So… Blog
2 of 3 to finish before I go home in a week. Due to intense procrastination on
blogging, I am condensing two big trips into one blog. My last blog was a doozy
of a post so I think I’ll impose a word limit on myself this time: 3,000 words
(including this little introduction.) So, word economy is the name of the game
and I’d best start right away.
For this
break, my friend Aasha and I explored Lombok. We spent about half our time on
the little island of Gili Air (again; see previous blog for my first visit
there) and the other half on the Lombok mainland. We had ideas about getting
over to Flores and Komodo too, but these didn’t pan out. What we got instead
were some new friends and travel mates. More on this later.
Early
Saturday morning on the first day of break (because you don’t waste
weekends; that would be unthinkable,) Aasha and I hopped on a flight to Bali.
We got a taxi to take us to the eastern port of Padangbai (also see previous
blog) with the hopes of getting a boat ride to Gili Trawangan that day. The sea
had other plans however. Due to excessively big waves and the fact that no one
wanted to die and be sent to a watery grave, no boats were making the
Bali-Gilis-Lombok trip that day. Some hawkers were really trying to sell us a
slow boat ticket instead (the only one that was running,) that would take us
all day to get to our destination. They were very pushy and even followed us
around town. Fortunately, we didn’t take them up on the offer. Instead we
managed a deal with someone else: one night’s accommodation, breakfast, and a
one-way boat ticket to Gili T the next day, all for 50 USD. It was a blessing
in disguise because we discovered that Padangbai is actually a really lovely
town (once the hawkers have dispersed.) We enjoyed walking to a small, secluded
beach, eating dinner, and seeing the stars for the first time in a long time.
The next
day we pushed our way onto the dock where the Marina Srikandi boat was leaving from.
You need a ticket to get on the boat, but it actually doesn’t reserve you a
spot. You just have to get their early enough to elbow your way to a spot. If
you don’t make it, tough luck, you just have to wait for the next boat. We sat
on the top of the boat (the only space available) with some other young
travellers from Europe. It started out fine, but by the end we were totally
soaked by the waves coming up and over the edge. We arrived soaking wet but
hey, it’s the tropics; you dry quickly enough.
One of
the first things I remember about Gili T was that there was a white,
30-something year old man locked up in a little cell at the dock. What he was
doing there was a mystery, but seeing as he still looked drunk / hungover it
wasn’t too hard to concoct a story about some terribly embarrassing, maybe even
illegal, thing he had done to make an ass out of himself the previous night.
Gili Trawangan has more people, more parties, more places to eat, more bars to
drink at. I prefer Gili Air. That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy our one night on
Gili T however (it was supposed to be two, but night one was at Padangbai,
Bali, as you recall.)
Aasha
and I went snorkeling, which turned out to be a bad idea, because the surf was
going out and we got stranded on very ragged, cutting rocks. That night we
enjoyed a splendid dinner with a carafe of sangria between us, chatting away
and enjoying the night breeze and the stars. (You know, I appreciate being a girl
– woman? Am I a woman? Am I an adult? – because I get to do things like having
splendid, star-lit dinners with a carafe of sangria and chatting away the night
with guys or girls and it’s pretty
normal either way in society’s eyes.) That night there was an outdoor screening
of Midnight In Paris, which seemed
too good to be true and I couldn’t – and didn’t – pass up the opportunity.
The next
morning we took a boat to Gili Air, where I'd spent some time with my parents
during June break. Aasha and I wanted to have accommodation before we got
there, and the only place open that I could get a hold of was the place I had
stayed with my parents, Youpy Bungalows. So a horse cart to Youpy it was. Talk
about déjà vu. Here is where I hope to condense time (and save words, seeing as
I only have just over 2,000 left. Am I really going to be able to make this
goal?) So let me just say the next four days were spent learning how to scuba
dive, eating dinner, and relaxing.
I had
decided I wanted to learn to dive during my trip with my parents. It looked
like a lot of fun and I figured this would be a great place to learn. There are
– at least – half a dozen dive schools on Gili Air alone. I chose one called
Gili Air Divers. I had a great instructor and good dive buddy and I enjoyed
every minute of it. (I learnt too late that my certification is SSI and not
PADI, but even if SSI is not as widely recognised, I still feel like I had very
sound and thorough training.) As an added bonus, almost everyone at Gili Air
Divers spoke French (including my dive buddy, Thierry, and my instructor, Arno,
both from France.) I enjoyed hearing everything in both languages and even chatting
with Thierry in French. And being used to les
francophones as I am, I was not alarmed when Thierry started to faire la bise upon greeting. Anyway, one of the best experiences was on
the first day of diving in the open ocean when we circled around a big coral
and I had a feeling just like being submerged in an aquarium. (!!! So cool!)
