Mandy: Sunday 25th August
The bus station in Ubud, back on the rickety bus. (smile)
It proved to be a small world yet again* as we boarded the rickety bus from Ubud to Sanur to catch their speedboat to the small island of Nusa Lembongan.
I sat by a young women called Kelly who was travelling for three months on her own. After swapping travel stories during the fifty minute journey to Sanur I found out that she was from Bristol and worked in Bath! What are the chances!? *For those of you who have not read comments on Facebook about the flight to Singapore….. We sat by a women and her daughter on the flight who was married to a Balinese man but, because of personal details I won’t go in to, now lives in Gloucestershire. (just up the road from us in Bristol!!) Then a friend of mine on Facebook, who now lives in France, posted that we should go to an area called Amed whilst we were in Bali. She told us that she had stayed in a ‘resort’ called “Wawawewe” there last September ….. guess who owns Wawawewe….. Deborah who I sat by on the flight! small, small world!
The speedboat….. No one told us we would have to walk out through the water with our back packs to get on the boat (chuckle)
Our first accommodation was on the beach front with a lovely little plunge pool, sea view etc
but no glass in the windows!!!
So we moved along the beach. Our balcony (and bed) looks directly out to sea, and we can hear the waves crashing over the path in front of our garden wall……at 3am in the morning!
You can’t have it all…..well not for £14.79 a night…..the towels are so old (and dried outside in the sun) they are like sandpaper which is not all bad as our feet badly need pumicing after a month of walking in sandals. They said it didn’t have hot water but then someone in the room below complained as they had been promised it the owners miraculously found a switch that gave us hot water! They are so thoughtful in other ways though….they even supplied us with a pet! We saw a baby rat in our room in the middle of the night on our first night (it had taken items from our bathroom bin and put them in the cupboard bless it!) but we complained so they put poison down and we saw three big rats on the roof eating it. So as you can see we are taking the rough with the smooth here in paradise!
We can sit in bed and see the sea too……
As lovely as Indonesia has been, so far, there is something missing here. Before we left the UK we had been trying to think of ways to make a living and Glen had said ” there must be something we could import or export to make a business…… ” Well I have found it! Jif! (Or Cif as it is now called) they are in great need of it here and in Asia generally!! I actually cleaned a toilet cistern and basin with tissue in a cafe the other day. It hadn’t seen any Jiff for along time, if ever, and it is such a shame when the staff dress so well and the buildings are beautiful and the food delicious. I would happily spend a day in each place we have visited explaining the importance of such a cleaning material. And there was my friend Deb thinking I had left such mundane things behind In the UK …….see below the poem she sent to me the other day.
At first I thought that the old women in Indonesia look so good for their age, carrying things on their head…big and heavy things too! (Whilst the men watch… really what is that about?) anyway I was thinking, maybe they are not actually old!!! but young (in their 50’s) and carrying all of this heavy stuff in the sun all these years, as well as bearing children, has made them look 80!!! Something I need to get to the bottom of. I wish I had the nerve (like Allie) to take close up photos of these people, they would make great photos as they walk towards us rather than taking a sneaky one as they walk away.
We have spoken to some and they have happily tried to communicate ….. but some just look at me with their tired eyes and ignore me! (Don’t blame them) As I watched one lady collecting seaweed (more on that later) on the beach though she came up to me and gave me a shell and a big smile and then kept going.
A young boy collecting what we eventually found out were worms (in a strange way) was not so happy to engage with us! Or explain what he was doing and how, other than to say “worms” when we tried to look in his bucket.
Everything seems to come in to the island by boat (except salt and seaweed!) and it is the women who carry it through the water from the boat to the shore and up the steps! Just look what they carried off yesterday……..
Notice the men just sat watching!!!
I was stood looking out from the balcony at 7.30am this morning watching the locals talking and going about their daily life and a women walked by swinging her arms with fish hanging from in between her fingers as she held on to their tails. She beckoned to another women and pointed to the boat on the beach and off the other women went to get some for herself. It all seems so simple, no polystyrene tray with cling film over it!
I looked out of our side window as I pulled the curtains and saw the women pulling back the plastic covers from the seaweed to continue drying it in the yard next door, the odd chicken walking around.
There are people of all ages sat around chatting and I wondered what they talk about living such a simple life, probably us weird tourists!
As we walked along in the dark last night with our torch to ensure we didn’t fall over the sea wall, it is very narrow and some of it has broken away over the years, you have to have your wits about you. We saw old people sat in the dark in their doorways and as we shone our torch you could see their rooms were just big enough for a little bed and nothing else. Maybe that is why you see everyone sat outside so much because they don’t have the inside space, or belongings and that means they don’t have anything to dust though! They save their energy for carrying things from the boats. (Smile) When we walked back after our meal a guy was sat by a little fire cooking a fish on the narrow pavement, another was having a pee over the side into the sea. I bet they just love us coming along with our head torch. (grin)
ooooooOOooooo lovely, my afternoon reading…xo
Your blogs have made my school holiday! 🙂 x