The “second half” of my adventures began in style with a trip on the new double decker A380 plane courtesy of Singapore Airlines to Sydney. The plane was so gigantic that it didn’t even bear thinking how it might get off the ground so I immersed myself in the library entertainment system catching up on some good old British classics that passed the night journey.
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!
Day 1 – Monday 13th October 2008
Forestville, Sydney to Mittagong – 100km
Having survived the test run from Wollongong back to the city without any apparent mishaps Stubby was deemed roadworthy and began his adventures in true style by making his first proper journey over the Sydney Harbour Bridge as we departed Kensington to find Paul and Sindy (and retrieve my new bank card) with a little detour via the vast warehouse stock of the Salvation Army to kit out our new abode with an artillery of kitchen utensils!
Coming back over the Bridge into central Sydney our first task was to navigate the e-tagging system of bridge and motorway tolls whilst negotiating the post-work rush hour traffic. Circumnavigating the airport we finally hit the Hume Freeway and with an hour of daylight left drove as far as we could south towards Canberra before having to pull over. Heading for one of the many campsites signed on the freeway we found ourselves in a caravan park inhabited by permanent scowled residents complete with their nightly bottles of whisky and making as swift a u-turn as possible in a 5 metre van disappeared down an avenue of trees before popping out in the town of Mittengong. It took the services of the friendly petrol station cashier to direct us to the town’s campsite and arriving out of hours we had to buzz for someone to show us how to pitch our virginal first night. Erecting our awning, hooking up our electricity to the mains and cooking on our two ring gas stove were all groundbreaking experiences that even the swirling wind could not prevent us from enjoying as we sat in our fisherman chairs outside Stubby washing our tuna pasta down with vats of tea. The only slight imposition on our night was the intrusion of one of the park’s “residents” who invited himself under our awning with his laundry and in spite of much awkward polite chit chat and less than polite hints for him to leave seemed to have lodged himself for the night. It was only when we both physically retreated into the van itself that he eventually left and we quickly snook out to do our washing up and made a hasty return before we could be caught again.
Day 2 – Tuesday 14th October 2008
Mittagong to Canberra- 180km
Our first full day in the campervan was, to everyone’s surprise, a triumph. This was largely in part to the fact that navigation was reduced to finding our way back onto the Hume Freeway and following it directly to Canberra. There had been a bit of umming and ahhing about whether we should take the prettier, more winding coastal route and avoid the capital but was decided against by a combination of anticipating similar sights on the Great Ocean Road and a desire to visit a city that seemed in our small experience to have been castigated by an overwhelming majority of its country’s inhabitants.
In fact the only excitement saw me take the wheel of Stubby and begin to learn how to manoeuvre our beast on wheels which involved some hairy attempts at hitting third gear and general cultural difficulties in encountering a gear stick on the side of the steering wheel, indicators on the right hand side of the wheel and a wiper button virtually in the passenger’s glove compartment. I felt like I was driving a truck, albeit one with the horsepower of a Shetland Pony, and fifth gear is so far out of my reach that I physically have to clamber over the steering wheel to slot it into place. My first foray was not helped by the epidemic of bright yellow signposts indicating a whole host of kangaroos, wombats and “native wildlife” were preparing kamikaze rushes in front of me for 20km stretches at a time.
Irrespective of these obstacles, literary and literal, we arrived in Canberra by mid afternoon affording ourselves the luxury of exploring the capital while tearfully leaving Stubby on his own for the first time. Our plans were thwarted by the architectural aesthetics of Walter Burley Griffin, the designer who won the lucrative prize to design the capital, as we discovered Canberra is a city not accessible to the pedestrian especially in consideration of the geography of its principal tourist attractions. Venturing out from the car park at the University we had to duck across motorways and clamber over walls in order to reach the pretty lakeside path, replete with blossom floating in the breeze and an army of KiKi cockatoos, that wound around to the National Museum positioned on the peninsular of land tantalisingly close to Capital Hill but frustratingly on the wrong side of the water inlet forcing us to have to trace our footsteps back around the lake towards parliament. The circular road system that surrounds Capital Hill requiring continual dodging of rush hour traffic across the highways meant that we eventually abandoned our attempts to reach the parliament buildings by foot and return to Stubby. The exploration was a not complete waste however as the National Museum provided plenty of entertainment with its revolving postmodern fractured theatre screen and bizarre multicoloured tarmaced Garden of Dreams. Though as far as I could make out from the museum’s hagiography Australia has only four segments of history: the arrival of convicts from England in the eighteenth century, the Gold Rush in the nineteenth century, the establishment of independence at the turn of the twentieth century and then the appalling travesty of the fight for equal rights for the indigenous Aborigines. But the resounding message from the museum seemed to be who needs a history when your country has spawned the world’s greatest and most eclectic collection of animals?! And this was backed up by the giant collection of stuffed platypuses, kangaroos, possums, wombats, koala’s and the world’s last Tasmanian tiger.
Stopping off at the over-friendly Information Centre we were directed to a campsite in the fading dusk and it was only once we had set the van up for the night that we realised we were sandwiched between a race course and the outer perimeter fence of the Canberra Juvenile Prison...So instead of lurking about outside Stubby it was tacos night with a DVD run off the laptop newly charged by our swanky inverter!
