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Published: October 18th 2008
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We were up early (one day I will get a lie in!!) for our transfer to the port. The van picked us up at 08.00 and the four of us were off. We'd been travelling about 5 minutes when we realised that the gorgeous sea view was on our right which meant that instead of heading north to the port, we were heading south!!! Now what was going on??? When we asked the driver, we were just repeatedly told it was fine. What could we do? There was a 'tour guide' with us on this section of the journey who wanted us to buy tickets back from the island with him and was most put out that we had already bought them. This seemed a little bizarre as he had been with the van the night before that dropped us off at a tourist information point selling tickets! Why drop us there and expect us not to use the services?! He kept asking to see our tickets. We were very keen not to let them out of our sight as once in someone else's hands they have a habit of disappearing and the you have to buy new ones!! After I
had shown him our ticket several times and he had jabbered frustratedly at the driver in Indonesian I asked if there was a problem with the ticket. He reluctantly agreed there wasn't and so that was that.
We went the back road to the ferry which took us through a monkey forest. The monkeys were everywhere at the side of the road and just generally walking around!! Wicked!!
Eventually we stopped at this little cafe and were told to get out of the bus. We just wanted to get to the port but were told that we had to change transport and we would be collected from the cafe an hour later. This cafe was in the middle of nowhere but seemed quite busy. When I looked closer, I could see people from the restaurants in Senggigi the night before. Again, we had no option but to wait. The cafe stop was obviously (another) scam like the hotel stop the night before to pump money into the local economy (and someone's pocket). The annoying thing is, we wouldn't have minded if we had been told what was going to happen up front. It's the constant plan changing, confusion and feeling of compete helplessness that is hard to stomach. You just get put into this dominio rally of events that you have no control over and just have to hope works out in the end!!
Those of you who have been following the story so far will realise that , although close, this is not quite the end of the story yet! We accepted our fate, ordered breakfast and waited for an hour. At that point one of the hotel staff came up and told us our transport had arrived. We came out the front to find a horse and cart and a man asking for payment to the port. Not funny. We refused the horse and cart and said we'd walk to the port and where was it?? Annoyingly 200 m down the road, just out of sight of the cafe. We could have been there an hour ago. There was absoutely no point getting angry at any stage during the journey. It wouldn't have done any good. However, internally we had reached our breaking point. Kasper and I both went into invisible mode. Sunglasses on, headphones in and head down. All four of us made a very solitary walk that 200m to the port.
The boat left about half an hour later. I sat in silence, writing in my notebook. I wanted to get the whole journey written before we arrived so I didn't have to think about it again. As I type this up, I am smiling, but it has taken a few days to get to this point!
About 40 minutes later, just over 30 hours since we left Bali, and via a country I hadn't intended to visit, we reached the Gilis and my god was it worth it. I will get some photos up when I get back to the mainland as the connection here is shit. However, this place is paradise on a stick.
We found a really cheap hotel (£1.50 a night) and found the Blue Marlin Dive shop. On the boat to the Gilis we had picked up a French/ Belgian couple who were also interested in diving and so the 6 of us got great deal (Kasper already had his licence). We had a look around town and then started out PADI Open Water course that evening by watching 2 out of 5 of the cheesiest American DVDs I have ever seen. “People who dive have more fun” don't you know!!!
Tomorrow we'll be in the pool and in the sea!!!! Unbelievable. The stress of the past 2 days has gone already!!
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