By boat from Padangbai to Gili Air

I woke up this morning to a cacophony of noise from the street below and the port over the road. The sound of moped engines, chattering voices, music and boat horns, drifted up to our room and reminded me that today was all about getting across the sea to Gili.......another challenge, and if you know me and the way I feel about boats, something which I wasn’t looking forward to one tiny bit!! During the night we had been intermittently disturbed by boats sounding their horns.......presumably to let everyone in Padangbai know that they were leaving/returning to the town . Each horn had its own individual sound and pitch and after a while didn’t cause us too much distress, that is until the Queen Mary arrived complete with a foghorn of industrial volume which woke us up and almost vibrated us out of bed at the same time!!! Dear Richard had been up for ages, using the time before he woke me, to explore a bit along the seafront, and sit with a cup of tea on the balcony, looking out onto the mayhem that was life in the busy port of Padangbai.

Even at that time in the morning it was flipping hot, and massively humid to boot.......my hair, normally well behaved , had developed a mind.....and a very dishevelled new style of its own overnight, which didn’t bode at all well for the rest of the trip.

We took ourselves off to locate some breakfast, and found it at the front of the hotel next to a small swimming pool, which was being used to teach a group of American teenage school children how to scuba dive.Not sure what your school trips were like, but diving in Bali was certainly a step up from mine, which were mostly to Longleat or Woburn Abbey.....or North Leigh Roman Villa!!!

Breakfast turned out to consist of fruit followed by eggs cooked any way we fancied and was surprisingly good.....the divers had finished their lesson and had swooped on the buffet section where they were busily hoovering up anything that was left, so we made our way back to the room , gathered our stuff and went to wait for our pick up.....something we eventually realised wasn’t coming.....possibly because we were so close to the port we could spit further than the short distance to the boat, and so we set off to look for the ferry office. I knew which general direction it was in and so off we went, trundling our bags in between the scooters, mopeds and pedestrians, getting hotter and sweatier with every step. I had elected to wear my Dad’s straw hat, a) because I felt that it would be sensible to cover my head, given the soaring temperatures and my not being used to the ferocity of the sun, even though it was still only about 10am and b) because there was no room in any bag to put it. Very sensible I hear you say......but not, as it turned out, my head, unused to the high humidity and heat, was so hot under said headgear that I thought I would melt into a little puddle on the side of the road. There was no time for any adjustment though, as we had to find the meeting point before the deadline for check in and so ploughed on......up the road we went........no sign of the office we were looking for, we turned round and walked back down the road......still no sign....... eventually we asked for directions and were sent up a side road to what I can only describe as a shack with a counter. Clearly we had some adjustments to make regarding our expectations>.........to say Bali was a culture shock at this point was the understatement of the century!!!

And so back to my hair.......which will feature heavily for a while ....as it became clear to me that I was going to have to learn to live with much lower expectations with regard to styling. I thought that if I removed the hat I would be cooler.......well I tried this and oh dear lord......there are no words to describe what I looked like.....even Dear Richard looked aghast at the apparition which was sitting next to him.......and so I quickly stuffed the hat back on and once again, vanity triumphed over comfort!!!!!

While we waited for the signal to go down to the port, we were entertained by a stream of well rounded ladies offering refreshment, fruit or sarongs to the waiting passengers. Each of them carried their wares balanced expertly on their heads and worked the captive crowd in turns, not many took advantage of their offerings but they didn’t give up, disappearing round the corner and reappearing ten minutes later as though it was the first time they had seen any of us.

Finally, we were given the signal to set off for the ferry and so out into the blistering sun we went once more walking in convoy down to the sea. Our vessel was waiting and I was very relieved to see that it looked robust and seaworthy......loading commenced and after a brief safety briefing we were off. It was noisy and a bit smelly but the sea was calm.......I had taken preventive drugs just in case......and we were both excited about getting to Gili.....I was so excited that I promptly fell asleep........and stayed asleep for most of the journey......I blame that on the tablets......notorious for having a very odd effect on me, particularly if I add alcohol into the mix......but that’s another story from another holiday!!!!

The boat called in atGili T , the larger of the three Gili islands , first, and then a short trip

further we came to Gili Air. Before we left the UK on our adventure, a member of my family, in whose footsteps we were following at this stage, had warned me that on some of the islands there was no jetty between the boat and the beach, meaning that passengers had to wade through the sea in order to reach land, their luggage being passed overhead along a line of people waist deep in the sea!!!! You can imagine how I was dreading this scenario.........putting up with the hat was one thing, but getting a large percentage of my clothes soaking wet was another thing entirely.......imagine my concern when we arrived at Gili T and the boat wedged itself onto the beach and the passengers disembarking had to jump off the end of the boat ( its got a name I know, but I’m not a bloody sailor so end of he boat will do for now!!).....luckily our island was blessed with a sturdy jetty and so we arrived on the Gili islands looking dishevelled, but dry from the waist down.

And so to transport from the port......to our accommodation. Whatever I was expecting...........and I’m not sure what I was expecting, it..... certainly wasn’t what we were greeted with. There appeared to be two options.....

Option 1 : this involved dragging......there wasn’t much of a road.....our bags across the island.......just how far we didn’t know at that point .....to the hotel we had booked.

Option 2 : was a taxi........here is a picture of the taxi.