Day 3 – Wednesday 15th October 2008
Canberra to Cann River – 293km
Resolved to visit the impressive parliament buildings before we left Canberra we combined our departure through the city with a stop-off at Capital Hill and were glad we hadn’t been deterred by the previous day’s frustration as the building, though an ugly pillared grey from the outside, was a revelation inside. From the Aboriginal 90 000 piece mosaic outside the entrance (symbolising the original meaning of ‘Kamberra’ as ”meeting place”) to the rooftop lawn with double-decker bus sized national flag to one of only four copies of the Magna Carta the building was the perfect combination of old and new, mixing regal stateliness with the traditional Aussie relaxed atmosphere. We were able to access the building for free and it was championed by a militia of staff keen to enable every query thrown at them and even the politicians conducted their wheeling and dealing at the bottom of the staircase without batting an eye as to who was listening. The best find was however the Queen Terrace with to my now finely honed budget eyes Australia’s cheapest food, though sadly we could only scrape together our collective shrapnel to afford a solitary apple and cinnamon muffin which was impossibly light. Well versed in the Forsdike camping tradition of helping oneself to “free” sacheted condiments it was also a coup to pocket a couple of government stamped salts and peppers that sit so well with the Supabarn meals in our twenty-five year old van...
As a consequence of our parliamentarian dalliance it was an afternoon on the road as we aimed for the south coast. The Monaro Highway is fortunately a gorgeous route ploughing through the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales and over the border to the forest-lined valleys of Victoria. The problem with the perennial straight roads and unwavering flat gas pedal is that when you do come across a road marking you either forget completely what it means, ignore it or are thrown into such a panic by its sudden appearance that you tend to overrun any danger it signifies. But the counter blessing of these roads is that the sparseness of traffic means that even when this happens there’s virtually no chance of it being witnessed by anyone else and you can easily conduct your ninety-point turn and get back on track!
Having congratulated ourselves on the brilliance of our navigation and speed we ambitiously decided that once we hit Cann River we would continue on through the Peachtree Creek Reserve to the little campsite perched on the end of the inlet at Furnell Landing. Stubby withstood an additional 20km of winding hairpin bends through the peachtree-less Creek but when we took a wrong turning and ended up on a dirt track designed for 4x4 he began to whimper and with night fast approaching we sheepishly had to head back to the petrol station we had stopped off at on the main road to ask the same attendant where the nearest campsite was and have it pointed out to us a whopping 400m down the road...Delighted to be back in civilisation we even welcomed the usual redneck permanent residents with out-stretched arms as we were finally able to pitch for the night, safe from any Wolf Creek style scenarios...
Day 4 – Thursday 16th October 2008
Cann River to Wilson’s Promontory – 410km
Designated driving day...left Cann River at midday and drove continuously along the Princes Highway taking it in legs with a stop in the clapped out shopping centre of Sale to buy sausages for a simple bangers ‘n’ mash dinner. A pretty drive through the Lakes Entrance with its sparkling blue creeks and waterways and we had emerged into Wilson’s Promontory National Park, Australia’s most popular National Park. We arrived just before dusk and managed to set up the van at Yanakie Caravan Park and enjoy a stroll along the wetlands of the Tidal River entrance where the black swans were sailing along the edges before settling down to our hearty English tea.
Day 5 – Friday 17th October 2008
Wilson’s Promontory National Park
After four days on the road and having covered over 400km yesterday we were both in agreement that we needed a stop-off day out of the van just to explore the country that we were hurtling through (at all of 55mph...) I had particularly suffered with the long driving as prior to Stubby I had probably completed about five two-hour drives in my life and to suddenly find myself tearing up 200km a day was beginning to take its toll. It also meant we could set up the van with the pop-top and awning and establish it as our “home” rather than just our mode of transport. The plan was thwarted first by a flat battery, we presume caused by putting the headlights on to do a spot of midnight washing up, and then secondly by a dwindling of petrol which forced us to detour back towards Foster in order to pick up some more fuel. Finally we made our way into the park and set up base along the beachfront in the organically partitioned individual camp sites. Our first port of call in exploring the park was Norman Beach, one of only a handful of places East Australians can see the sunset, which was only a hop, step and a skip from our van. Sharing the plains of white golden sand in a bay frowned upon by craggy mountain ranges with only two other tourists we were more than spoiled and followed the shore round to the Lilly Pilly Gully walk which wound us through the wetlands and hills up to the Tidal River lookout tor affording an incredible vista of the whole park. On our way up to the vantage point we also came across our first live (and wild) kangaroo who looked most perturbed to have been disturbed but posed eloquently for photos before disappearing off into the scrubland. On descending the viewpoint we continued the walk round to the neighbouring bay of Squeaky Beach, so named for the sound produced by walking on the sand barefoot. Another gorgeous, and eerily desolated beach, was spoiled only by the sounding of the emergency siren which caused us to quicken our pace away from potential bushfires towards the water before it stopped almost as inexplicably as it had begun.
Back to Stubby before dark we cooked up a feast of chicken in tomato, onion, mushroom and garlic sauce with sautéed potatoes, pushing the limits of our kitchen and culinary skills as well as racing against nightfall as we were pitched in a non-powered site so that as soon as the sun set our light (and heat) sources disappeared. As we were hurriedly clearing away the debris to go to bed we noticed a wombat snuffling about just feet from our tent doubling our tally of native wildlife spotted.
