Indonesia 23/01/11-02/01/11

Indonesia 23/01/11-02/01/11
23/01/11
We spent the morning in Darwin at markets with our host Beth. Taxi ride to airport $14, got there two hours early and only took about 10min to get through security and departure. Darwin airport has free wireless. Upon arrival we were hounded by taxi drivers and though they may have been cheaper we weren’t sure so we just booked at the taxi window 55,000 rph to get from airport to Kuta square. We passed a pizza place with a free sample lady outside and it was the best pizza I’ve had since leaving America for 6,500 rph, which is pretty expensive for Indo standards. Ended up at Gloria Jeans Coffee to use wireless and try to find our host. After finding a SIM for a suitable price (50,000 rph with 5000 credit, it may have been cheaper elsewhere but also more expensive elsewhere for 150,000 rph) and spending too much time on the internet to try and register my phone with it, we were able to contact Ngurah and he came and picked us up in his car. The drive to his home was about 40 minutes, rainy wet roads with many potholes, glad we never got a scooter or car. His home was probably upper middle class for Indo standards, two bedrooms, bathroom with western toilet and stone shower (I think it had hot water too but couldn’t figure out how to turn it on). There was no furniture in the small living room and both sons and nanny were home so we slept on the tile floor with our Gator blanket. He gave us a pillow. Though it was extremely uncomfortable, he was very kind to come pick us up late at night in the rain and take us to his home and give us shelter.
24/01/11
Starting around 4am the kids woke up, so for two hours we tried to sleep on the floor in the middle of all the racket with the mom and nanny trying to get the kids ready for school and prepare breakfast. At 530am we gave up when one of the boys stood over us and gave an ear piercing scream. They invited us for breakfast and in fact wouldn’t eat until we did first. Breakfast included an omelet, pig ears, other parts of the pig, some dried meat topping, rice and seafood soup, fried bananas, and bananas. After breakfast I shared a unicorn lollipop with the older son (after asking parental permission), he quickly opened it and I’m sure was the hit of the classroom that morning. Ngurah offered to take us into Denspar on the way to work after dropping off his son at pre-school. Once in Denspar he took us into the bus station and helped us get on a bus so we wouldn’t be eaten by the piranhas. As soon as he stopped the car a swarm of 5-10 Indonesian guys tried to get us to go with them. We had to pay 500 rph to even cross the parking lot, and then another 100,000 rph to ride the bus to Padang Bai. The ride took two hours and we passed some pretty interesting places along the way, including rice paddies, rivers, etc. First impression of Bali: it’s what I expect Vietnam would look like. Once in Padang Bai we were very confused and had no idea where the ferry was. Many people tried selling us packages to Gili and Sengiggi for 200,000-300,000 but we didn’t know who to trust. Instead we used the internet to try to find where we wanted to go. Eventually we walked towards the water, found the public ferry for 23,000 rph and dodged peddlers selling drinks, snacks, and paper cones of chicken and rice that had been sitting out who knows how long. The ferry took almost 5 hours, when we arrived in Lombar we yet again didn’t know where we wanted to go and how to get there when we decided. We were trying to get to Kuta Lombok to try and get some surfing in, but it was two hours in the opposite direction of Gili Islands where we wanted to go the next day to meet some CSers and do some diving, so instead we went to Sengiggi for 100,000 rph. We decided to stay the night there and took a few hours searching for the right hotel and price. We ended up splurging for a really, really nice resort for 300,000 ($30 USD). The first room they sent us to had carpenter ants all over the ground, so we went back to get a different room. The second room seemed okay at first until a rat ran out from behind the tv, then a second one behind the blinds. When one of them ran across the bed I left. Jesse tried to get a photo. So we went back again and ended up in the ant room but they sprayed and cleaned it. We went out to find some dinner and ended up at a local tent eatery with 15,000 dinners, though we were hesitant because there didn’t seem to be any refrigeration anywhere and less than adequate sanitation practices…but there were so many people, both locals and travelers, eating there that we thought it would be okay. Jesse had his fried noodles with chicken which was very good and I had a chicken stir fry which wasn’t good at all. Then we went back to the hotel, booked a transfer for Gili Air, enjoyed the last hot shower we were going to have for a week, and enjoyed an actual bed as opposed to a tile floor. I wouldn’t splurge again in Indonesia, though it was nice, it wasn’t really worth it when we probably could have found the same type place for 100,000.