When I had been reading about life on the Gili Islands these taxis had been mentioned in a piece about animal cruelty, as the ponies often carry very heavy loads and have to work extremely hard. I had made up my mind after reading this that I would on no account be travelling in one..........so, we had just arrived in a very unfamiliar place........its very, very hot and we have been travelling for a while so we are thirsty, hungry and in need of a swim. We had no idea where our beds for the night were located.......I’m very sorry but its really hard to do the right thing under those circumstances.....and so we crammed our bags and ourselves into that luxurious cart and set off at a fast trot, through the maze of narrow roads ( they weren’t really roads........there was a bit of tarmac here and there interspersed with dirt tracks which were peppered with the biggest pot holes I have ever seen.........and our driver steered his trusty steed through every single one of them.).... as we careered along at breakneck speed the cart rolled from side to side so in addition to being bounced up and down each time we rounded a corner, (a manoeuvre laced with danger due to the fact that the road was single track and there was a very real possibility that we would meet another cart travelling in the opposite direction, being driven equally as erratically, and for which the universal warning signal was the toot toot of a small horn,)......we almost fell out of the cart to certain death or serious injury!!! Add into the mix pedestrians, cyclists and the odd chicken, all of whom were forced to leap into the bushes to avoid being trampled to death, and you have the recipe for a nervous breakdown of epic proportions!

Despite the odds of safe arrival being stacked heavily against us we, pulled up outside .........and here it gets tricky as I would not describe any part of it as a hotel........our “hotel”.

Our bags were removed and the little pony breathed a brief sigh of relief before being urged back towards the port in search of more customers.

And so we made our way to another shack with a counter in order to check in.

There follows an important announcement regarding the booking of accommodation over the internet.....

Exercise “extreme” caution at all times, particularly when looking at pictures which purport to be of the accommodation and its surroundings!!!!!! And especially in countries like Bali......

so there we were standing at the counter.......to our right is a bench on which a man is sleeping.......behind the counter there is a man asleep on the floor........the lovely lady, also behind the counter is finding it hard to understand us so calls the manager who turns out to be the man asleep behind the counter.......there were a series of small huts each with a thatched palm roof, in a small garden , one of which was facing the sea, which was literally on the other side of the track........... and this is where he led us........bear in mind that we had booked the top option here...a beach facing bungalow, which technically this was..........but it was tiny!!!and right next to reception( I am using this term very loosely )....mentally I am catching the next ferry to the mainland and flying home!!!! Obviously not an option as we had only been gone two days......so I asked for a bigger room. Bless him, he took us further into the garden to a similar hut and showed us inside.....I wasn’t feeling it one tiny bit.......so we went further back to a semi detached cabin which was bigger and so I settled for that. Bags inside I went to look at the bathroom...........the internet illustrations of the sanitary arrangements had indeed been accurate, I knew that there would be no roof , but thought that was romantic........showering in the open air.......there will be more on that later......for now we decided that what we needed most of all was a drink ( with alcohol in it...) the welcome offering from our hotel had been distinctly lacking in that department and I was ready to sink a very large cold something or other.........

The walk from our room to the track running along the beach was only a few steps, we walked onto the beach and had a quick look. The sea was a variety of shades of green and the sand was soft and pale, there were boats anchored along the shore which was fringed with trees. It looked beautiful and was very hot.

The track was lined with hotels and bars and at this time in the afternoon was busy with pedestrians, taxies and cyclists. There was music everywhere and I had never seen anything like it before.

As we were both now desperate for a drink we didn’t walk far before finding a suitable spot to sit and enjoy a beer. Two cold Bintangs appeared and we allowed ourselves to relax at last.

Several beers later we were both feeling chilled and so made our way back to our “bungalow” to shower and change. The outside bathroom was still a novelty and so I was happy to shower al fresco!!! As you will discover it became less appealing as time went on..........particularly if I made the mistake of leaving my ablutions until after dark, when every biting bastard on the island congregated there to feast on my flesh whilst I washed!!.

Tonight however , I was unaware of this issue, and so happy to be there, that I was floating along in a little bubble of happiness.

And so we were clean, sprayed all over with insect repellant, and ready for dinner.........so off we went in search of something to eat. For a tiny island there were loads of places serving food........they all had seating on the beach side of the track, candles, music and chatty greeters............all offered bar-b-qued food which was cooked on an open fire....consequently the air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke , so much so that if one happened to be sitting downwind of the bonfire it was quite hard to breathe or see!!!

Dinner done, and paid for..........it was so cheap we thought they had made a mistake!!........we took ourselves back along they track to our room.......I can’t call it a bungalow no matter how hard I try to suspend reality.........and fell into bed.........obviously we arranged the mosquito net tightly around the mattress first!!!! No little biting bastard would be getting through that barrier in a hurry.....and waited for sleep to wash over us..........the air con whirred softly in the background and I was just drifting off when a noise like a machine starting up followed by a series of noises that sounded like a parrot saying f**k you about five times, became audible from somewhere in the roof....... I sat up looking around for the creature that I was sure would be perched waiting to devour us in our sleep, but there was nothing to be seen, and as it was now completely silent, I decided that whatever it was I wasn’t going to let it cost me precious sleep and so ........finally .........after a very long and at times traumatic day fell asleep dreaming of boats, heat and horses making people pull carts full of heavy luggage.