younger brother, still in the high school equivalent. Their father earned the equivalent of about $1,200/USD a month, and had recently moved the family to the capital, Astana. The brothers had met in Bali for vacation and the sister was flying to Singapore to meet them and travel to Korea. My question was, of course, how they could be studying all over the world if the family was not wealthy. He explained that 20-25 years ago, the current President of Kazakhstan thought it important to focus on education and established a scholarship program. Each year 3,000 scholarships are given to high achieving high school graduates. The scholarships pay tuition, room & board, and provides a living stipend. In return, they must return to Kazakhstan and work for a minimum of 5 years.

One afternoon we overheard playboy Aussie asking the brothers if women were easy in Kazakhstan. They looked kind've stunned and perplexed. He continued with “you know, are they promiscuous?” They continued to just look at him but said nothing. Finally he said, “is it easy to get sex in your country?' This they understood and replied, in unison, “oh, no, no, no.” Phyl and I discussed this later. Of all the things he could have asked them, this was his pressing topic. It's no wonder so many countries try to curtail Western influence on their citizens.