25/01/11
We woke early to enjoy our free breakfast of eggs, rice, toast, and pineapple juice. The shuttle to Gili Air was 30 minutes late and the whole trip was spent telling the workers that no, we do not wish to purchase a return ticket from them. They just repeated and continued to ask. The shuttle took an hour to Bangai, then we waited to be shuffled to the next mode of transportation. They tried getting us to pay another 40,000 for a horse carriage ride 300m to the boat; we walked. Once at the water we waited another hour until the 100 people standing around decided they were ready to take the boat to Gili Air. In Gili Air we dodged the horse carriage transport people and walked to Blue Marlin to meet our hosts. A few other CSers were there still as well and ended up randomly running into a guy, Adrion, who we planned/plan to check out WA with. After getting acquainted and settled we took a walk around the island. The island takes an hour to walk around, and all around it are quaint beach bungalows, little restaurants where the kitchens are located in a house and you sit in private thatch huts on pillows. We ate at Chill Out upon our hosts reference, the food was subpar (supposedly the fish is the reason to go there but…I don’t like eating where I snorkel) but you can’t beat the location. That evening we spent with our hosts Yamil and Mario, two of the most accommodating gay men you’ve ever met. Yamil’s Chai Tea is stellar. After my cheesy meal at Chill Out our suspicions were confirmed of the restaurant the night before not being a safe place to eat. The next 3 days we stayed away from most dairy and were quite sick anytime we did eat.
26/01/11
I still wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t go diving that morning but Jesse did and he saw clown fish and a mimic octopus. We had great visibility for snorkeling that afternoon, highlight was three ghost pipefish and a few cone snails, and in the evening went to Chill Out with our hosts, though we only had a snack in fear of getting too sick. Also important to note that almost every time we were in the water we were stung by jellies or sea lice, non-deadly but still painfully annoying. We went to Space Bar for a drink at night and encountered many hermit crabs along the way.
27/01/11
We went on the morning dive to Manta Point (Sunset Reef). The dive started with 3 white tip reef sharks, an octopus, an eel, a nudibranch, and ended with a massive amount of clownfish in every anemone. Apparently on the boat they saw a manta jump out of the water, in the shallows while we were in the deep. After the dive, we returned to the house, made pancakes, and refilled the water bottle with real water by tramping through the backyard towards the center of the island on a grassy pathway. Then we did more snorkeling with cone snails, clownfish, etc. We decided we were hungry enough for a real dinner and gluttonous enough not to care how sick we got, so we went to Bibi’s Italian Restaurant. We ate Bruschetta (38000), a Chili Pizza (60000), and the wrong Calzone (55000). The bruschetta was amazing with tomatoes, garlic chunks, olives, mozzarella, and toasted homemade baguette slices. The calzone was more like folded pizza than the ricotta cheese blend calzones I’m used to. The restaurant was very good but pretty expensive for Indo. We didn’t get very sick afterwards either. We meant to go to Space Bar that night with our hosts but everyone was too full and tired for it.
28/01/11
We were meant to dive but I was under the impression that the sight they were going to was Hans Reef, which was just offshore and easily snorkelable; instead we stayed behind and snorkeled where they were going. Turns out they went to Halik Reef and saw lionfish and turtles, we really missed out on a great dive. However, our snorkeling was amazing with the highlight being a 10 foot long poisonous sea snake. Jesse first saw it and pointed it out to me, warning me not to get too close because they can definitely kill a human, so I stayed at the surface. I got some photos and videos but they would have been much better had I dove down to the bottom (and risk aggravating it and dying). We also found Danger Cove with thousands of neon sea urchins, worms, brittle stars, and other alien like creatures we have yet to research. Later that day around sunset we went for another snorkel, full of sea lice, fearing hungry sharks, and found our first Gili sea turtle. I photographed it for a good 30 minutes while it swam around before heading into shore. That night we ate with our hosts at Bibi’s, had homemade Panna Aspargi gnocci and the correct calzone, and journeyed to Space Bar with our hosts for some shroom shakes but it ended up already being closed so we postponed our departure for yet another night in order to experience that with them. Yamil and Jesse went out for a beer together like the social butterflies they are.