Day 6 - Saturday 18th October 2008
Wilson’s Promontory to Melbourne – 250km
Our hallowed spot of isolation became invaded overnight by cars full of families taking advantage of the unseasonably hot weather for a weekend break so while we were reluctant to leave the Park in such good weather the influx of visitors reassured us we had made the right decision as we hit the Princes Highway again. Apart from a brief lunchbreak at a petrol station it was another heavy drive all the way into Melbourne where we managed to drive straight into the centre to find directions to a campsite at Federation Square and then straight back out to the Big 4 Caravan Park in Coburn just in time to shower and change into less sweaty clothes for dinner with Rich’s former nanny at her cafe, Chartreuse, where we ate and drank like kings as their guests!
Day 7-15: Sunday 19th – Sunday 26th October 2008
Greenvale, Melbourne
Under the strict instructions of Rich’s Nanny we were ordered to leave the caravan park and settle ourselves into their guest room where we ended up basing ourselves for a week while we explored Melbourne and continued the job hunt as we spread our baskets of eggs around the television world. The family were lovely and we were made to feel like extended relatives as we joined them for the youngest son’s 17th birthday and helped their best friend move into her brand new house in an attempt to earn our keep alongside helping them open the cafe in the morning for which we were treated to full English breakfasts! We also went to visit the customs office where the daughter works and trains the dogs and were allowed to go into the puppies pens and play with puppies ranging from a few days to a few months old.
Melbourne has far more character than Sydney and is also shabbier and more homely and it was fun enough just to potter about the streets sampling the hundreds of coffee houses (and their mountains of pastries!) and catching postmodern film exhibitions on the moat or wandering through the casino and watching the OAPs flicking the handles or the Vietnamese screaming in the poker room! The foyer also contained an incredible dancing water fountain that spat globules and fans of water out in time to the music.
It would have been rude whilst in Melbourne not to have visited the home of Neighbours and in true clichéd British style we drove Stubby to Pinoak Court aka, Ramsey Street, pulled up outside the Kennedys, put the kettle on the gas ring and sat down for a cup of tea and biscuit with the Ramsey Street cat and security guard before posing for the most ridiculous photos we could muster. Sadly we didn’t manage to make it to the Neighbours themed night where various cast members turn up to an organised club night and allow you to take their photo for vast cover fees and will have to make do with the Busted jump in front of the Bishops’.
Saturday 25 October 2008
Thursday 23 October 2008
The Adventures of Stubby
The “second half” of my adventures began in style with a trip on the new double decker A380 plane courtesy of Singapore Airlines to Sydney. The plane was so gigantic that it didn’t even bear thinking how it might get off the ground so I immersed myself in the library entertainment system catching up on some good old British classics that passed the night journey.
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!
Wednesday 22 October 2008
Belated tales from Indonesia...
Just to tidy up loose ends from the previous post Mike and I ended up back in Kuala Lumpur for three days where we opted not to stay in backpacker central and after traipsing around some more homely hostels found ourselves lodging at Pondok Hotel (nothing to do with being situated above a bar with Guiness draught!) a large building with bare rooms but gigantic, relaxing common rooms and a free breakkie:) It later turned out to also have bedbugs, requiring pesticide spray machines, and rats running about the common rooms... It was a peaceful few days spent pottering around the markets, sorting out the next legs of our differing ventures, exploring the Golden Triangle area (and taking comic "boy" photos of the Twin Towers) and indulging in some western fancies, combining giant plasma coverage of the premiership with proper battered cod and chips washed down by a draught pint and topped off with apple crumble and custard. We parted ways at the train station with Mike taking the shuttle off to the airport while I caught an overnight train to Singapore. The train station at Singapore is little bigger than Sandling and surprisingly unconnected to the airport so I had to wander through the city to find an underground station and take two lines before I arrived. At least this afforded me the briefest of glimpses into the city though my limited observations were confined to the startling obedience to traffic lights in which hordes of people line up politely, almost in formation, on the pavement edge and don't twitch a single muscle until the green man appears. Now bred a Londoner who knows that you will never get anywhere in the city without suicidal forays onto the roads to forcibly halt traffic it was a strange experience. My second observation also derives from the cultural difference between two supercities as after getting lost in finding the underground and then spending another ten minutes trying to locate an attendant who could help me make sense of the ticket machines when I finally did get on the train and prepare myself for the fourteen stops to my destination I was ravenous and tore open the breakfast I had picked up and began devouring it only to realise I was attracting a number of disdainful looks which had nothing to do with my frenzied gobbling but the $500 dollar fine for being caught eating or drinking on their spotless trains... Having not been particularly keen to stay in a city almost expensive as London my fleeting experience of Singapore did nothing to make me rue my decision and I was more than happy to have reached the airport, meet Rich and catch our connecting flight to Bali without any problems. We reached Denpasar later in the afternoon and found ourselves queuing for visas only to realise that I had left half of my stash of dollars in my checked in luggage as part of my security checks and didn't have enough to pay the extremely irritated attendant...it meant losing our place in the huge queue, being escorted out