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Monday, January 18, 2010

DAY 7: I'm on a boat AGAIN!!

We thought day 4 was a traveling day... Well, we had no idea!! Day 7 was 18 hours of traveling! You'd think we were going back to the US!

Luckily, we were still able to enjoy ourselves! Here are some pictures from the van and the boat! ENJOY:

When we were leaving Gili Meno, we jumped onto a small boat, holding way too many people, and got stuck in the sand!! The locals, along with some of the tourist, pushed and pulled ropes and anchors until we finally were freed of the sand! This was a 30 minutes ordeal!

When we arrived on land, we took this horse drawn carriage to the parking lot down the road to catch our van!

I noticed our van even had an offering, hanging tightly to it's windshield!

While we were waiting to leave, we met this guy, name Full. We talked for a long time with him about life in Bali. He is a high school graduate, and would love to go back to school, but he doesn't have the money to do it. He sells these necklaces near the port, and makes the equivalent of about $3.00 a day, on a good day. I think this is probably the case for most young Indonesian men. We asked him what he would recomend we see in Bali, and he said he had never been to Bali. (Take out a map and look. Lombok to Bali is REALLY close!) At this moment, I realized just how fortunate I really am.

Before we knew it, we were making the treck back in Bali in the first van of the day! The outskirts of Lombok is gorgeous! It's lush, with palm trees and rice fields everywhere!


I fell in love with this river! I saw it on the way to Gili Meno, and had to take a picture! What I would give to live near something this beautiful!

As we were driving through the town, I noticed this lady, walking up to the cars and scooters, asking for money for the building of the mosque nearby! Sounds like a good way to do a building project, huh?! Unfortunately, this would never work in America!

Driving through town...



... and back into the forest!

Finally, we made it to our Ferry! This one was different than our first one... a bit smaller, and a little cleaner. We quickly settled here, at a small table and chairs near the ledge.

Our boat actually had a mosque on it!

I have to include this picture, because I have to take a moment to show the extremely long finger nails of the Balinese men! We saw this guy on our boat, selling food. Whenever I ask them why they're so long, they always tell me different stories, like: "Growing them out is my hobby" and "I do it to play guitar." I overheard another foreigner saying that they grow them out to show that they don't work in the fields! Either way, it's DISGUSTING! I think Aaron is trying to do it too, because his nails are getting pretty long! I am encouraging it though, because it makes back scratches sooo much better! My skin is so darn itchy from being burnt! (sorry mom... One day without sunscreen! I've learned my lesson!)

While this ferry did probably go a little bit faster, we ended up waiting in the ocean for 2 1/2 hours, in one spot, for our turn to enter the port! On the positive side, we got to watch the sunset over the water! On the not so positive side, it ended up being a 9 hour boat ride!

... luckily they had a little snack bar with Tim Tams to fill out tummies! Unfortunately, 2 Tim Tams is 497 calories though! That will be the last time I send Aaron to the snack bar to pick out something!

When we got off the Ferry, we were met by a Balinese man who loaded us and another couple into his air conditioned SUV (so nice!) and drove us to Ubud. He was a crazy driver, so I closed my eyes and tried to sleep! This was the first time I ever put my seat belt on!

We arrived around 11:00pm, and were really lucky to find a great place to stay at such a late hour! It's actually a guest house of sorts, and it sits right near a river. There are 2 rooms, which is perfect, and an adorable yellow retriever to keep us company!

More pictures and blogs to come! It's time to go explore Ubud!

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