Last Day in Bali & Visiting Dad
Crazy few days we got back from Bali. Which was a trip in itself, we checked out from our accommodation after a lovely few days. Thursday we decided that we'd go down to the beach to go swimming ourselves with our snorkels, though the place we stayed at was kind enough to drive us down there and pick us up again an hour and a half later when we'd had enough. It was a nice little beach but it was very windy and the snorkelling at it wasn't great, there was heaps of rubbish in the water and there wasn't heaps of fish to see. It was fun though, I don't mean to sound like I didn't enjoy it because I did, we both did. I accidentally forgot to bargain for the cost of a lounger so we paid 50,000 each for a beach lounger for the 35 minutes we sat on it. That's $10 so not the end of the world but quite a lot really.
Thursday afternoon Sarah went to the Spa so I decided to go for a walk, I walked for about an hour and a half, didn't really made it that far but far enough for a bit of a look around the place. I walked along the road, then down to the beach (past a cow that sort of scared me) and back along the beach. Lots of locals kept asking me "what are you doing, where are you going?" I guess lots of people don't go for walks along the rock beach in the boiling atfternoon sun.
Once I made it back to the accommodation I played in the pool practicing my snorkelling while Sarah finished getting rubbed and oiled and all those things at the spa.
Friday we got up and had the usual massive breakfast, then we were driven out to ----- to go diving at the USS which sunk off the coast. The wreck was only a 2 minute swim from the shore which was nice, but it was really hard to see anything, I guess the day before all the wind or the currents had disturbed a lot of silt so it was really muddy and murky. Plus it doesn't help of course that I am blind with no glasses on. But even Sarah had trouble seeing it, clearly. You could see the bubbles coming up from the people diving down there, that would be the proper way to see it. Make me realise just how far down it was, even though we were only 50m off the beach.
After diving the shipwreck we were driven back to a beach quite close to our hotel, another place with an entrance fee (the same as at the sunken ship) but this place was great! Really clean water, hardly any plastic bags floating around unlike the place we'd been on Thursday. Heaps of fish, an underwater temple (not much of one, but still) and just really nice and warm. We had a really good time here until pretty much both of us had to stop due to flipper blisters and it being quite hot. It was great fun though, Sarah got some good little movies on the underwater camera that we had, which we've shown Beth and Theo who seem interested.
Saturday we had to pack up and head home which was a shame, I was just getting used to sleeping in and having a huge breakfast. I think if we went back I'd want to skip Denpasar and just head straight to Amed. It's much quieter and more relaxing, there's no shopping and many more local locals. No Japanese tourist buses etc.
The drive back took the exact 3 hours as promised by both the hotel and Google maps. I never like those trips where you get stuck in traffic while you know your flight is going to depart. But then being a Harman we always make sure we're going to be at the airport 500 hours earlier than we need to be and of course that's exactly what happened. We checked in and went to try and find Sarah's jumper that she'd left on the plane on the flight over but it wasn't to be found, though they allege that they tried to find it. Once we'd done that we went and waited in the lounge, had some chinese for lunch and then Sarah stressed for about 15 minutes as to what she was going to spend her last 50,000 on. It probably wasn't even that much, I can't remember, but in the end she decided on a donut that once purchased turned out to be dry and horrible. Sadness.
The plane flight back was a bit of a nightmare, I kept getting poked, bumped or someone would scream/cry etc so it was impossible to sleep. It was only of those flights that's only 7 hours, but it leaves at 7pm then crosses the dateline so gets in at ~6am. So if you don't sleep (neither of us did) your body is super confused. Once we made it home I stayed awake all day, I had a flight sleep a few times, then went to bed. That worked, except for extreme nightmares I kept having, they were so intense and horrible that I had to sit up for an hour to just calm myself down. I think my brain was just super confused and in some sort of meltdown mode.
Then it was back to work as normal, I knew that Dad needed to have a cancer removed from his bowel but I hadn't told Sarah on purpose so we could enjoy our holiday without stressing about that. A little bit selfish I guess, but anyway. Then of course, I found out yesterday from Jeremy that actually Dad has a few other things wrong as well, so I made the decision (and Sarah really helped talk me into it) to fly to Australia. Which is exactly what I am doing as I type this, on the plane from Wellington to Melbourne, then there's one final plane down to Hobart where Dad can pick me up. It's good because I'll get to attend Rob's 40th birthday, something I wasn't going to get to do otherwise, but it's also a huge pain because I'll be away from Sarah and the kids for ~2 weeks. Poor kiddies, poor Sarah. I miss them all already and it's only been 4 hours so far. Or 5, I dunno. I left them all little notes under their pillows to find, not really very exciting but something to let them know I am still thinking about them all the time.
So that'll do diary, typing on my massive computer on the plane isn't very comfortable so I'm going to stop now. Until next time...
Tim