One of the worst experiences was at the end of my three day training when my
nose got clogged with snot, I couldn’t breathe, and my sinuses started aching
and pinching and so drove me to distraction that I had to surface. Fortunately
I had descended far enough for long enough to cover the requirements. And
lastly, one of the craziest experiences of my training was in the
pool, when we had to practice breathing from the regulator out of our mouths in the water. The best way I can describe it is
like the reverse of drinking from a water fountain. You take the regulator out
of your mouth underwater, press the button to release a torrent of air bubbles,
and then have to open your mouth
underwater and breathe! You drink in the stream of air while
totally submerged in water! This has to be one of – if not the most – crazy,
mind-bending, counter-intuitive things I have ever done. There is a good reason
why your body freaks out a bit if you open your mouth to breathe underwater.
But, hey, it’s okay. It’s all part of the training. And now, I am a certified open
water diver. I did four dives for training and two more a week later in Kuta,
Lombok.
After my
training was done, Aasha and I decided to stay one more night on Gili Air so
that I could have a chance to relax and lie in the sun one day without the
stress of diving (which, fun as it is, can be a physical drain.) For our last
night we found new accommodation (Banana Cottages, just behind Biba. Highly
recommended for anyone who might find themselves on Gili Air.) Which was not only cheaper, but came with A.C. and hot water! They were also newly built. Aasha and I somehow got
the honeymooners’ suite with a king sized bed and a heart-shaped shower drain!
The next
day it was off to the Lombok mainland. (Approx. 1,500 words left. I need to
stop these word count updates. They’re not helping.) On the way over we struck
up conversation with a Dutch guy. He was connecting to shuttle bus to take him
to Flores, while we were Senggigi-bound by minicab. But even though we only
chatted for an hour or two at the most, it was fun to talk (he turned out to be
a big NFL fan, unexpectedly) and he gave off that easy-going and friendly vibe
that a lot of travellers do. Connecting with other travellers is one of the
best parts of travelling.
Aasha
and I had been doing a good job so far of chatting and making friends with all
sorts of fellow travellers. We found, during out time on Gili Air, that our
generosity one night in making new friends was soon repaid. We wanted to eat at
Biba, the best Italian restaurant on the island, but it was very crowded, as
usual. We waited for 20-30 minutes before finally landing a table for four. It was
just the two of us, so we had two empty seats. Later, two girls about our age
were looking to sit down, but got turned away because the restaurant was at
capacity. We offered them our two empty seats and enjoyed talking and eating
with them that night. Soon (was it just the next night?) two couples sitting at
a table for six did the same thing for us. They were from England and three of
the four turned out to be teachers, so we had plenty to chat about. The night
ended with ice cream and several rounds of Uno. I doubt I will ever see them
again (or the girls at Biba or the Dutch guy from the boat,) but I enjoyed
every minute of our dinner with them. Amazing the good times you can have when
you open yourself up to sitting down at a table with someone.
And
speaking of making cool, new, international friends… it was about to happen
again in Lombok.
The
directions for catching the shuttle bus were not especially clear, but we
shuffled on down a little street to an out of the way café. Aasha, our Dutch
friend (Nicolas,) and I were worried that we were in the wrong place but
suddenly this café jam-packed with white 20-somethings sprang out of nowhere
and we squeezed our way in. I nearly freaked out when someone took out tickets
– I didn’t know what was going on – but soon enough we said goodbye to Nicolas
and were lead out to a jam-packed minivan, our luggage unceremoniously thrown
onto the roof and bungeed corded down. I believe we had 15 people in a 10
passenger van. I was in the back with two other women. Just as we were about to
leave, someone began speaking to me in Bahasa, trying to tell me something. I
was confused and suddenly a man with the shuttle company was squeezing himself
into the already cozy backseat. So, with arms and legs pressed in, we started
down the winding coastal road to the resort town of Senggigi.
For me,
the trip passed in silence, but Asha began chatting with her seatmates upfront
and was on pretty friendly terms with them by the time we arrived.
