It seems like a lot has happened since I last wrote anything here. I'm actually in Australia now, sitting in a quality hostel. Its a bit cold and is pretty similar to being in the UK for summer (I think, its a long time since I've done that!) I was planning on writing a seperate entry for our time in Melbourne so far, but 2 sentances in, that doesn't seem likely. Well, the major thing is that everything is SO EXPENSIVE! Anything was going to be a shock after being in really cheap places for so long, but its crazy here. More expensive than the UK and I'm going to be pushing it living on a 200 pound a week, the hotel is 14pound a night literally 10 times what we've been paying! Aside from that its cool, its so relaxing to be back in a big 'Western' (well its west to some people) city. We had 2 final days in Bali where we embraced (or just braced for) the squat toilets and the endless heckle's, but here in Australia I'm definately enjoying going to the toilet and not coming out with wee on my feet. We've met a guy from Ireland and girl from Canada - Paul & Juanita, who are driving up to Sydney tomorrow, they've offered to give me & lisa a lift if we share petrol, so its pretty exciting, a whole new part of the journey and I can't wait! We've been round to the local 'Op Shop' (Oppurtunity/Charity shop), where we purchased some delightful and well used bedding - i opened it up to check for stains - and some classy plastic cutlery. Its only downhill from here, we've decided we don't have enough money to pay for nice campsites, so are going to be washing in rivers or perhaps the sea for the next 4 days. I'll be lush by the time I arrive in Sydney!
Anyway, the last time I wrote here we were leaving Senggigi, possibly one of the most boring places we'd been for a while, to embark on an epic journey which took loads longer than planned! It meant a bus from Senggigi across Lombok, a ferry, which was VERY rough as its rainy season (also VERY RAINY) an overnight journey across the worst roads ever, I saw a coach crash & a bike crash before I put my beautiful eye mask on and looked at the inside of that instead. Got as close to sleeping as closing your eyes gets, then got kicked off the bus at 3am into a very 'local' bus station, goats and everything. We piled, squashed and crammed ourselves onto a much smaller non air-con chicken shack bus, which was due to leave at 3.30am, then 5am, then 6am. It left at 8am, not leaving us much time to make the 2hr trip to Sape for the 8.30am ferry. The fun was meant to end in Sape (a hole, full of stinking fish drying on the road) where we would take a further 8 hour ferry to Labuanbajo which is the bit of mainland you travel to Komodo/Rince from. Luckily for us the ferry didn't leave at 8.30. It didn't leave at all. All ferries had been cancelled until further notice due to bad conditions on the water. There hadn't been any ferries for 3 days and NOBODY HAD BOTHERED TO TELL US. We hooked up with a group of people, some of whom we knew from the Gili's who'd been waiting in this dump for 3 days as they were part of a prepaid package tour which wasn't offereing refunds. So we checked into a room, at a rip off rate as there were no other options. The day took a turn for the better when a girl (who's name i can't remember) knocked to tell us there was a cruiser leaving from Bima in 2hrs and we had to leave straight away. Bima was the place where we'd sat in the bus station for 4 hours earlier. The story continues like this, we arrived in Labuanbajo at 10pm that evening and stayed in the second hotel, after it turned out the first had no water/sink or shower (he did bring us a bucket of water though when we asked for a shower).
The sea was still rough and we had to hire a 'Big' boat, all 15ft of it, as small ones weren't sufficient to get across the water. Rinca is a better place to see the Komodos and we were really lucky as there were hardly any people there and we saw loads of them!
Because of the bad weather we'd lost a day, which meant all of our plans were thrown and it was going to be an awful few days of ridiculously early mornings and crazy journies if we wanted to see any of the things we'd planned. Things started to go right for us though, an Indonesian tour operator 'Harry' was staying in our hotel, he'd been in Labuanbajo to arrange trips for 700 cruise tourists to Komodo, it'd been cancelled due to weather and he was driving back to Maumere, he offered to do us a personal tour, taking in all of the things we'd planned - traditional villages, hot springs & volcanoes and our travel to Maumere for 250, 000 each, about 12 pound! It was amazing and I definately one of my favourite bits of the whole trip! We were so lucky that we met this guy as it made our journey so easy and perfect. We'd met so many people who hadn't been able to see the Komodo dragons, or the Volcano due to bad weather but everything slipped into place for us and the weather was ideal. We were taken to all the local restaurants we would have avoided otherwise and saw all the sights that only the locals knew about (Harry was from a village near Bajawa) It was a brilliant end to our Asia travels!
