I've had my first traveling glitch and failed by AirAsia. After catching our 5.30am taxi and navigating domestic departures we boarded our plane to Surabaya en route to Borneo to spot the 'rangas. An hour of the same song later (actually the same song, it didn't repeat it just kept going and going and going) we were told there was a technical problem with the plane and told to go back to the terminal to wait. Which we did, diligently. For 6 hours. At this point catching our connecting flight over to Borneo was a fading dream, so we were booked onto the next days flight for a take two and given a McDonald's for our trouble - a bit of chicken and a rice ball (I declined). I had been perfectly happy and calm for most of it, even though the 'attention, attention' tannoy lady was announcing things every 20 seconds. We managed to get our bags back, put them on a trolley and headed for freedom...until a guard announced we couldn't take the trolley outside. At that point my facade dropped and I made him rue the day.
We then headed on back to Seminyak to surprise Ben and Dave with the good news we were there for another night (they were suitably pleased) and had a lovely day on the beach surfing, not buying tat and generally being merry. Lots of email toing and froing later and it became apparent that our orangutan adventure was just not going to happen - booking flights on a deadline in Indonesia is not an easy thing to do!
However when you're on a tropical island option B really isn't too bad. We had a fun last day take 2 with Dave and Ben and decided that we would take scooters to Kuta in the morning. Thinking I was sensible I shot gunned Ben as my driver which in hindsight was an error. We rented our shiny scooters, donned our fetching helmets and the boys did a practice lap. So far, so good. Soph and I then mounted our respective bikes and prepared for our journey. Mine was less than 1 metre before Ben and I were both on the floor. I'm sure Dave and Sophie were hiding their concern behind the tears of laughter. Unharmed (apart from ben's pride) we attempted to take off again, Sophie and Dave happily rolling down the road. But Ben didn't turn and we headed straight towards a shop. At this point the worried scooter man put his food down said we should get a taxi. We promptly abandoned plan scooter to Kuta and got a suggested taxi with Ben muttering 'I was fine on my own' all the while. I think the fully loaded 3+ person scooters who passed us on the journey didn't help him and his man pride. And on the plus side I will never get on a scooter again!
They flew back this afternoon and soph and I are now in a lovely beachside bungalow on the North of Bali which is a far cry from the busy shores of Kuta. Our drive over was very pretty, very hilly and very green and I only slept for a bit of the daylight portion waking up in time to see a very pretty sunset over the volcanic lake (it was windy so I was sleeping to avoid car sickness,yeah?). We are off diving all day tomorrow and keeping our fingers crossed we'll see mantas.
Very sad not to get to see the orangutans, but I think the dragons will make up for it in a couple of weeks
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