They were a couple from Switerland (Swiss-Germans) named David and Andrea. The
four of us started looking for a hotel in town, having no plans or
reservations. We wandered around for a bit before finding something nice and
fairly cheap. We ended up being hotel neighbors. We parted ways for a while and
Aasha and I ended up on the beach, enjoying the shade and some very expensive Cokes while planning the next leg of the trip. Would we try to get to Flores and
Komodo? How would we do that? (We had also looked on Gili Air, but nothing
seemed quite right. We found one reputable company that left on a bad day for
us, and one company we knew nothing about that left on a good day for us, and
ending up booking nothing.)
I was
swimming when who should stroll by on the beach but David and
Andrea? I called to them and we all sat down together. (On my way out of the
water I cut my toe on a sharp shell or something and had to have it bandaged
for the next several days. That was a real bummer. But not especially relevant
to anything else…) We looked at different tours and talked about what we might
do. That evening we went out for beers and dinner and stopped by the Perama
tour office to see if they had anything available. There were two spots
possibly opening up on a Komodo tour, if a couple of people did not call to
confirm said spots. But if that didn’t pan out, there were also some tours that
went around the interior of Lombok to see cultural and natural sites. In the
end, we didn’t get on the Komodo tour. Instead, we spent the next week with
David and Andrea.
Our
friendship with David and Andrea formed very fast. You can get to know a person
over time if you work with them, much faster if you live with them, but
probably fastest of all if you travel with them. David and Andrea were at the
tail end of six months of travel through Asia. After having spent so much time
together, they said, they liked to meet and talk with new people along the way.
At times we were afraid they would get tired of us, but they never did. We went
on the two-night-three-day tour around Lombok together with a private van and driver. The first day we saw a monkey forest
(not nearly as cool as the one in Ubud though,) and drove north and east to Mt
Rinjani (which we did not hike up; maybe another time…) We saw a beautiful
waterfall though. Sadly, the locals were intent on throwing as many plastic
wrappers, cups and cigarettes as possible on the ground. The water was freezing
cold and I just managed to edge my way up to it. I don’t understand how some
people actually bathed in it. Not only was it utterly frigid, but the water
pounded the ground with enough intensity to flatten a person.
That
night we slept in a cute, little, wooden cottage. It was actually chilly at
that altitude (this was the town that most of the Rinjani tours start from,)
and I had to dig out my one pair of socks from the depths of my backpack. David
and Andrea were fine because they had all their warm clothes from Mongolia. We
enjoyed talking the night away and playing cards. For dinner and breakfast the
next day we sat on traditional, outdoor, roofed pavilions, Rinjani in view.
The next
day we joined up with a Perama tour for the day. They were starting out on a
multiple-day tour that would eventually end up at Komodo national park and then
bring them back to Lombok. We got to crash at Perama’s private island, Gili
Kondo. We swam and replanted some coral, had dinner, a bonfire, singing and
mandatory group bonding through line dancing. The tour left to sail on through
the night and we (along with some British girls who were – or weren’t – in the same
boat as us) stayed and slept in an awesome, tiny tree house on the island. The
next day we were treated to some amazing snorkeling and a visit to a tiny spit
of an island, just a sand bar really, that actually got smaller the longer we
stayed on it. It was beautiful though, sand and water and bright blue sky as
far as the eye could see. One of the more beautiful spots on our whole journey
I think.
Day
three took us to some weaving and pottery sites on the interior of Lombok. We
were getting tired, so we spent a lot of time sleeping in the van, but I did
really enjoy stopping at the pottery village and picking up a few items. That
night we headed back to Senggigi where we had one more night at our original
hotel. The next night we took a day tour south to Kuta (Kuta, Lombok is not to be confused with Kuta, Bali)
stopping at an interesting, multi-religious temple complex. Our tour guide
there (a friendly, middle aged man
bedecked in green, yellow and red with a pot leaf belt buckle, Bob Marley on
his T-shirt, and reggae playing from his hand phone,) explained to us that the
temple was very old and traditionally had hosted Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim
worshippers altogether. We also stopped at a traditional Sasak village before
arriving in Kuta.
Aasha and
I thought we might part ways with David and Andrea then (surely they wouldn’t
be mad enough to voluntarily keep themselves in our company any longer,)
but Andrea suggested we all search for a hotel, so, we happily did just that. We found a little two story house opposite a café that had a total of four
rooms. The accommodation was perfect: a room for 250,000 rp ($25) with three
large beds and breakfast in the morning. Some things in Indonesia are so
wonderfully cheap.