29/01/11
We went for an early dive at Shark Point, as we had been attempting to do all week. The group was just us and the dive master. We descended directly onto a green moray eel but my Octopus hose was leaking badly (I didn’t even notice it) so we had to go back up, safety stop, get back on the boat, and switch gear. In the second descent, Jesse lost his underwater camera clumsily and it drifted away south in the current before he noticed it was missing. On this dive we intended to find pygmy sea horses but were unable to, not for a lack of trying. For future reference, they live on purple sea fans by specific coral features at 22m depth that the dive master at Manta Dive claims to know. However, we did see a good variety of sea life including two frogfish, six turtles (3 sleeping, 3 swimming), two cuttlefish, and a black tip reef shark. After the dive we were dropped off on Gili Trawangan directly in front of a turtle hatchery! We didn’t even know it was there, it was fate! Tasha was excited to see the turtles, and we had a few things to accomplish when we were there. Firstly, Tasha wanted to experience “fish therapy,” a spa treatment where you submerge your feet (or body, in some places) into a tank of hundreds of minnows. They feed ravenously on your dead skin cells for as long as your feet remain in the tank. We located the best “fish therapy” treatment for Tasha at Exquisit Spa, with a 15 minute session costing Rp25,000. After that, we explored the southeast side of the island getting a great hamburger lunch at the Sidewalk Café for Rp25000 each. Throughout our walks we also asked every dive shop to keep a lookout for the camera. We headed back to the harbor, then the turtles because we still had 20 minutes left, then back to the harbor where we were 2 minutes late and the boat was already leaving. They saw us running and turned back around for us, but then accidently beached the boat. Definitely our fault. Oops. That’s Tasha for punctuality…Back on Gili Air we skipped dinner so we wouldn’t be too full for shroom shakes. Unfortunately, Yamil and Mario were too beat after a full day of diving work to join us. When we arrived Haans didn’t have any juice for shakes so instead had some snot-nose high f give us chocolates (tried charging us 100,000 when we already knew the price was 75000 and giving us a “discount”) which weren’t strong enough and put us to sleep instead of shrooming. I got really mad at wasting a whole days worth of budget on a little piece of broken chocolate…but whatever. I’m still mad about it. Yamil said we should have just told Haans they didn’t work and he would’ve given us more, which is what I tried to do while leaving but...
30/01/11
We woke early, made some crepes, gathered eggs from the chicken nest (the store in the backyard), and went snorkeling along the front yard north to Danger Cove and Hans Reef. There were way too many Sunday Indo fisherman on the reef though so we stayed around Danger Cove instead. It was the fourth beautiful sunny day in a row (we never expected more than one day of sun since it’s the middle of wet season), and had a nice lunch at the Blue Marlin Café in the beach hut. Nachos are NOT good in Indo, chicken fingers are acceptable, honey is too watery and tastes like metal. Then all of a sudden it was 2:20 and we still had to pack, pay the food bill, say goodbye, and walk 20 minutes to the harbor. We hurried and rushed but still almost missed the ferry, again. Luckily Jesse ran ahead to stall and convinced them to wait for us. When we were leaving another boat ran into us (or us into them, I’m not sure); it was straight out of the Little Mermaid were the bow spear plows into Ursulas stomach, only this time is was the bow spear plowing into the roof of our over packed boat and splitting the 2x4 in half. Once again, wouldn’t have happened had they not been nice and waited for us. Oops. Back on Gili Trawangan we tried to get the 6pm ferry for 185,000 to Bali, but found out we completely read it wrong and instead the ferry leaves at 8:15am and ARRIVES at 6pm. Fail. So we were forced to stay on the beautiful Gili Islands for one more night. I decided we would stay on the beach in a private bungalow as long as we were stuck there. It took a lot of walking and Jese bargaining to find the perfect one. Rp150,000 on the beach; no AC or hot water but still great. Then we went to snorkel and eat at one of the restaurants on the north part of the island. They didn’t have food for some reason so instead Jesse had a diet coke, I went snorkeling, saw lots of good things but nothing too unique (and it was sunset and I was snorkeling alone and a little worried since we were so close to the dive site known as Shark Point), then had a chocolate milkshake (Rp18000) made of ice, not ice cream (but I never got sick so I guess they make their ice okay on the Gili T). Then we raced towards sunset and had a long walk down the west side of the island searching for Jesse’s camera (hoping it washed up) in the dark (with phone torch light). It was another clear, starry night and quite enjoyable until somehow deciding where to eat was too stressful for me and I got really upset walking back and forth indecisively until most of the restaurants were closed anyway and my flip flops were giving me blisters for the eighth day in a row. I must get it from my dad. Then Jesse picked a great little spot with our own beach hut and had delicious chimichangas with proper guacamole (not that Australian lime crap), then Cornetto ice cream at a convenience store on the way back to our cheap beach bungalow which don’t even exist in the states.
31/01/11
We woke early so we wouldn’t almost-miss our ferry for the third time. We ferried to Bangai, Lombok, shuttled to Lombar via three stops and two different vans, then hopped on the public ferry, dodged the peddlers for a half hour, then took the 4-5 hour journey back to Padang Bai. Then 2 hours to Kuta. Once in Kuta it was pouring and they dropped us off in a huge puddle haha. Luckily we had an umbrella. McDonalds free wireless saved us once again. Also, the manager and workers at that McDs were some of the best ever – the place was packed and I guess they could tell I was distressed because they conjured up a table and chair for me to sit in. After the heavy rain we walked around until we found a decent hotel, $20 for a room with A/C, hot water (it has now been 6 days without hot water), in room breakfast, and beautiful pool with swim up bar.
01/02/11
MOMS BIRTHDAY
The day was spent walking around Kuta bartering for unnecessary goods.
02/02/11
Tried to get to Ubud but not enough time and too much money for the quick trip, so instead bartered more and relaxed.