When you need to get from point A to point B in Bali, find someone who looks trustworthy and smiles, offer them a good price, and you have a ticket out of sketchy places (and there are several).

En route to Semarang, I met some fellow bus passengers.

These guys did not expect to see a traveller in their town of Probolinggo, but they were very welcoming.

I bought all of my tickets from this great merchant I met on the streets of Ubud, Bali. We had many laughs.

On days when chaotic people around me seem overwhelming, in that place called life and the real world, I always seek the solace in what I know to be universally true. And that is the goodness in others.

I ignore the emotional tornadoes who suck energy from others, and I bring back memories of people I have met everywhere in the world. Today, on a day when the whirlwind people were a bit too much, I got a jolt of the “rest of humanity” through some friendly old smiles. Here are a few of their faces, taken from my travels in Bali and Java, in Indonesia, in February 2009.

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)