JBR continued - the end of another trip
It is Friday 8th August. Its C & K's last full day as they leave on the 12.45pm flight to Perth on 9th August. Hubby and I fortunately have the day of the 9th in Bali and are on the horrible 2am flight to Perth on the 10th. I message C as they haven't turned up at our door for breakfast. She messages back that K is unwell again and for us not to wait for her. After breakfast I grab some towels and get us some loungers facing the ocean on the grassed area. This gets a great combination of sun/shade. Hubby heads off with Wayan in the search for the black honey. Wayan was unable to find it yesterday and hears that it is in a village near Mt Agung. Rightly so it is a fair distance and so we don't see hubby again until after 1.30pm. C eventually finds me, and advises that K is the same as he was the day before yesterday. He is holed up in the bedroom watching cartoons. C is making the best of the sun on her last day. It is a day of relaxation for us all. Hubby gets back with the black bee honey in a very old, very used aqua bottle...I am not happy. I had already said to Wayan and hubby that unless it is in a sealed container, I won't be taking it as I don't want the risk of getting sick. Hubby takes it to the room (we will discuss this later!!) and rejoins us. We have some lunch and wile the afternoon away. C checks up on K throughout the day, he is somewhat better and so by the time we head out for dinner he is back to his usual cheeky self.
We head off for some last minute shopping for all of us. We head again to Matahari's but the black healed sandals I admired a few days ago, are not in my size. In fact nearly everything I like doesn't have my size. We admit defeat and just as we are leaving I spot a vision of beauty in black, a strapless, slip in shoe with a silver detailed heal, it is fancy, it is lovely, it is not 50% off but it is in my size! It is mine! I am happy! I have bought 3 pairs of shoes this trip and all I feel are bargains. Hubby heads to the male show section as he had admired a pair of slip in sandals a couple of days ago, sadly they are not his size and they don't have any in his size. He settles for his third choice and makes the purchase with a little less enthusiasm than I!
We are unsure of where to eat tonight. We have done just about the whole strip in Tuban except for Il Cielo. We actually get to this place the long way round after perusing and discarding the menus of many others. We want somewhere where K can have either a soup or a plain green salad! We go into Batan Waru (excuse spelling) which is packed, but the smell of sewerage is overwhelming (and has been every time we go past this restaurant) and we all agree against dining here. It's a real shame as we dined here in January and the food was fantastic. This trip we have noticed, unfortunately, really bad sewerage smells along the whole JL Kartika strip - I mean so bad that I cover my nose and mouth, which I never do, but had to this time to avoid dry retching.
We end up at Il Cielo it is past 8.30 and we are hungry. I order penne arriabiatta again, hubby gets a seafood pizza, C orders arriabiatta also and K gets some minestrone soup. We have never eaten here before and I have to say the food was absolutely delicious. Really well priced, big serves and really delish! I whisper to hubby that we should come here tomorrow night with Wayan on our last night rather than go to Kori's...he agrees so I know he is really loving his pizza!
We finish our drinks and meals and head back to the Ramada. Every night we walk past through the lobby and hear the lone singer with his guitar in the lobby bar lounge area which is away from the bar and sort of sits out by itself (its kind of open air). We decide to have a drink and listen to him. It doesn't take much encouragement from him and we join in his songs. We are the only people there. He plays there 6 nights a week and because of where he is positioned, hardly anyone goes and listens to him. We tell him that we will suggest to the hotel in one of their feedback forms, that they either move the bar closer to him, or bring him closer in so that people know he is there. He was really good. We eventually grow weary and it is time to call it a night.
The next morning dawns. C & K call past and we all go down for our last Ramada brekkie. C & K head to the room to pack. Wayan is picking them up at 10.30. I head down and put our towels down as Wayan is coming to spend the day with us by the pool. He has no 'clients' to attend to today and is on a rare day off. We haven't spent as much time as we would have liked with our dear friend as he has been so very busy this trip, which is great for him. Before we know it, Wayan is here, C & K are checking out and we are saying our goodbyes. We will see them in Perth but I hate goodbyes!