of the visa checkpoints to an atm and withdrawing the Indonesian equivalent before returning and queuing up again. Having eventually passed through we headed straight to Kuta, the intensely touristy part of the island, and managed to find a room at Kedin's Inn which though on the pricey side had the luxury of a bath and a swimming pool and slap up breakfast included in the price. We spent three days in Kuta mainly on the surfer's beach and wandering around the labyrinthical back passages of the Poppies Lanes checking out the cheap shopping. On the first night we headed north up the coast to Legian and ended up in the legendary Engine Room and stumbling out realised we were so lost amongst the maze of alleys that we didn't know how to get by. It's a sad indication of the commercialism of Kuta that we were only able to signpost our location by the McDonalds, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts outlets though even these weren't enough and to our shame we had to hail down a taxi (the urgency enhanced by being physically accosted by ladyboy prostitutes) and take the poor driver down every alley until we eventually reached Kedin's... Tearing ourselves away from the sun, and hundreds of aggressively minded touts, we booked the cheap Perama bus to the central island highlands determined to do some less touristy and commercial activities. Most people opt to head to the Gurung Volcano but we went even more off-piste and headed to the mountain top village of Munduk. Taking a bus to a tiny village halfway between Kuta and Munduk we found ourselves and bags bundled off and informed there was no way we could reach our destination unless we hired the extortionate private taxi as the roads were too small for the bemos. Reluctanly, we agreed to the rip-off which turned out to be the best option as we plunged down roads cut seemingly on a knife point into the mountains that only a local taxi driver would have dared! We stopped off on a plateau to look at the two giant lakes filling the valley caused by the mountains en route to our beautiful homestay. Run by the softest spoken staff in the world who met us with ice-cold orange squash we were shown to our vast room and taken to lunch on the balcony terrace overlooking the spectacular drop into the mountains. It was so peaceful in contrast to the hustle and bustle of Kuta that we were perfectly content to lounge about the homestay and just soak up the incredible vistas. We did finally stir and explore the little village, gaining looks of consternation from the locals unused to seeing tourists invading their sanctuary which turned into looks of incredulity when eschewing the option of motorbikes decided to walk to the waterfall. This involved an almost sheer vertical climb back up the mountainside which had us drenched in sweat within minutes before leaving the road behind and tumbling into the lush rainforest. Following the little dirt tracks we eventually found one, and fortunately largest, of the four waterfalls and then embarked upon finding the remaining three on the circuit. Sadly our every twist and turn was thwarted by my old travel nemesis...wild dogs!! Once we had to run back up a clifftop to escape two ferocious dogs and on another occasion found ourselves blockaded between two territorial sets of dogs having to wait (a long time) for the arrival of local children passing on the track who beat the dogs away and allowed us to follow in their wake! Sadly this prevented us from finding the other waterfalls or the beautiful paddy fields we could espy from our balcony and so had to settle instead for glorious sunsets drowning in a miasma of golden smoke in the valley. After a few days of retreat it was time to reimmerse ourselves into the tourist scene and we headed south-east to Ubud, the cultural capital of the island. A sprawling town with art galleries everywhere you look and a vibrant cafe-coffee culture it was the perfect way to ease ourselves back into the hustle and bustle of Bali. The transition was made easier by our Hanging Gardens of Babylon hostel, Sania's, which came complete with pagodas, Hindu shrine, swimming pool and a menagerie of pets wandering about the grounds. Every morning we woke up to find a thermos of tea on our verandah and then would sit out and order breakfast. Rich had brought over some squeezy tube marmite from the UK as I had been complaining about withdrawal symptoms so we used to ask for an extra plate of toast with our brekkie to lather the marmite on but became so predictable that on the last day the staff brought out a plate stacked high with toast before we had even asked - was like being at the Ritz! Our first stop was to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a sacred forest filled with crumbling temples and now heavily populated by tribes of monkeys protected by the sanctity of their Hindu environment. Turned into a tourist venture you pay a small entrance fee and can wander around the temples clad in the traditional green and yellow sarongs and buy a bunch of bananas to feed the monkeys. However, you have to be extremely quick as the monkeys are well practised in the art of de-bananing and as soon as they espy them emerge from nowhere in there hundreds to swarm you - we saw one girl who was sadly too slow and had her top removed by one particularly laviscious ape. Even when you don't have any food the monkeys still play up to their mischievous tag pouncing on you from the trees and there was one temple ruin accessible only by a stone bridge upon which hid one of the monkeys who waited until you had crossed the bridge then sprung you from behind the pillar and pushed you down the staircase; we had to wait until one unseeing Japanese photographer was being attacked before we could run back across the bridge without being caught!
Our second stop was to go walking along the Campian Ridge and explore the area surrounding the urban centre of the town. This involved trekking through elephant grass that completely submerged me and carving our way through rice fields and remote villages on the very outskirts of the border that revealed a completely different side to the town. On returning to the centre we rewarded ourselves with chocolate cake and library books at my favourite cafe, Rendezvousdous, before heading onto happy hour mojitos and thus undoing all the hard work of our physical exercise.
