Indonesia

Another day on the move. We were up early to catch the 7:30am boat back to Bali. The sea was in a much calmer state today, so the crossing was fairly smooth…for Bali standards. We met the driver at the port to collect our luggage we had stored. Not having any cash on us we were loaded into the back of his car and driven to a cash point. However…roughly 2 minutes after he had left, a worried “where is the paddle?” was aired from Sam. Somehow it was now my responsibility to look after it and I had obviously left it in the man’s car…classic Reagan. We headed back to the port walking 20m apart, as Sam could no longer look me in the eye 💔 All of a sudden I heard someone shouting “Mr, Mr” - they call me Mr a-lot here…still not sure how to take it. I turned around and there was the driver extremely out of breath, having run all the way down the road to us with the paddle! Day saved and Sam was now willing to walk next to me.

We finally met our next driver who was taking us to the port in Padangbai to catch the boat to Gili T. It was a 1hr 30min transfer and an interesting standard of driving - straddling 2 lanes was his go to position. We did however make it, and killed the next hour at a cafe getting some much needed breakfast! Back at the office we were directed down to the harbor where we then had to pay a fee to use the port to get on the boat…the boat we had already paid for! Just as the boat started to board, there was another panicked “where is the paddle!?”. At this point, Sam was ready to abandon it however, I had been through too much slogging it around on the back of the scooter for the past 3 days so took the risk and sprinted back to the office. There it was chilling against the wall, not a care in the world. I grabbed it and ran back dodging people on their way to prayer like a mad woman. I made it. Hallelujah. Meanwhile, Sam was abandoned in the blazing sun with all the bags, so the two of us had become a sweaty mess in the space of 10 minutes.

The boat to Gili T was around 2.5hrs, stopping at Lombok on the way. Back on land, we got a horse cart to take us to our hotel which we didn’t feel the most comfortable about but there are no motorized vehicles on the Gili islands. We later found out that there has been a lot of work on educating the drivers on caring for their horses etc m, so this made us feel slightly better. 100m down the road, our driver spotted some horse poo on the road. He casually jumped out, and scooped it up with his flip flops!

We checked in at the coconut garden and this was the first time the man at reception laid his eyes on Sam 😍 - the start of a blossoming relationship. We spent the evening having a wonder around the island to get our bearings, and had dinner at a place called Skinny Dip.

Early night after a busy old day!Read more