Leggy Lizard

Yesterday we saw tons more Komodos at another area of the UNESCO National Park. They are huge and lizardy and strong and intimidating. But amazing, and I feel so lucky to have seen them. The park is currently up for becoming one of the new Seven Wonders of the Natural World. We also spotted lots of monkeys, lizards, a hand-sized spider (thought of you Clary!!) and several massive water buffalo.

We are now chilling out in the port town of Lubuan Bajo on Flores, trying to get rid of that boaty side-to-side feeling which is haunting me, and eating and drinking with our new-found friends. We are staying in a cruelly grim and dingy hotel Bajo, costing 150,000 Rp (approx £10) a night. ALL we wanted, ALL we wanted in the world after our 5 day boat trip was a shower. But alas, the shower at Bajo is more a pathetic trickle. And that only when everyone else in the hotel stops their pathetic trickles from trickling and we beg nicely with reception to please turn our trickle on. But, a cold pathetic trickle after 5 days of semi-dreaded salty spazzy hair issues is actually rather okay. 

The Boat That Rocked

Getting around these parts is a slow and painful process. Ferries to any given location tend to go once a fortnight and only if there are enough passengers. We are still waiting to hear whether the ferry to Sumbawa we have purchased tickets for for tomorrow morning is actually going to go. If not we have a contingency plan b, c, d, e, and f. Which may not be enough contingency plans.

Getting through tons of amazingly good books and making the most of other people’s heavy backpack issues, taking books off their hands. I have just finished the wonderful Richard Power’s book Time Of Our Singing which Will is now reading. One of the best pieces of American fiction I have read for a while. I am now half way through The Time Traveller’s Wife which was a book I had intended to read for yonks but never got round to actually picking up. Another brilliant read is Kill Your Friends by John Niven which Will and I both loved. It’s a kind of American Psycho take on the music industry through 90s Britpop. The protagonist he has created is so fantastically warped and sleazy he almost becomes likeable.

Will has a slightly unsettled tummy. I keep saying he should get a couple of lassies. He keeps saying that sounds like a mighty fine idea.

Much love xxx

ps: am taking this opportunity, a week before I turn 30 to smoke loads and loads. Once I am 30 it really is the end of this silly sometimes habit. And even Will says it’s good at getting rid of the mozzies.

We are on the run. Apparently. Yesterday we took a four day boat trip from Lombok via Sumbawa to Komodo and Flores. But inbetween events have left us in flight for our crew’s lives. Apparently.

The Crook
Our boat was chartered for 18 people. Many of our fellow travellers purchased their tickets for this trip (which altogether costs the equivalent of about £100 each full board for four days and four nights) from travel agents up and down Lombok and the Gili Islands. One guy from Manchester bought his ticket from a ticket agent in the centre of Senggigi on the morning of our departure on the boat*. When we came to register at the tour operator’s office to leave for the boat trip, the manager told our Manchunian fellow that he in fact could not go on the trip as the agent had not passed on any monies. All hell kicked off. The Manchunian chap was delightfully calm, but the rest of us were pretty annoyed with the whole situation. It seemed ridiculous that

Jamie looking very happy he got on the boat and thwarted the crook

this guy had paid his money that very same morning, but now because the agent he had passed his money to in good faith was a corrupt bastard (excuse my French) he was having to not only forfeit the trip, but also had no idea whether he would ever see his money again. So we hot footed it down to the travel agent’s pad on route to the boat. When we got there the agent was nowhere to be found. Several groups of intrigued Lombokians later, someone managed to get hold of him by phone and shout at him loudly enough to get him to return to the office to answer for himself. Five minutes later he rocks up and says that yes, this guy did pay me the money this morning but I have now spent it and I don’t have any money left to pay the operator. Genius. So, we sat around a while. Some Lombokians sort of looked a bit annoyed with him. Poor Manchunian guy looked very annoyed at him. The tour operator manager who really couldn’t give a xxxx just said that it was bad luck and that our protagonist just wouldn’t be able to come on the trip. Cue his bag being lifted down from the minibus. Cue the rest of us staging a mutiny and getting off the bus and refusing to go anywhere until Manchunian can come with us. Some Lombokians looked a bit more annoyed at travel agent. Poor Manchunian guy still looked very annoyed at him. The tour operator manager who really couldn’t give a xxxx started to give the slightest hint of maybe giving a little bit of a xxxx. Eventually corrupt travel agent man gave in enough to pay half the monies then (in mobile phones, rather than cash – ??!!) and promised that he really would, honest guv, pay up the other half the next day. Yeah right. But anyways, this satisfied our tour operator manager enough that we could depart for the boat. One hour late. And apparently that is why we didn’t get to see the flying foxes last night. We were just too late.**