In fact because of all the culture on offer we had no choice but to gorge ourselves in true Balinese style during our stay in Ubud. Every night there was different live music on in the cafes and bars from ultra cool funk-reggae to karaoke-esque air-guitar rock to rhythm jazz that had everyone dancing. Every other building was some kind of pastry selling cafe so that all we seemed to do was roll from one venue to another snacking on all this incredible food including a superb tapas restaurant that served up all the Balinese delicacies on a deceptively small plate but which were so rich and filling we had to waddle home.
Leaving Ubud provided the complete contrast as we endured the public bus to the coast and then sat on the public ferry to cross to Lombok during which my sea legs completely gave out as our lumbering pile of rust lunged back and forth in the middle of lurching waves that rocked us from one side to another and left me pinned to the deck trying to think about everything but the spinning world around me. A route that takes four hours to do 20km took six and a half hours, with the additional two and a half hours coming sat at the port on the other side queuing to dock at the one ricketty port to the extent that locals row up to the ferries and for astronomical fees offer to whizz you over to land as long as you are willing to jump through the windows onto their boat! We refused, in spite of my need for solid land beneath my feet, and had such sensibility punished as disembarking from the ferry we realised that in spite of all our militant security consciousness we had somehow been fleeced of our wallets and bank cards during the journey by one of the many aggressive touts who had been cornering us on our desks where pinned by our huge backs we were completely at their mercy. Fortunately we had spares hidden away in secret places but spent the evening frantically trying to cancel our cards in the town of Sengiggi which was best comparable to the location in the League of Gentleman and suffice to say as equally unhelpful and unfriendly. Instead of progressing with our trip we were unfortunately confined to Sengiggi for another day as our insurance policy required a police note from the scene of the crime and so we spent all afternoon in the local police station with the one officer who vaguely spoke English running to and from our prison-cell themed hostel in the scorching heat of the day to fetch the various bits of paperwork he kept forgetting to ask us for. To heap insult to injury at the end of this debacle in which the officer had tried his best in his broken English to console us by appearing to be our friend he charged us a "fee" to process the note he had made; completely at his mercy as he had copies of all our documents and fearing we had entered one of those towns where the eradication of our existence would not be blinked at by anyone we reluctantly gave into the bribe and angrily gave up the remaining hard cash we had.
It should have been an indication that we were meant not to leave the joys of Bali behind and that we should have stayed in the land of indulgence rather than trying to be intrepid travellers as things went from bad to worse. Finally escaping Sengiggi we were able to start our trek up Mount Rinjani, a beautiful active volcano that had only recently been reopened to the public and was the sole purpose of our excursion to this island. The trek started well, albeit with difficulty, as we marched for eight hours up the crater ascending 2600metres on the first day. The journey was made lighter by the accompaniment of a Swiss-South African couple who were far more hopelessly prepared for the climb in spite of their brand new sparkling climbing gear and our two shared guides, Adi and Andre, who with the porters cooked all our food and kept us entertained with their anecdotes, clean and filthy....The last hour was really difficult as though only about a 500metre path was covered in volcanic ash that imposed a one step forward two steps backwards style of climbing that had everyone slipping and covered in dust. It was however well worth it as reaching the edge of the rim, above the cloud cover, we camped for the night looking down the crater which afforded a view akin to feeling like you were standing on the periphery of heaven looking down on the world. It was so warm in the evening sun that we all, alongside the twenty or so other trekkers camping for the night, ended up stripping off and lying on the grass soaking up the rays. By the time dinner was ready the wind was picking up and swirling the dust around so that instead of sitting around the campfire we had to retreat into our tents which we didn't mind as we were all exhausted. Unfortunately the worst storm in six years brewed that night and we didn't sleep a wink. The wind was so fierce it ripped two of our walls so that we were protected only by the mosquito mesh on two sides and prevented us from being able to step outside as it bent the poles and flattened the roof against our faces, suffocating us. We could hear each squall brewing up in the valley and then gaining in velocity and sound as it gathered momentum before smashing us perched on the rim. It was all we could do with the weight of two bodies and bags to keep ourselves from being blown over and within an hour or so we were caked in inches of dust blown through the mesh. It got so cold that in spite of three layers of clothes and a sleeping bag we were frozen to the bone. When the storm finally disappeared with the morning sun and we were able to get out of the tent without fear of being blown away we realised that we had in fact been the luckiest in our group; every other tent had had their poles smashed and canvas blown down the crater. No-one had slept and everyone had been petrified. The guides quickly packed up our tents and insisted we headed straight back down rather than continue over the crater edge into the hot springs as we had planned but perhaps because of the sleep-deprived madness we all insisted that being only a few minutes away from the very tip of the volcano that at the very least after everything we had been through we wanted to see the crater lake that was the focus vista of the whole trip. Eventually we persuaded our guides and picking our way through the wreckage climbed the final part of the ascent and were rewarded with an indescribable view of the shimmering blue volcanic lake and the burnt ash cone through which the lava is pummeled as it erupts before we very, very quickly headed back down to lower and safer climates.
Just when we thought we had endured everything that could be thrown at us in the last 48 hours our up until then overly friendly guide told us that there was no refund for the loss of the trip and we were out of pocket for two days budget to compound the bank-cardless state of our finances. That was enough for me and while everyone else swallowed it I called up the manager to complain that while we didn't blame them for the weather neither should we expect to be punished and after much wrangling got him to agree to put us up at a hotel he knew for free for the next couple of days as a partial recompense. While not fully placated it was enough to gain a mere concession and when we arrived at the hotel we realised we were staying at somewhere far more luxurious than we would normally pay for and were receiving what we had lost on the trip in the accomodation and free breakfasts provided which felt like some kind of moral justification.
