An incident in Bali - A short Story

“Can I drive you up to the chemist store?”

This question that came from a complete stranger, at a night time, on an empty road, was fearsome. Away from our home country while wandering on this new island of Bali, we were searching for a chemist shop. It was quite dark outside, but I needed the pills. I and my husband were on a short trip here, hence did not possess any local sim cards to access the internet and find our way. While walking, on the other side of the road, outside a typical Balinese house we saw a man busy in his chores. As it was late evening, there was no one on the roads and we were left with no choice other than asking help from this fellow. After a little hesitation we decided to approach him. Gathering our guts we asked him for a chemist shop in the vicinity. At first due to the language barriers it was difficult to understand him. Later, we managed to understand that the chemist shop was two blocks away and we will have to walk till there. After realizing this, the man voluntarily asked,” Can I drive you up to the chemist store? You are already sick and walking up till there may worsen it”. Being unused of this hospitality in this world, the thoughts that ran through our minds were, does he want to mug us? Or what are his evil intentions behind this? We were reluctant to take such a help from a complete stranger. But, nevertheless he was repeatedly asking if he could help us. Gradually after coming back to our senses we realized that the man had a pure soul and was actually willing to help us, just because we were new to the place. We had heard so much about this aesthetic island, but little did we knew that we would explore another appealing facet about it. A small encounter with this person restored the faith in humanity in us. This incident gave us the confidence of trusting the people here and sightseeing the place with no worries in mind. Later as we roamed around the place we came across so many locals and their amazing welcomes, their prioritizing your comfort first, down to earth nature and that serene smile on their calm faces, made our journey even more blissful. Every travel teaches you something, this trip taught me to be more thoughtful and helpful even towards the unknown.

Image courtesy :
Image 1. Photo by Alex Fu from Pexels
Image 2 : Photo by Alena Koval from Pexels