Had a good walk along to the shops, absolutely sweated up so wandered in to the Matahari department store where the ground floor is given over entirely to selling stuff to tourists & the aircon soon had us back to normal, so we did a load of shopping. Stuff was a lot cheaper than in England, but I had a hard time converting the currency as 14,500.00 Rupiats = £1.00. I just cannot work out all those noughts!!
We returned to the Hotel via the beach, walking at paddling depth again & spent a lazy afternoon by the pool where we met some Australians who had come to Bali with a friend to celebrate his 60th birthday here.
In the evening we were picked up at the hotel at 5.45pm to dine on a boat in the harbour. We picked up a couple of Australians en route (seems to be becoming a habit!) & set off on what is normally a 40 mins max journey. The traffic is apalling & we finally arrive at the harbour about 7.30pm. The rest of the diners were a trifle p...d off by our late arrival but it was nothing to do with us. We had a super five course dinner accompanied by a trio of musicians singing popular hits from the seventies & eighties while the boat meandered around the harbour. Towards the end of the meal we realised that planes were coming in to land at a rate of one to two minute intervals. It felt like sitting in the flight path of a major airport, but it was just Saturday night & obviously a changeover day.
We climbed back into our taxi at about 9.30 pm & set off back. The traffic was unbelievable still and we didn't get back to our Hotel until 11pm tired and grumpy by then.
We learned later that major roadworks are in progress building an underpass to ease this notorious bottleneck although it isn't going to ease anything in the back streets where cars etc are nose to tail as little motorbikes, some with whole families on them, weave in & out through the mayhem.