After all the traumas we spent no time hanging around in Sengiggi and headed straight for the Gili Islands to collapse and lick our wounds. The Gili Islands comprise of three separate land masses, each only a mile or so in length and width, so small that there is no motorised transport, only old-fashioned horse and carts! They are famed for their pristine white sand Robinson Crusoe tropical beaches, turquoise water with reefs for snorkelling and little thatched huts on the beach that ensure you feel as if you have left the real world truly behind. Each one has its own character: Gili Air is the family friendly island with lots of beachside restaurants where you lounge the days away under the cabana thatched roofs eating, drinking and sunbathing; Gili Trawangan (or Gili T ai it's lazily known) is the party island with lots of beachside bars and clubs, where the alcohol is insanely cheaper than the food; Gili Meno is the honeymooners paradise, the smallest, most remote and most untouched. We started off on Air and treated ourselves to the luxury of a two-tiered "bungalow" complete with a daybed and hammock downstairs next to the bathroom and a verandah overlooking the sea upstairs. While our lungs, muscles and minds recovered we did nothing but move from the bungalow to the beach hut to the beach and when it got too hot the water. Eventually we plucked up enough energy to go snorkelling, which for a pound a day was a veritable bargain as the reef only a couple of metres from the shoreline was packed with marine flora and fauna. We spent most of our time hanging out with a hilariously London yuppie couple who helped us sample the many cheap restaurants and when we finally felt young again took the narrow longboat to "hop" across to Gili T. The crossing was derailed by the appearance of a 6ft long seasnake on the jetty which sent the female contingent running while I amongst all the men fought to take the best pictures of the serpent! It was perhaps a symbol of our arrival on Gili T which in many ways was like being back in the Thai party islands in the sense that there wasn't much to do except walk down the main strip and drink through the long, long happy hours. Having geared ourselves up for the first night I ended up devouring a salad with peanut sauce, throwing up in the toilet and being in bed by 9pm...After the peace and beauty of Gili Air it felt a bit marred as we were surrounded by ghastly British property developers, lads-abroad holidayers and gap yearers with more of mummy and daddy's money to frolic with than sense to use it. To be fair it was nice to go out and party and meet lots of people our age and I loved the sunset bar where we watched the sun disappearing behind the volcano at night causing a fantastic silhouette of peak and horizon in a burning orange sky. However we did feel like we were turning into grandpas with our complaining about loud music and all-night partying neighbours so we escaped to the idyllic and remote Gili Meno which was stacked at over-hyped honeymooner prices which meant we could only afford to spend one night (because the islands have no atms or banks you have to take all your money with you before you go and ours was rapidly dwindling...) and so decided to see out our time back at Gili Air where we had so enjoyed ourselves. Due to the dwindling finances it was a downgrade to just the one floor cabin though by then we had sussed out the cheapest eateries and gave up nights of table dancing to make the most of the free DVD booths with dinner, eat Devil's Rings doughnuts stuffed with Bailey's ice-cream on the island peninsular in front of sunset and order the cheapest fish on the huge open air barbeques lining the beach.
Having planned a week on the Gili Islands we had made our money stretch to ten days and would have seen out the rest of our visa here had the rupiah not disappeared so quickly from our pockets....so it was with great reluctance we endured the horrific journey back to Kuta which began with a longboat from the Gilis to Lombok, a mini-bus down the coast to the port, the awful ferry journey back to Bali and another bus to Kuta, eating up a whole precious day of our time.
The last few days in Kuta were spent shopping down the Poppies Lanes where I bought an unprecedented number of ripped off DVDs for an obscene price (having been deprived of TV for half a year) as well as kitting out our anticipated campervan by buying lots of cheap brightly coloured sarongs to upholster any unsightly travel-worn material...We ended up staying in a wicked hostel next to two Canadian girls and a Scottish lass who took us out surfing and taught us for free and in return we treated them to a moustache-themed party with Geoff the Giraffe (our travel mascot) at the Engine Room. We also found the mall with a pick'n'mix bakery that tasted like manna and managed to explore the nearby resorts of Legian and Seminyak though everywhere was so heavily security-conscious with the anniversary of the two Bali bombings approaching the end of our stay that we didn't want to pry any further than we were allowed.
As we returned to the airport I actually felt a bit sad to be leaving Asia behind me. Sure, at times it's been difficult, hassle-filled, frustrating, confusing, and nonsensical but as well as being part of its charm after six months that had all begun to feel like normal. I was actually feeling a tad apprehensive about immersing myself in western culture again and the prospect of having to plan my life by more than just at which bakery I wanted to eat at for brunch or which country I wanted to wake up in. However with a job, home and campervan to find I'm sure there's going to be little time to miss anything...
Our second stop was to go walking along the Campian Ridge and explore the area surrounding the urban centre of the town. This involved trekking through elephant grass that completely submerged me and carving our way through rice fields and remote villages on the very outskirts of the border that revealed a completely different side to the town. On returning to the centre we rewarded ourselves with chocolate cake and library books at my favourite cafe, Rendezvousdous, before heading onto happy hour mojitos and thus undoing all the hard work of our physical exercise.
