New Years Day 2026

Our lazy breakfast on NY morning was very quiet - no sign of the revellers who were so enthusiastic on NYE for some reason!
After eating, packing up I had time to give our bungalow mate - a very pregnant little cat - a little cuddle. The cats here are tiny compared with the ones at home.

We checked out of our accommodation and are back on the boat, at Gili Air.

A pony buggy ride took us back into the town and harbour. Some friendly fishermen gave us a lift out to Thetis as we only had one kayak on shore. Great guys, and a relief as it was really choppy.

Dale’s been looking a replacement outboards for the dingy, so a local guy turned up at the boat with his pal who had an outboard for sale. We were dubious about their claims that it was just a year old, and it certainly wasn’t worth the 20 million IDR they were asking as it had been worked hard.
That over, we wandered the streets to find food - the restaurants were all open despite being NY day.
We chose a Poutine Restaurant (Canadian Comfort Food - read cardiac arrest food!)
Fries loaded with curd, cheddar and Mozzarella cheeses and gravy. Tasty enough but kind of alarming! Probably great after a days skiing, but heavy in the tropics. The owner is from Montreal and they make their own (curd) cheese.
When looking at the GoPro footage from NYE I found a funny video of me riding along the road - I was passing a kid, busy washing his butt - quite unworried about passers-by. Just the funny things you see!
We tried to buy provisions but the grocery stores and markets were closed. We did find one large store which had fruit, veg and grocery items. Again the quality of the produce was dreadful. I think the only veg I saw worth buying were cucumbers - everything else was tragic. Are we just used to GMO produce that looks perfect but generally tasteless? Or is agriculture in Indonesia really needing help?
Chicken is generally good, although the chooks here are the size of bantams.

Dale bought a pack of beef, which I cooked today (Fri) for lunch. When we defrosted it, it consisted of a piece of meat less than 1cm thick, between 2 layers of tough membrane. I’ll swear this was a bit of meat rescued from the street outside the slaughter house! There was bits of grit on the membrane, so I gave it a good wash before carefully removing the membrane on both sides.

I decided to stir fry it with onions and tomato, and spices. As soon as that meat hit the hot oil it curled and I knew it wasn’t going to end well 😬. The taste was fine but I have never attempted to eat meat that was so tough. We literally couldn’t chew it! We laughed so much that I had tears running down my face 😂.
I’m sure even Jamie Oliver couldn’t turn that crap into something edible without slow cooking it for a week!
Said meat is now feeding the fishes.

The weather has still been fine and sunny although there’s a bit of cloud build up to the north and a bit of thunder grumbling. Looking forward to some rain, although we’ve just filled our tanks (this involves heading out into the ocean where the water is clean and using the desalinator). It still blows me away that water from this simple system tastes better than bottled water!

I’m going to stick a bit of the leftover meat on a hook and see if it’s any good as bait. If we are really lucky, we’ll catch and fish and makes it to harbour before the storm hits 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
PS Unlucky on both counts - no fish, and no rain. Rain is forecast for tomorrow though.Read more