The last week has been eventful, for lack of a better descriptive word.

The most significant event is that we had our pre-wedding photography shoot done on Monday 7 January, even while I was trying to recover from the sore throat and cold that had been bugging me since before Christmas.

The lovely photographs can be viewed at our online wedding album via our our wedding website. Once again, we send immense thanks to Rio Helmi for sparing the time and his home, Rumah Rio, for the shoot.

We leave for Chiang Mai in Thailand via Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on Tuesday night for one month then arrive in Singapore on February 15 for Chinese New Year followed by our wedding on February 24. From now until our departure, blog entries here may not surface.

However, do check back every few days for updates about our time in Thailand and Singapore.

Bali may be a beautiful island, but it could possibly be one of the most polluted places on earth.

Further to the first entry about the lack of a proper waste disposal system, there is one other pollutant that seems difficult to avoid: exhaust from motor vehicles.

Since the S.O.’s arrival here two years ago, he has seen the number of motorcycles on the road increase steadily. He estimates that there are twice more motorcycles on the road at the end of 2006 than at the beginning of it. For over the past almost-six months that I have been here, I have also noticed that there is an increase in the number of four wheel drives on the road.

Before we continue on pollution, the reader has to understand the situation of the transport system in Bali. Most of the roads in Bali are one-lane two-way, quite similar to the road leading from the Tuas causway Malacca in Malaysia. The conditions of these roads are also not ideal, with most of the asphalt is washed away during heavy rains, leaving potholes or multiple huge gaps in the road.

Only the by-pass have two or three lanes, but most have only two lanes and that is already considered a luxury by the road standards here. Even on these, the road condition is only slightly better and the journey from one location to another is probably reduced by 15 minutes.

The trouble with begins with the choice of vehicle. These one-lane two-way roads were built for bicycles and motorcycles; most of the Balinese cannot financially afford anything more than a motorcycle. Then came the foreigners and along the way, saloon cars and four wheel drives strated trundling along the roads. With increased demand for land and villas here, so does construction pick up and this means the need for large trucks to transport sand and stone.

You can imagine how much traffic relies on the one-lane two-way streets for travelling. However, this is also the part when pollution begins.

As it is, all vehicles emit exhaust by nature of how the petrol or diesel is processed by the engine. Unlike in Singapore, there is no requirement by any governing body in Bali where the vehicle owner must have the vehicle checked for illegal levels of gas emmission.

When things like that go unchecked, the level of pollutants being emitted into the air by all manner of motor vehicles is scary.

Then there is the congestion that adds to the pollution. In most parts of the island, houses are built a step away from the road. Thus is a vehicle is parked outside a house, it will block part of the road in one direction. This is not much trouble for motorcyclists.

However, if a huge truck or tour bus happens to travel down that path, traffic on both sides slows down and builds quickly. The congestion continues to build if four wheel drives, trucks or cars join the queue on both sides. As a motorcyclist navigates through this maze, you are assailed with the collection of exhaust from these vehicles.

Even just by riding on the motorcycle on a road, I could pick out all the distinctive fumes from passing vehicles and this makes me sick. Whenever we hit a congestion like above, I always wished I didn’t have to breathe air to survive. That is how bad the air pollution on the roads here is.

At this rate, do not be surprised if we fall ill from respiratory-related illnesses more than any other kind of sickness.

It is highly untypical of me to welcome a new year without an entry about what the past year has brought and my hopes for the new year. However, it was through no fault of mine: the long silence was mainly due to the lack of Internet connection between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve (is that a sign?!).

If you have been following international news, you would know why there was no Internet connection. Unfortunately, Indonesia is not as efficient as Singapore so it took us four extra days before Internet connection was back to normal.

We were also busy with wedding preparations.

Did I hear “Wedding? What wedding?!”

Our wedding. The wedding between the S.O. and myself. Mystery explained and solved here.

We have also been experiencing phenomenal amounts of rain in Bali for the past week. Fine, I exaggerate although it was continuous and heavy. A typical rainy day would consist of heavy downpour beginning from midnight to 5am, then starting again from 9.30am to noon, then resuming again from 6pm to 11pm.

Sometimes rain came down only over one part of the island, so you will have to hide under the minimal coverage of the rain coat when travelling in the rain from Ubud to Sanur, then suffer the heat of a hot and dry afternoon as we continue from Sanur back home to Jimbaran.

Other times, it rained over the entire island except one place, which would experience rainfall only much later and after the clouds have emptied completely over the other parts of the island.

All this travelling to Ubud, Seminyak, Celuk and back to Jimbaran has exposed us to the elements as well as pollution. Many are falling sick during this rain-sunshine-rain-sunshine cycle. In the days when there is sunshine, we inhale so much air pollution from vehicles or dust of the road, it makes us physically ill.

Believe us when we say we cannot wait for our Thailand trip to happen. It will be 30 days of lazing by the beach or trekking in the mountains. That is a well-deserved reward for all our hard work over the past six months!