We head down to the pool and shortly after Wayan arrives and joins us. The day is spent lazing around doing nothing! We eat lunch at the beachfront restaurant. Indulge in a fair bit of swimming and when we tire of all this, we head to the room for showers. All refreshed we head out into our final night. We wander the streets with no intent and when the time hits 8.30 we decide to head back to the Ramada and eat at Il Cielo again. It was disappointing this time. Admittedly it was busier tonight than it was last night but still it was disappointing. It was like a comedy of errors with everything. We ordered our drinks and entrees and we got our entrees but not cutlery. We asked for the cutlery which arrived but no plates for our entrees. We ordered our mains and it took about 30 minutes for them to arrive. I had ordered what K had the previous night which was Minestrone soup - purely because it looked yummy and it was a big bowl. My offering came as half a bowl, still tasty but the quantity was half that of the previous night. Wayan had ordered steak well done and his steak was still bloody. Hubby ordered pizza (again) and it was fine (thank God!). Oh well!!
We head back to the Ramada, again we call into the lounge bar where the guy is playing and stay for an hour or so with a drink or two in hand! We eventually admit defeat and head to our room to pack. Amazingly we get everything in and I am pretty sure we are not overweight!
We check out of the Ramada and head to the airport. We fondly bid our farewells to Wayan. It never gets easier and I am crying again! We head inside and look at all the check-in counters for the Garuda flight to Perth but don't locate it. We sit down. I tell hubby that its not on the little television yet so they probably wont open the check in until a couple of the other flights departing have been bumped off. We sit like this for maybe half an hour all the time commenting on how strange it is that there doesn't appear to be others hanging around waiting either. Eventually hubby declares something is not right and heads over to speak to someone about this. He is directed towards where we had our luggage scanned on entry and he is bolting back to me! Whats up?? We are supposed to be checking in over there, he says...over there is to the left of where you get the luggage scanned, not to the right which is where we were!! What idiots we felt. We join the massive line, and realise we are one of the last ones to check in. We are only 2 kgs over weight and the lovely check in lady dismisses this! Great stuff! We took so long to get to this stage that by the time we got upstairs, we were being called to the Gate. We quickly purchased a couple of bottles of Vodka and made our way to the Gate holding area.
Whilst sitting in the holding area, we notice a very sick young man, he doesn't look well at all. It is time to board and as we had already reconfirmed our flights and requested seats, we were again in row 6 and the same seats as our return flight from January's trip! Oh dear, the unwell young man is sitting in our row. He is sitting in my window seat. I tell hubby that we best leave him there as he looks like he needs something to lean against. He starts straight off (before we had even put our carry on luggage away) by telling us that he is sick as a dog and he hopes that our trip wont be too uncomfortable. He then asks for all our sick bags...GREAT! Hubby gallantly offers to sit in the middle (well there was no way in hell I was going to!) and I take the aisle seat. Truth be known I prefer the aisle seat as I do tend to need the toilet during the flight.
We are off home, we are sad to be leaving beautiful Bali, but happy enough to get back to our own home, own bed, water from the tap etc etc. We take off on time and the sick young man starts hurling into his sick bag. Its going to be a long trip! He threw up the entire trip home - all 3 hours 30 minutes of it. Needless to say we didn't get any sleep on the plane! Hubby enquired at some stage whether it was from alcohol and all he got was a muffled response so we are not sure whether the guy was hung over or whether he was sick with the belly or something. Who knows. Hubby swore there and then, never again, that we would fly Executive Class next time....wrong I said, we are flying Jetstar! Already booked and paid.
We had been warned that there would be turbulence during our descent into Perth and turbulence there was. A lot in fact. The plane was dipping and bouncing all over the place, which made our neighbour puke even harder.
We eventually land, head through to baggage collection and as we were one of the last ones to check in, our baggage sailed out on the first round. We breezed through Customs to Declare and were in a taxi and home by 6.30am. Another great trip has been and gone and I sit here thinking it doesn't feel like we have even been to Bali. The tan is fading, but the memories are strong. Till next time...