Day 35 (Monday 20th November 2006)

Well the bubble has well and truly burst ladies and gentlemen! Just as Sarah was the night before last, Marc was up all night long, but it was the excruciating pain of trapped water in the ears that was to blame.

With no sign of it subsiding, even after a whole bottle of warm water graduelly poured in bit by bit, it was down to the Gili Air doctor’s clinic for an examination.

The really frustrating thing is, Marc meant to pick up a bottle of ‘swimear’ before he left and had he have, he may have cleared it all out long before the pain began and in turn, the doctor revealing the heartrenching news "yep I’m afraid you have another ear infection"!

This time, if the last one was not bad enough, it’s really bad and it will keep him out of the water for 5-days! It seems that as soon as one of us shakes off an illness or two, the other one picks up something else.We were trying to work out whether there was a single dayon our whole trip when we both felt fit and well.

Marc was feeling very sorry for himself indeed and solked off to buy a whole stick of toblerone, which he ate in the shade by himself. He is deaf in one ear and has lost all balance and co-ordination. He thinks what might well have sparked it was diving down too deep, too quickly the other day when he stroked that turtle and has had a few equalising difficulties and water-in-the-ear issues ever since. He spent the whole day in the hammock solking!

Sarah’s still not feeling a million bucks either and except for a few short trips to the sea for a dip, she kept him company reading her book. She’s coming to the end of ‘Angels and Demons’ now Marc’s mum and is enjoying the thrilling twists at the end. It also lends itself as the perfect escape from Marc’s now constant whining!!

Later that day we got talking to the couple staying in the next hut along. We thought they were a bit strange at first, him with his little speedo hotpants (you know those really terrible things that Uncle Ian would probably wear) and them both doing their wierd tantric excercises in the morning…but they turned out to be really, really nice!

Bjoern is scandinavian we think and Chantal american and we all got talking (Marc shouting) about the four of us visiting Mt Rinjani together to reduce our individual costs for the guide, sometime in the near future. With Marc now moping around the island, perhaps it’s a good time. I guess you could say we’ll play it by EAR!!!!!

Chris, the manager at Blue Marlin, never made it back to the dive centre that night with Marc’s photos…so that gave him something else to moan about!!

PS What’s this we see about ‘Tubes’ on the scoresheet yesterday??? Surely that’s a misprint or someone’s been playing under his name?? Good win though boys and that’s us back on top of the league where we belong!!

Day 36 (Tuesday 21st November 2006)

Having waited anxiously for over 24-hours and still deaf in one ear, Marc trudged down to the dive shop to check out his latest snaps. As you know, he’d been expecting great things from this batch, so when he flicked through 54 shots of his index finger, he wasn’t best pleased! With a decent photo editing package, perhaps a few of the photos can be salvaged. As well as pics, Chris had some crisp new money for us to spend.

The waves were crashing in (think we’re on spring tides), so Marc was a little pleased to know that the snorkelling wouldn’t have been great, but Sarah, who hadn’t snorkelled for 24-hours herself, fought her way out to give it a go. It’s just too shallow going in and the waves pummelled her against the rocks, so she quickly returned with a few bumps and cuts to the knees. Great, even the snorkelling’s going wrong!

After lunch we took our first weekly dose of malaria tablets, but we have to say that here in the Gili’s, mosquitos are few and far between. Within a few hours Sarah was very ill again and had to go to bed. So maybe it was ‘Larium’ making her bad all along? Come to think of it, we have both felt a little stripped of our energy all week, but we put that down to the heat. Maybe these malaria bad boys are having more of an effect on us than we thought?

Bjoern certainly had an opinion on the whole thing and told us that malaria tablets are bad news. He and Chantal have not taken them, even when travelling through really high risk areas such as Sumatra and believe it best to just slap on the repellent and cover up at night.

You’re never totally safe he said and the side effects, not to mention damage thay cause to the body, just don’t make them worth taking. He’s a nurse, yet seemed to have a more hippy-type ‘cosmetic medicine is bad for the body’ attitude. He said it’s our choice, but he’d give up on the tablets and if we didn’t want to take his word for it, his sister was arriving on the island soon and she’s a doctor. At the worst he said she could give us some tablets for the side effects.

We don’t have to make any rash decisions, the next tablet’s not until next week, so we’ll see how it goes.

Before Sarah did buckle up in bed, we dragged ourselves up to circumnavigate the island. We took a gentle stroll along the beach all the way around, collecting shells and urchins. It’s not that big and it must have taken us a little over an hour.

In the evening we had a lovely meal (in a different restaurant for once), but Sarah couldn’t finish hers because of the bad belly cramps! Right, where’s Bjoern’s sister then…