We woke up surprisingly not hungover –
packed up our stuff and I went to the reception to settle up, adamant we
wouldn’t be staying (especially we we’d already paid for the first night at the
new place). There was only one of the guys working – Idris, the kid that picked
us up who was also the nicest of them so I figured it’d be no problem. Wrong!
He got fairly upset when I insisted we were leaving, despite telling him it was
nothing to do with them – just us wanting to be nearer the main beach. He
called someone – then told me we’d have to pay for all four nights, and that
there was some kind of agreement between the hotels on the island to not let
people change places early.
In my nicest – but most serious tone I made
it clear we weren’t paying for the four nights, gave him the 2 nights rent plus
a bit extra for the inconvenience, shook his hand and walked away. The poor kid
looked like he was going to cry and I felt horrible! We grabbed our bags and
pretty much ran out of there before anything could have happened. Not that I
particularly expected it to, but all I could think about was a blog that we’d
foolishly read before coming by a couple that got scammed on Lombok whilst
renting a bike, it had been ‘stolen’ and the owner and his friends were
demanding money for a new one to the point where they were following them
around at all times and preventing them from leaving until they paid.
(Lisa: I would just like to point out that
James’ comment about not expecting anything bad to happen didn’t particularly
ring true at the time, as he returned from breaking the bad news the first
words out of his mouth to me were ‘how soon can you be ready?’ followed by a
LOT of backward glances as we trekked across those bloody cow fields as open
targets! Foolishly, looking for a bit of reassurance I said to him ‘What are
you looking at?’ to which he responded ‘Clearly I’m making sure we’re not being
chased!’… Okay then, let’s speed this up a bit!)
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| Needless to say, this is before we hit the soft sand! |
The whole experience tainted the morning a
bit as we were then both feeling a bit bad for the guys we left behind but
ultimately I consoled myself with the fact that it wasn’t all that great there
and we weren’t going to stay and not enjoy it just to keep them happy. We
emailed the owner (who lives in Europe but takes the bookings) to explain in
the hope we wouldn’t be hunted down by some kind of Island cartel – then went
snorkeling to attempt to forget about it all.
It worked! The coral starts right off the
beach on the islands so you can just wade in to about waist deep and start
seeing loads of cool and diverse marine life – it was easy to see just from the
surface why so many people from around the world come here just to scuba dive.
For the evening we decided to head to the
north coast and check out sunset from up there. We decided to rent a couple of
bikes from the resort for $2.50 each – they were pretty cool single speed beach
cruisers, but had seen better days (my handlebars kept coming loose and Lisa’s
brakes didn’t work very well – but hey, we’re on an island!). All the locals
had bikes and a lot of them were fancy! One guy in particular had a chopper that
was right out of a Snoop Dogg video and was always immaculately polished.
The ride north began nice and we were
loving the experience – then the soft sand hit, soon we were hot, sweaty and
pushing our bikes through the thick patches that kept cropping up every few
hundred metres, it was slow progress but we made it before sunset.
After some sundowner cocktails, we pushed
our bikes back down the beach (the absence of lighting and inability to spot
the soft sand didn’t bode well for the ride back – especially for Cooksey) and
stopped off at Freedom Bar for a nightcap and to watch Chagu play some acoustic
guitar to the crowds. A local compared my beard to Osama Bin Laden’s, which was
a highlight for me…they love the beard here.
The next day we woke to an amazing gale
blowing across the island. It was kicking up a dust storm inland and a
sandstorm on the beach – so we opted for a day by the pool writing the blog and
enjoying the sunshine. We also had an
email back from the owner telling us it was no problem that we moved
accommodation – alleviating the fear for our lives ever so slightly…
 |
For our last evening on the island we opted
for a moonlit (a blue moon no less, the 2nd full moon of the month
which is fairly rare) stroll up the coast and had some (more) awesome BBQ’d
fish. Once again there was a lineup but the guy didn’t speak much English and
amusingly referred to everything as Snapper – there was big snapper, red
snapper, black snapper, smaller snapper and just plain old snapper. We had
snapper.
Despite our lazy day, we were exhausted
(all that sea air!) and hit the sack early again. Unfortunately one of Gili
Airs many, MANY stray cats (they were everywhere and hassled people at most
restaurants) howled outside for most of the night so we both had a fairly bad
nights sleep – but on the plus side got up early to pack, to return to Bali and
see the infamous Kuta, trendy Seminyak and most likely a lot of people in
Bintang vests…
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