Day 7 and 8 - Hardcore Travel Time
One whole week and the holiday is not over yet! Today was the last day at the Suly so we hung out by the pool and did some swimming and some sunbathing. We listened to the kids doing music practice and also doing their offerings and prayers.
We both were a little carried away and both got a little bit sunburnt as it was a very hot morning but this will be a good start of a tan.
At around 2pm we were just gearing up for a pot noodle when our car arrived to take us to the afternoon's entertainment. While we were driving out the kids were doing some decorating in their education and craft area and singing Jason Mraz, this made Nik happy.
The car then drove us towards the central mountain area of Bali. We stopped at an organic plantation for herbs, fruit and coffee on the way and met the farmer, who used choice phrases such as 'lovely jubbly'. We got to look at and smell all the herbs and spices, including turmeric which looks like ginger in root form and stains your hand yellow. They drink it as a tea here for digestion and as a treatment for cancer!
Then we saw all the coffee and learned about the different types and saw the man grind the coffee with a stick met the civets (cute little jungle cats called Alex and Alan) who eat the coffee and poo it out and it makes a special kind of bean which makes the best coffee. We then got to sample all the different things they grow and make there, which included lemon tea, ginger tea, cinnamon hot chocolate, coffee and chocolate coffee. These were the most delicious drinks we have ever tasted. We felt very Jamie Oliver.
We then drove on to a comedy guest house in Kintamani which is one of the villages around Mount Batur - the most active volcano in Bali. It has a huge lake in a crater. Our room looked like Bournemouth circa 1972 but had the most incredible view over the volcano and the lake and comedy people working there who we had a good chat with. All the locals love Nik, especially as he buys things from them. He has bought a picture which is painted out of paint made from coconut oil and ground up lava and rock from the mountain. To be fair it is amazing and of a god and cost about £1.
The guest house was run by a collection of real characters which made the slightly rough round the edges room worthwhile. Balinese people are all slightly crazy. They are always smiling and love a joke - often with Nik about swapping their life with him and whether this includes the wife! But they all want to sit and talk to you about your life and their families, and football.
We had Bintang and some rice and noodles (cost about a pound) and chatted with the other people staying there, including two blonde Swedish girls on mopeds, two very cool dutch guys, a couple of tired looking Australians and an American called Alex who shared some excellent travel tales. The man at the guest house kept insisting that everyone try his home brew coconut arak or 'coconut moonshine' as Alex (who had also observed that driving in Bali is like being in a computer game) dubbed it. Nik sommelier-ed it and gave it a sniff and a try. Hannah abstained. What is amusing is when you are travelling everyone becomes known by their nation, with people sayin 'So, England, where are you going tomorrow?' for example. Saves you having to remember people's names.
We had an early night as we were then up at 3.30am to go and climb Mount Batur. Our driver came to get us and brought the rest of our party - two very cool German girls who had just graduated as doctors and had a great sense of humour. We started up the mountain at about 4.15am with our guide. It was very hot and pitch black so you have to walk with a torch you shine on your feet, you don 't really see anything else other than the clearest most amazing stars in the night sky. The climb was hard on the legs, and we both fell down a couple of times, but one of the German girls managed to draw blood so hers was the best fall. The volcano climb was Hannah's idea and Nik was surprised at how hard it was - the gym did not prepare him for this. "Why do people do this for fun?", "have we actually paid to do this?", "I can't actually go on".
However, after about an hour and a half of climbing and just before sunrise we reached the top of the volcano and had coke and Balinese coffee to rejuvenate ourselves. The guide then cooked breakfast in a kitchen which uses the heat from the volcano, and we had baked banana sandwiches and hard boiled eggs - eggs in Bali are in everything as they have so many chickens and they are the best eggs as they are about ¾ yolk. There was a dog who lived at the summit, who was ferreting for eggs. We called him Eggdog and fed him some. We then watched the most amazing sunrise and incredible scenery, you can see Lombok from the top and the lake, other mountains and lots of Bali too. The bit we climbed to was just on the edge of the crater at the top of the mountain, which came off in an eruption in the 1800s, though it last blew 10 years ago.
***MONKEY NEWS***
At the top of the mountain, there were also lots of monkeys including baby ones and they were really cool and not as scary as the monkey forest ones. They had lots of bananas and made lots of love! One monkey was lonesome, we took a picture as he was our favourite.
We went to see a bit of the volcano where smoke comes out, and also a bit where steam comes out that they then use as holy water. All mountains are holy places in Balinese Hinduism so they come during the year for prayers, there is even a temple being constructed on the side.