The Collision
Six or seven hours into our boat journey it turned dark. We were chugging along quite happily, and then suddenly there was a loud and continuous banging noise followed by some loud and pained shouting from a small boatsman***. Now, my Baha Indonesian not being all that good, you will have to imagine here what small boatsman might have said. I reckon it was along the lines of “Ouch, hey you, you b*stards, you’ve just totally hit my boat and now I am like really hurt / pissed off / drowning”. Cue us chugging along a bit more before our crew turn the boat around to go back and see the damage / hopefully check small boatsman is alive. We head back but from what I could work out from my limited vantage point (right at the back of the top deck, shoved in like a sardine) they could not find anything. Our boat continues on, but the crew mysteriously turn all the lights out for the next few hours and spend a lot of time peering out into the darkness to check out other boats. Over dinner our crew liaison man explains that we are no longer heading to the intended island to moor the boat for the night, but are instead continuing on for an extra five hours or so to go to the next island where the small boatsman will not be out to get us. It is later over beer that he explains that the crew are worried the small boatsman, who incidentally will know our route because our boat is the largest to go through these waters on its regular twice a week trip, has links to the mafia and may well be sending the Sumbawan underworld out to find us with machetes and the like. So, we are now on the run.

Going To The Toilet On A Boat
This is just not a very easy task at all. Particularly when at nighttime your first step in Mission Take A Piss is to scramble delicately past seventeen other tired grouchy trying-to-sleep-please-dear-god bodies whilst you are simultaneously being thrown about like a whisked egg. Aiming is difficult. Toilet paper gets damp. Toilet lid falls down on your back continuously. Floor is always soaked. But somehow you just manage. And in fact the toilet is stunningly clean especially when you consider that there are 22 people using it.

Feeding
Trying to eat a meal on a boat like this is also problematic. A feeding frenzy always inevitably ensues. The best strategy so far has been to just pile up the plate as much as possible as soon as you get a look in, because by the time you get around to wanting seconds everything is always all gone. But more often than not the food itself actually tastes pretty grim / you’re served the same old rice again, and so by the time you get half way through you’re actually looking for a way to dump your food. The chicken is always fresh though. We have a basket of three live chickens on board C4 Shipwrecked styley which are slowly being strangled through to our plates. And today we are ‘pissing’ (Baha Indonesian pronunciation for ‘fishing’) which will hopefully come up with the goods.

Komodo Dragons Day 1
The Komodo dragons were majestic and startling easy to get close to. They are pretty huge and intimidatingly eye you up as you creep past trying to take a photo. On our way out of the National Park we actually spotted a massive dragon as we were leaving, no longer with our guide man with the big stick. It was a beautiful tourist scramble as we all clambered over each other to get near to the dragon, before someone realised there were two more massive ‘sleepy’ ones a metre behind us. Taking your eyes away from these creatures for a moment is not advised. Apparently they are pretty fast. I have photos of a tree trunk that had been ripped in to by dragon claws. It looked pretty traumatised. And that was a tree. Someone reminded me this morning that Sharon Stone’s husband got bitten by a dragon here and had to be air lifted out. But our guide assured us that since 1978 only 9 people have been killed here. So not too big a death count. I made sure I wore trousers today, thinking that if my tendons were not on display then temptation would be curbed. It worked ‘cos I didn’t get eaten. Neither did all the people wearing shorts, but best not to tease these beasts with flesh.

And finally
We saw a MASSIVE turtle floating at the surface of the water. It was incredible, and looked to be about 2m squared (but was not actually squared, more rounded).

* Senggigi is the town where Will and I slept in a dirty dirty whorehouse ten years ago, since back then it was the only accommodation available. For the equivalent of £1 our room boasted a broken fan, a 5 inch high window strip, a cracked toilet basin that leaked stale brown ‘water’ all over our floor, two flimsy mattresses stained with lord knows what, and a used condom under the bed. But that’s another story.
** What are flying foxes anyway? I cannot believe they are actually foxes that fly. That would just be silly.
*** Man with small boat, rather than a pygmy man in a boat.