Tuesday 12 August
After our best night's sleep yet we were up and organised to head off to the Safari and Marine Park. http://good-timesDOTwebshotsDOTcom/album/565588374plutwb I was really looking forward to this outing as the park only opened after my trip last year. Made picked us up at about 9 am and off we set for the park. Just as we arrived at the park we recieved a phone call from Ketut (Rotary) saying that one of the Rotarians was at the airport picking up the hats but customs still wanted Rp 500 000 in taxes before he would release them. This was even with letters from my club here and also the Bali Sanur Club. By this stage I was over customs and we just needed to get the hats so I advised them to pay the money and I would reimburse them. It will be the last time I take anything from here. I will purchase everything in Bali. This is what I usually do but in this case they were donated in Australia.
We had a fantastic day at the park and although everyone had estimated a couple of hours here we ended being in the park for 5.5 hours. We had our photos taken with the orangatans, the baby tigers (which both appeared to be heavily sedated) and also fed the elephants. I love monkeys so spent quite a bit of time with the orangatans. We enjoyed lunch in the restaurant overlooking the lions and tigers which was great. We had a wander through the water park area and took photos but did not use these facilities. We were starting to feel guilty about Made waiting so long for us. He had decided he did not want to come into the park with us and would use the time getting some sleep. When we finally returned to the car he joked that out of the 5.5 hours in the park, he believed I would have spent 3 hours with the monkeys. He knows me too well now. I can't wait to take the kids there next year as they will love it. The only down side to the whole day was on the bus back to the entrance. There was a young guy on the seat in front of us who asked us for a lighter as soon as we boarded. I explained that it was no-smoking and that there was also a child sitting in the seat in front of him. He did not care about this and even responded that it was ok as the kid was with his group. I told him to remember that when the child got an illness later in life due to his inconsideration. It was the only time during the entire trip that I really could have thumped someone. He did proceed to light up his cigarette once he found matches in his bag. I am a smoker and so is Renae but this guy had no idea if we suffered from asthma or the like that would mean we would become ill from his smoking. I could not believe that this guy could not wait the whole 2 mins until we were back at the entrance and off the bus. Clearly he failed to receive brains at birth. Made knew I was fuming when I returned to the car and was very quick to turn my mood back around.
We returned to Sanur Beach Villas and then headed out to Cat & Fiddle for dinner. They had an Irish band playing who were pretty good however we felt the music was probably a little loud over dinner as you could not even talk to each other. We headed back to the villas to have a few quiet drinks by the pool with Ron. New guests were arriving tonight so I sat up talking with Ron waiting for them to arrive while Renae headed off for an earlyish night. The poor new guests probably didn't know what to think when they were greeted by a half tanked Ron and myself in PJ's at about 1 am. Once they arrived we sat up and enjoyed a couple more Bintangs before heading off to bed. Ron was the first to head off to bed and unfortunately left his crocs in my eyesight. Before retiring to bed I decided to hide his crocs in the garden for him to find in the morning.
More to come
Balibabe