We then walked down, which was notably harder than going up and Hannah struggled with the length of steps and having short legs so was very very slow! (The others in the group were giants). But there was some beautiful scenery on the way down, including volcano side farms, including a peanut field and lots of tomato and chilli plantations. We eventually made it down, and despite it feeling like a whole day later, it was about 8am! We felt very Bear Grylls!
We had a quick banana pancake brekkie at the hotel before our driver came to take us to Padang Bai which is a port town in East Bali. The journey was long and hot but we saw some amazing villages, lots of boxes of chickens and some cool temples on the road side. In Padang Bai we got our boat tickets for going to the Gili Islands, which are a small group of paradise islands off the coast of Lombok. We wanted to go to Gili Meno - the smallest and quietest island for some R&R but the tide was too low today so we chose to go to Gili Trawangan (known locally as Gili T or Party Island as Magic Mushrooms and Marijuana are bountiful there) instead.
While we waited for the boat, we went for a coke in a small warung and got talking to an AMAZING Welsh couple. They were in their 70s and had been travelling Indonesia for a month 'Oh yes, we did the climb up Mount Rinjani last week…' and gave us lots of good tips on where to go. Turned out that 15 years ago, he retired on the Friday, she retired on the Saturday and they went to Borneo for their first trip on the Monday. They've been doing about 8 trips a year ever since, and have been everywhere - "I got all my money stolen in Guatemala, it was my own fault really…" - "We got runover by a motorbike in Thailand, he broke his collar bone, I broke my whole leg and we took 3 months to recover. It was inconvenient.", "We just keep going in case we drop dead tomorrow", and "I'd like to buy 15 years, but as I can't, this is the next best thing". Total inspiration. They stay in youth hostels and their grown up daughter apparently wishes they were like normal parents. Lots of deals on Teletext apparently!
We went off to get the boat about lunchtime and it turned out there were only 6 of us on it in total, us and two other couples - Toby and Claudia from Germany, and Jose and Tatiana from Chile. We pitched up at the harbour and they rolled out some tiny wooden boat of death which we got in. Luckily this then dropped us at a small passenger ferry - far better for the 4 hour journey! We got to see some amazing scenery and other islands and it was a really calm day at sea so it was not even sick making. As a bonus, they even fed us rice, noodles, chicken and some spicy nutty genius stuff, plus watermelon for dessert. Hannah had a nap and Nik stayed up drinking beer and talking about sport with the boys. Typical.
While Hannah was asleep, the others saw some dolphins. While Hannah does not like dolphins and thinks they are rapists and a bit weird, she was sad to have missed them. However, we spent the rest of the trip looking out to sea and saw lots more dolphins (yay) as well as freaky flying fish, giant clams and jelly fish under the water plus the Lombok fishermen setting their nets at sea. There was also a spot of rain and a resulting big rainbow which was beautiful.
We finally got to Gili T at about 5, and took a motorboat to shore, which we had to leap out of into the water to get to the beach proper. Gili T is the largest of the islands but still tiny, so we took a stroll to find somewhere to stay. Some madman took us to see his rooms and we decided to stay there at Funny's Homestay - no joke! We have a pretty decent room here but it is about $7 a night and about 2 minutes from the beach so you can't complain! The guy who runs it is hilarious and clearly learned his English from gangster films with some excellent glottal stops - e.g. 'Wa-er' and 'F*&^king Nu--er'. In general they love swearing here, as it's a bit free and rasta on the island. You would expect to see signs sayin 'Effing Bloody Fresh Magic Mushroom sold here'. Also, offering us Marijuana seemed to be part of the check in process!
After a quick wash in the cold, salt water shower, we went for a stroll along the east side of the island where most of the action is and had a drink at the diving club, before settling for dinner at Sama-Sama which is renowned at South-East Asia's best reggae bar. Every restaurant on the beach has a bbq grill outside and cooks fresh catches for dinner - the biggest fish you've ever seen. We met a little man called Eddie who was our waiter and taught us that sama-sama means 'You're Welcome' here. The people here are Sasak and look very different to those in Bali. The language is also totally different. Plus, there are lots of cats here, instead of dogs. They are good cats and very pretty but lack proper tails.
We sat at a table on the sand on the beach and had mojitos and fish for dinner. Hannah's made her mouth itchy so she is abstaining from fish now. There was a man playing a guitar and a man playing bongos doing covers of classic rock songs so we had a good game of 'intro - name that tune'. We enjoyed how in Careless Whisper, his dirty feet had got no rhythm and that in Clapton's Layla, there was a mention of a Polish bride. Who knew! Then a reggae band came on. Nik had specified that on the Gili's he wanted to sit in a bar on the beach while a man played the guitar like Jason Mraz. When the reggae band rocked out a bit of Mraz, Nik was content to go home after the long day of adventures we'd had.