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Published: April 24th 2009
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My first dive
On the boat with my beautiful instructor. Once again I find myself plotting ways through which I can organise to live in Bali full-time. I love it here! A marriage of convenience to a local lesbian is currently high on the list of possibilities… Fam and I returned a couple of days ago after a planned expedition to the wilder islands East of Bali turned into a battle with gastro and an extended sunbathing session on a perfect island. Gili Trawangan is heaven if you’ve been slogging around in the filthier parts of Indo for a few months; a cinema, white beaches, waters teeming with sea life, some cool bars and plenty of good food provide the distractions. I guess it’s like Kuta, minus the bogan Australian element, schnick-schnack sellers and penis bottle-openers. And it’s popular with Scandinavian “backpackers”, most of whom actively promote topless sunbathing. Awesome! I won’t go into extensive details as every day was Groundhog Day, albeit without Bill Murray providing the gags. That being said, there were some highlights!
I learned the basics of SCUBA diving with Fam. This was an early birthday present (unfortunately the other option of a “special” massage in Manila was touted as inappropriate) from my beautiful girlfriend. Being
Beach (South)
Main beach Gili T, looking towards Lombok. able to experience my first dive in 31۫ water, perfect visibility, with Fam and a handful of blasé sea turtles and 14108432 fish was amazingly perfect.
The main beach on G.T. is pretty damn nice too. Cool music from a stylish bar floats over a sea of Scandinavian sunbathers, crystal clear water laps gently on a blindingly white coral/sand beach, palm trees provide respite from the often-sweltering heat, and 10m offshore is some of the nicest drift snorkeling I have floated on top of. There is a swift current flowing down the beach so snorkeling is as simple as walking 1k up the beach, swimming out to your preferred depth and floating back to your towel. Lazy recreation at it’s finest!
Along the beachfront is a mass of UPmarket restaurants and bars. I’m talking about chandeliers, imported Penfolds reds, French champagne and rich cheeses. Seafood barbeques every night for only a marginal ripoff (I remember being able to buy prawns in Burma @ $3 for 15 monsters), and the option of a fresh steak cooked on a hot grill. Not surprisingly, these places required a mortgage to eat at, so we found ourselves eating with the locals and
other assorted bums at a couple of the local warungs in the village. At home we are blessed with food safety and preparation laws that ensure food is cooked when ordered, and if not it is kept warm or refrigerated until it is needed. At the fancy places this sort of respect is expected, but when you’re eating at the warung, the best you can hope for is a curry cooked that day. Picture a dirty table top with an assortment of mismatched pots and pans, some covered, others open to the constant onslaught of flies. The room is hot, and a single fan slowly stirs the morass without promoting any discernable air movement. The pots contain a variety of warm, lukewarm and cold curries cooked that morning (or the previous morning), which are dolled out by a sometimes cheeky, but often outright rude grandma in miserly portions. This is what I have eaten for 110 days now, a monotony that has been broken on 9 occasions (I counted last night). It had been a source of pride that my often beleaguered digestive system had handled this without nary a complaint, that is until Warung Kikinovi served up some suspect
Turtle power
Baby Hawksbill Turtle fish balls. I started feeling the familiar groans and protests at about 3am on Friday morning, and finally kicked the bug on Tuesday morning. As far as bugs go, this one wasn’t too vicious; however it happened to time its visit with a spate of rolling power cuts. Our room wasn’t well-ventilated and relied completely on one over worked fan to provide the relief. The power cuts meant I was left on a soaked sheet, gasping like a beached fish for hours on end until the fan choked back into life again. Not an ideal situation to recover in! In the end I was so frustrated with living my life on a toilet that needed flushing with a bucket that I dumped 4 immodiums down my throat and devoured a delicious meal of barbequed tuna. Take that, conventional medicine!
G.T.’s relative proximity to Bali opens it up to a whole world of people watching opportunities. I declined to photograph one particular specimen as I thought it would validate all the work he was putting into looking casually disheveled, and I really didn’t want that! This bloke was suffering from an acute case of too-coolitis, and was in dire need
Happy times
NASA should investigate these so-called "Tickets to the moon" of a cure. Again, I’ll paint a picture: a hair cut reminiscent of Dean Geyer’s in his Australian Idol period (blonde tips, naturally), bottom lip pierced in the centre, left nostril sporting a similar ring, Ray-Ban Aviators perched casually on his nose (constantly), iPod on (constantly), cutoff denim shorts with a HUGE belt buckle, and the piece-de-resistance, a flying eagle tattooed onto his lower abdomen. This guy spent the 6 hour ferry trio from Lombok to Bali sitting in the “cock pose” - sprawled over 2 seats, Aviators on, but no doubt gazing wistfully towards the horizon in what could only be an extremely uncomfortable, but aesthetically pleasing position. As the boat docked at Padangbai, our world-weary wanderer extended his wheelie-suitcase handle and strode off towards the horizon, no doubt in search of the first available taxi driver to accompany him on his next adventure. LOL.
Fam and I celebrated my long awaited tax bonus last night with a non-warung meal of pasta. Apparently the 350-odd rice based meals have shrunk my stomach to the point where I must undergo physical discomfort in order to finish a simple plate of seafood tagliatelle. That is a worry. Tomorrow we’re escaping Indonesia for Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. From there we fly to Manila on May 2nd. Manila itself doesn’t really hold much attraction to us, we will extend our visa there and while we wait we will hunt down a mythical bar staffed exclusively by “little people”. I first heard of it in Howard Marks’ book,
Mr. Nice, but considering the book is an autobiographical account of a hash smuggler’s various attempts of transporting tonnes of hashish into Europe, I figured the guy was tripping when we wrote about a bar staffed by dwarves. Nonetheless, finding that bar and taking (in?)appropriate photos remains #1 on my to-do list in Manila. I’ll report on that little escapade with glee.
Until then, enjoy ANZAC Day and let us pray for a resounding red and black victory over the black and white forces of evil.
x temps
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