(By the
way, I passed over the 3,000 word mark 65 words ago. Screw it. Whatever. I’d rather have more details than too few. Haha! Like I’d ever write
something with too few details! But perhaps I should just finish Lebaran and
save Vietnam for one more hastily compiled blog.)
That
night we made more new friends,
thanks to my striking up a conversation. They were two German travellers, Chris
and Sharmaine, who had both been studying in Australia. We all ate dinner
together that night and had drinks at the café opposite our homestay. We bonded
with Sharmaine right away. I liked Chris too, but he was so utterly, unshakably
German. Prim, precise, serious about
everything (including having fun,) far better groomed than me, and with almost
laughably high expectations about Indonesian customer service. (He said he was
going to try to write a letter to get money back after being ripped off on the
ferry ride to Lombok. I just smiled and nodded and told him not to get his
hopes up too much.) What I do have to
be thankful to Chris for, however, is letting me have a go on the motorbike he
had rented. It was my first time driving a motorbike and it was so much fun! He
took me to a rather quiet road where I wouldn’t have to worry about traffic and
I enjoyed zipping up and down the hills with the sunset in view. And once I had
tried it, I found it wasn’t too scary after all.
The next
day was David and Andrea’s last full day in Indonesia before their flight to
Malaysia. We walked up and down the beaches, taking in some absolutely spectacular views from the hills. We passed
a dive shack at a hotel and I signed up for a dive the next day. David and
Andrea would have probably gone with me if they hadn’t been leaving. We
continued our ambling and ended up at beach that was mostly populated by
locals. We had a blast swimming with the local kids. The inner teacher in me
came out because we must have played with those kids for at least an hour or
more. They taught us words in Bahasa while we taught them the same words in
English. (I am happy to say I brought amusement to all when I accidentally
called my kepala (head) a kelapa (coconut.) Why do those words sound so much alike?!) We also bonded over
reciting the Pancalisa (sort of like the Indonesian version of The Pledge of Allegiance)
which all school children, regardless of class or background, know. They were
delighted that we knew it too.
A
scrawny little six year old took a liking to me. She spoke hardly a word, but
basically attached herself to me so I gave her a piggy back ride for the next
hour. Of course, all the kids wanted a piggy back ride then, so I had at least
two or three children hanging off me as I swam around and bobbed and twisted
and ducked underwater. Eventually their mothers called them away and we were
free, but I really did enjoy playing with those kids – who were a mixed group
from 4 or 5 to maybe 12 years old – and learning Bahasa from them.
David
and Andrea left the next day, which was definitely bittersweet. Aasha and I
both really enjoyed hanging out with them. They weren’t just traveling
companions, but I really feel like we became friends in that week. I sincerely
hope we will be able to meet up again someday in the future. I went for my
first post-certification fun-dive (with more francophones, bien sûr,) and made
sure to log the dives in my dive book. It was funny, but the guy in charge of
the dive shop knew who I was already.
Turns out he was friends with Arno, my dive instructor from Gili Air. I’m not
surprised they all know each other. Apparently Arno had mentioned an American
girl who spoke French and the guy in Kuta figured I had to be her. So once
again I got to converse in French!
Aasha, Sharmaine
and I spent our last couple of days together. Chris had left for a Rinjani trek and Sharmaine
moved into our room in David and Andrea’s recently vacated spot. We walked around town a bit, freed a baby goat from a fence and bought a few pairs of travel pants. (I am convert to the ways of travel pants now.) We also rented motorbikes and explored the coast, enjoying the beach,
dinner, and a beautiful sunset from a high peak at the end of the coast road.
We almost didn’t make it up because it was too steep. We ended up parking the
motorbikes and hiking up. It was well worth it.
We
headed back on the Sunday before school recommenced. It was a full vacation,
even though we didn’t cover as much ground as we normally do on vacations. It
was nice just to stay in one place for a couple of days, both in Gili Air and
in Kuta. The landscapes were breathtaking, I got to learn how to dive, and best
of all, we spent almost the whole time in the company of new and awesome
friends whom I still hope to be in contact with in years to come.
Well,
I’m just about to 4,000 words. I’ll just have to write about Vietnam this week
and post it as soon as possible. Sorry for my long stretch of procrastination followed
by (hopefully) four blog posts in one moth. I want to be caught up before I get
on my flight home for Christmas however. So… stay tuned. More adventures are on
the way!
