Exit Strategy

I didn't get the chance to post this right away when it happened, then I simply forgot about it since then. I'm post-dating this update so it falls properly into the chronology. So although it's about 3 weeks late, here's the story of my eventful voyage from Sydney to Sint Maarten.

Knowing I could find the cheapest ride to the airport via shuttle, I searched the internet for the cheapest ones. Twelve Australian dollars was the total for a shuttle called JetBus that would pick me up at the door and take me directly to the airport – much better than the 40+ dollars for the cost of a taxi. Accounting for an hour to make the 45-minute drive to the airport, two hours before the flight left, and another 30 minutes in case traffic was very bad, I told the shuttle to arrive 3 hours and 15 minutes before my flight was planning to take off. Twenty minutes after they were supposed to pick me up I rang the company to politely ask what the story was and to see when I would be picked up. After being on hold for no more than a minute, the man on the other end said the driver was 15 minutes away and coming to pick me up now. 30 minutes later, I call them back and sternly asked where my ride was. He paged the driver and told me the street he was on and said he would be there in about 5 but no more than 10 minutes later. At this point Steve saw me getting a bit uneasy and demanded we play cards. 15 minutes later I hear a car honking at me across the street. I threw my bags in the car and after saying thank you and goodbye to Steve, stepped in the back seat for a very awkward car ride.

As he was an hour late, I really didn't feel like speaking to him at all and kept every conversation to a minimum. I told him where I needed to go, what airline I was going on, answered a couple of his questions in about 3 words or less, and left it at that. I didn't really care about anything else he was saying and frankly as a customer I didn't want to hear it. Throughout the trip, he openly admitted that he wasn't going to take this job but had a friend coming in on a flight and thus decided to take it so he could meet his friend at the airport and make some money along the way. In light of the heavy traffic, the driver said that he would take the back roads. This was fine by me until he admitted that he was doing a bit of guess work. He felt comfortable guessing from his 11 years of taxi driving experience in Sydney... which ended 16 years ago. It would have also been fine had he been using GPS or a map. It might have even been alright if he wasn't cursing the other drivers on the road and making U-turns. I might have even gotten out of the car somewhat satisfied if he'd looked for the airline entrance for more than a few seconds before telling me that “that's good enough, it shouldn't be too far from here.” Because I accounted for so much extra time, I checked in and made it to my gate with a few minutes left over to watch some olympic curling before boarding.

I managed to have an open seat beside me on the way to Honolulu and was therefore able to sleep on the way there. I already wrote about getting in touch with people in St Maarten and eating sushi with Meg and Conor but I didn't mention that the airlines had lost my guitar. When I got onto the plane that evening bound for Charlotte, it was the same story – another empty seat beside me which is always conducive to sleep. By the time I made it to Charlotte the next morning, the temperature was 31F and about 90% of the people in the airport were wearing heavy winter coats and gloves as opposed to my shorts and (thank goodness!) thin sweatshirt. Anytime a door would open to the outside I would bundle up tight and rub the exposed skin on my legs to keep warm. It wasn't until the plane took off that I was finally at ease again about the weather, knowing that I was on my way to sunny blue skies.

At baggage claim, I filled out a form for my missing guitar giving them all the information I had in order to get in touch with me. The crew house I ended up in had an ample amount of beds so I grabbed a bite to eat and settled in for what I thought was only going to be a short time before finding an apartment.

First Impressions

It is actually the 12th of November but I am post-dating this entry to fit a little more with the chronology. Just so everyone knows, I left my laptop charger in Sabang. The one I picked up in Manila doesn't actually charge my battery so I can only use my laptop when I have power. In the place I'm staying, we have power 15 hours a day at best, but usually less making it impossible to update my blog. At this point, I've spent two days in Legian, two days in Amed, two days in Ubud (all 3 in Bali), and about 6 days on Gili Trawangan (an island next to Lombok), but for the sake of the blog I'm still in Legian. I consider this enough to give some general impressions about the Bali/Lombok region of Indonesia. First and foremost, unlike the Philippines, there was no American occupation and thus English is not as common. I regularly come across people including taxi drivers, waiters, and hotel staff, that know little to no English. Sometimes it makes interactions rather interesting, and other times it makes things very interesting. Take for instance a certain taxi ride I took with Margerie and her friend Howard who was traveling with her.

We hopped in the cab and asked for a seafood restaurant from the guidebook that we thought wasn't too far, but we asked him just for a definitive confirmation on the distance. Sure enough, after 4 or 5 repetitions trying to make sure we understood each other, we discovered that it was conveniently only 150 meters away. After 3-5 minutes of driving we asked again to make sure we were going the right way and he repeated himself in a very genuine assuring tone in broken English that the restaurant was only 150 meters away to which Howard insisted he said the same thing several 150 meters's ago. At this point we decided to cut our losses and have him take us back to Legian (the region of Kuta we were staying) so we could go to Warung Yogia, a small traditional spot near the hotel. We repeat very slowly several times to the driver, “Stop. No more restaurant. No more seafood. We go Legian. Three Brothers Inn. You know? No food, just Legian. We go Legian.” We were comforted by the unsurprising response indicating that he understood where the well-known region of Kuta was located. There were doubts about the direction we were headed, but we just brushed them off since he knew the area much better and it was after dark. Nevertheless, we repeated a few more times, “No seafood. Legian. No eating. We go hotel in Legian. Three Brothers Inn. No restaurant,” to which he gave some nods and reassuring “yes, Legian”s with a “shut up, you've already said so a hundred times” undertone.

5-10 minutes later when the taxi finally stopped, I looked up a bit startled at the cab driver's expectant face as he turned to negotiate the price. Looking beyond him through the windshield, I saw the neon lights with the unmistakable words “Legian Seafood,” a fresh seafood restaurant in the middle of Kuta, not near the hotel at all. Unsuccessfully holding back laughter, I started to realize that our cab driver had honestly done his best to bring us exactly where he thought we were asking and didn't seem to be driving us all over town for more money. After Margerie showed him the listing in the guidebook for Warung Yogia on the street named Padma Utara, the driver indicated that he knew exactly where Padma Utara was, and no questioning could break the language barrier enough to find out whether or not he had ever heard of the restaurant. Like a little kid saying “I told you so,” he pointed to and read the street sign as we turned onto Padma Utara. Almost certain he had no clue where the restaurant was, the three of us begin reading every sign we saw for a few minutes, passing our hotel (where we started the whole endeavor) and other familiar spots. This went on until Margerie told him to stop the car so we could ask around and find it on foot, we payed him what we thought was appropriate (I think around $5), and began backtracking, following the directions of several locals until we came to a tiny ill-marked restaurant with a traditional Indonesian menu. After happily finishing our meals, we spent about an hour in the pool under a virtually full moon that brilliantly illuminated the surrounding palm trees.

Going beyond the language, my impression of Bali is one of great beauty and enchantment. These photos are the best I can do to convey what I have seen. As always, it's never the same as being here, but at least you get the idea.