In fact because of all the culture on offer we had no choice but to gorge ourselves in true Balinese style during our stay in Ubud. Every night there was different live music on in the cafes and bars from ultra cool funk-reggae to karaoke-esque air-guitar rock to rhythm jazz that had everyone dancing. Every other building was some kind of pastry selling cafe so that all we seemed to do was roll from one venue to another snacking on all this incredible food including a superb tapas restaurant that served up all the Balinese delicacies on a deceptively small plate but which were so rich and filling we had to waddle home.
Leaving Ubud provided the complete contrast as we endured the public bus to the coast and then sat on the public ferry to cross to Lombok during which my sea legs completely gave out as our lumbering pile of rust lunged back and forth in the middle of lurching waves that rocked us from one side to another and left me pinned to the deck trying to think about everything but the spinning world around me. A route that takes four hours to do 20km took six and a half hours, with the additional two and a half hours coming sat at the port on the other side queuing to dock at the one ricketty port to the extent that locals row up to the ferries and for astronomical fees offer to whizz you over to land as long as you are willing to jump through the windows onto their boat! We refused, in spite of my need for solid land beneath my feet, and had such sensibility punished as disembarking from the ferry we realised that in spite of all our militant security consciousness we had somehow been fleeced of our wallets and bank cards during the journey by one of the many aggressive touts who had been cornering us on our desks where pinned by our huge backs we were completely at their mercy. Fortunately we had spares hidden away in secret places but spent the evening frantically trying to cancel our cards in the town of Sengiggi which was best comparable to the location in the League of Gentleman and suffice to say as equally unhelpful and unfriendly. Instead of progressing with our trip we were unfortunately confined to Sengiggi for another day as our insurance policy required a police note from the scene of the crime and so we spent all afternoon in the local police station with the one officer who vaguely spoke English running to and from our prison-cell themed hostel in the scorching heat of the day to fetch the various bits of paperwork he kept forgetting to ask us for. To heap insult to injury at the end of this debacle in which the officer had tried his best in his broken English to console us by appearing to be our friend he charged us a "fee" to process the note he had made; completely at his mercy as he had copies of all our documents and fearing we had entered one of those towns where the eradication of our existence would not be blinked at by anyone we reluctantly gave into the bribe and angrily gave up the remaining hard cash we had.
It should have been an indication that we were meant not to leave the joys of Bali behind and that we should have stayed in the land of indulgence rather than trying to be intrepid travellers as things went from bad to worse. Finally escaping Sengiggi we were able to start our trek up Mount Rinjani, a beautiful active volcano that had only recently been reopened to the public and was the sole purpose of our excursion to this island. The trek started well, albeit with difficulty, as we marched for eight hours up the crater ascending 2600metres on the first day. The journey was made lighter by the accompaniment of a Swiss-South African couple who were far more hopelessly prepared for the climb in spite of their brand new sparkling climbing gear and our two shared guides, Adi and Andre, who with the porters cooked all our food and kept us entertained with their anecdotes, clean and filthy....The last hour was really difficult as though only about a 500metre path was covered in volcanic ash that imposed a one step forward two steps backwards style of climbing that had everyone slipping and covered in dust. It was however well worth it as reaching the edge of the rim, above the cloud cover, we camped for the night looking down the crater which afforded a view akin to feeling like you were standing on the periphery of heaven looking down on the world. It was so warm in the evening sun that we all, alongside the twenty or so other trekkers camping for the night, ended up stripping off and lying on the grass soaking up the rays. By the time dinner was ready the wind was picking up and swirling the dust around so that instead of sitting around the campfire we had to retreat into our tents which we didn't mind as we were all exhausted. Unfortunately the worst storm in six years brewed that night and we didn't sleep a wink. The wind was so fierce it ripped two of our walls so that we were protected only by the mosquito mesh on two sides and prevented us from being able to step outside as it bent the poles and flattened the roof against our faces, suffocating us. We could hear each squall brewing up in the valley and then gaining in velocity and sound as it gathered momentum before smashing us perched on the rim. It was all we could do with the weight of two bodies and bags to keep ourselves from being blown over and within an hour or so we were caked in inches of dust blown through the mesh. It got so cold that in spite of three layers of clothes and a sleeping bag we were frozen to the bone. When the storm finally disappeared with the morning sun and we were able to get out of the tent without fear of being blown away we realised that we had in fact been the luckiest in our group; every other tent had had their poles smashed and canvas blown down the crater. No-one had slept and everyone had been petrified. The guides quickly packed up our tents and insisted we headed straight back down rather than continue over the crater edge into the hot springs as we had planned but perhaps because of the sleep-deprived madness we all insisted that being only a few minutes away from the very tip of the volcano that at the very least after everything we had been through we wanted to see the crater lake that was the focus vista of the whole trip. Eventually we persuaded our guides and picking our way through the wreckage climbed the final part of the ascent and were rewarded with an indescribable view of the shimmering blue volcanic lake and the burnt ash cone through which the lava is pummeled as it erupts before we very, very quickly headed back down to lower and safer climates.
Just when we thought we had endured everything that could be thrown at us in the last 48 hours our up until then overly friendly guide told us that there was no refund for the loss of the trip and we were out of pocket for two days budget to compound the bank-cardless state of our finances. That was enough for me and while everyone else swallowed it I called up the manager to complain that while we didn't blame them for the weather neither should we expect to be punished and after much wrangling got him to agree to put us up at a hotel he knew for free for the next couple of days as a partial recompense. While not fully placated it was enough to gain a mere concession and when we arrived at the hotel we realised we were staying at somewhere far more luxurious than we would normally pay for and were receiving what we had lost on the trip in the accomodation and free breakfasts provided which felt like some kind of moral justification.
After all the traumas we spent no time hanging around in Sengiggi and headed straight for the Gili Islands to collapse and lick our wounds. The Gili Islands comprise of three separate land masses, each only a mile or so in length and width, so small that there is no motorised transport, only old-fashioned horse and carts! They are famed for their pristine white sand Robinson Crusoe tropical beaches, turquoise water with reefs for snorkelling and little thatched huts on the beach that ensure you feel as if you have left the real world truly behind. Each one has its own character: Gili Air is the family friendly island with lots of beachside restaurants where you lounge the days away under the cabana thatched roofs eating, drinking and sunbathing; Gili Trawangan (or Gili T ai it's lazily known) is the party island with lots of beachside bars and clubs, where the alcohol is insanely cheaper than the food; Gili Meno is the honeymooners paradise, the smallest, most remote and most untouched. We started off on Air and treated ourselves to the luxury of a two-tiered "bungalow" complete with a daybed and hammock downstairs next to the bathroom and a verandah overlooking the sea upstairs. While our lungs, muscles and minds recovered we did nothing but move from the bungalow to the beach hut to the beach and when it got too hot the water. Eventually we plucked up enough energy to go snorkelling, which for a pound a day was a veritable bargain as the reef only a couple of metres from the shoreline was packed with marine flora and fauna. We spent most of our time hanging out with a hilariously London yuppie couple who helped us sample the many cheap restaurants and when we finally felt young again took the narrow longboat to "hop" across to Gili T. The crossing was derailed by the appearance of a 6ft long seasnake on the jetty which sent the female contingent running while I amongst all the men fought to take the best pictures of the serpent! It was perhaps a symbol of our arrival on Gili T which in many ways was like being back in the Thai party islands in the sense that there wasn't much to do except walk down the main strip and drink through the long, long happy hours. Having geared ourselves up for the first night I ended up devouring a salad with peanut sauce, throwing up in the toilet and being in bed by 9pm...After the peace and beauty of Gili Air it felt a bit marred as we were surrounded by ghastly British property developers, lads-abroad holidayers and gap yearers with more of mummy and daddy's money to frolic with than sense to use it. To be fair it was nice to go out and party and meet lots of people our age and I loved the sunset bar where we watched the sun disappearing behind the volcano at night causing a fantastic silhouette of peak and horizon in a burning orange sky. However we did feel like we were turning into grandpas with our complaining about loud music and all-night partying neighbours so we escaped to the idyllic and remote Gili Meno which was stacked at over-hyped honeymooner prices which meant we could only afford to spend one night (because the islands have no atms or banks you have to take all your money with you before you go and ours was rapidly dwindling...) and so decided to see out our time back at Gili Air where we had so enjoyed ourselves. Due to the dwindling finances it was a downgrade to just the one floor cabin though by then we had sussed out the cheapest eateries and gave up nights of table dancing to make the most of the free DVD booths with dinner, eat Devil's Rings doughnuts stuffed with Bailey's ice-cream on the island peninsular in front of sunset and order the cheapest fish on the huge open air barbeques lining the beach.
Having planned a week on the Gili Islands we had made our money stretch to ten days and would have seen out the rest of our visa here had the rupiah not disappeared so quickly from our pockets....so it was with great reluctance we endured the horrific journey back to Kuta which began with a longboat from the Gilis to Lombok, a mini-bus down the coast to the port, the awful ferry journey back to Bali and another bus to Kuta, eating up a whole precious day of our time.
The last few days in Kuta were spent shopping down the Poppies Lanes where I bought an unprecedented number of ripped off DVDs for an obscene price (having been deprived of TV for half a year) as well as kitting out our anticipated campervan by buying lots of cheap brightly coloured sarongs to upholster any unsightly travel-worn material...We ended up staying in a wicked hostel next to two Canadian girls and a Scottish lass who took us out surfing and taught us for free and in return we treated them to a moustache-themed party with Geoff the Giraffe (our travel mascot) at the Engine Room. We also found the mall with a pick'n'mix bakery that tasted like manna and managed to explore the nearby resorts of Legian and Seminyak though everywhere was so heavily security-conscious with the anniversary of the two Bali bombings approaching the end of our stay that we didn't want to pry any further than we were allowed.
As we returned to the airport I actually felt a bit sad to be leaving Asia behind me. Sure, at times it's been difficult, hassle-filled, frustrating, confusing, and nonsensical but as well as being part of its charm after six months that had all begun to feel like normal. I was actually feeling a tad apprehensive about immersing myself in western culture again and the prospect of having to plan my life by more than just at which bakery I wanted to eat at for brunch or which country I wanted to wake up in. However with a job, home and campervan to find I'm sure there's going to be little time to miss anything...
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