A typical exit!

Exiting Indonesia was such a quiesential SE Asian affair that it was destined to be a blog entry. We saw it as leaving SE Asia, although of course that wasn't strictly what we were doing as a trip to Singapore was preceding our true exit from SE Asia to Australia. Somehow though Singapore doesn't really seem to belong in that generalised SE Asia category with it's organisation, integrated transport systems and cleanliness. Exiting Indonesia was a kind of two day affair, as is apt of course, considering the part of the world. We were on the Gili Islands, east of Bali and if we could have would have got onto a flight there which would take us straight to Singapore, but sure that would have been too easy. There is no airport in the Gili Islands (infact there is, rather uniquely, no motorised transport at all) so getting out of Indonesia was always going to involve a number of forms of transport.

Shunning the horse and carts rattling along the sandy track towards the "harbor" we donned our backpacks and set off on foot. It wasn't far we had to go, not that ridiculously short distances put off the many tourists who had more money than sense from using them - of which there were many! We headed first for the travel agency where we had bought our boat and bus ticket the day before...when I say travel agency read organised local gang out to exploit tourists with every sinew of being. There we were simply redirected to the "harbour", a small concrete box with three staff who would very happily help you with your travel arrangements for three times the price of the organised gangs (sorry i mean travel agents), a beach, the sea and a straw roof for shade from the sun.

As I padded bare foot down the beach, into the water and onto the boat I felt a certain nostalgia at leaving this way of life behind. By way of life I mean basic rooms with cold showers and, if you are lucky, a hand basin

I mean sitting for an hour wondering if the boat you are "booked" on will ever indeed show up and then spending the journey wondering if you will infact make it again to dry land. I thought about how nice it has been in so many destinations to be able to sit on a bit of quiet beach and have a drink brought to you for a few pounds and how amusing it is to watch the way of the locals as they splash around in the sea fully clothed, like 3 year olds.

My nostalgia didn't last long...

On arriving back on the bigger island of Lombok we were accosted by more horse and cart drivers telling us the bus stop was too far to walk "very far, you take horse cart" no thanks. Annoyed that our ticket which supposedly offered a boat then a connecting bus wasn't quite what it had been sold as we trudged along the dusty road in the heat, our bags on our backs and fronts! We couldn't see a bus stop but found ourselves drawn into a wee cafe, which it turned out was the "bus stop" we were looking for.

We told the guy who we were and where we were going and we were told to wait. We waited and waited and waited. Finally when the last mini bus load of people was about to go we asked him when our bus would be. In some mixture of frustration and disbelief he shook his head, pulled his hands over his face and approached the loaded up and ready to go van...a short discussion later and the driver was up on top undoing the strings holding down all the luggage. We passed our luggage up then went to get in only to find there was just one seat left. Now, this has happened so many times I don't care to even try to count, but at this stage we were just so ridiculously fed up with being treated like crap, being over charged for a service that we usually didn't even get in the end anyway. We argued. "two people, one seat, no good" we said. We refused to get in. They told us we had no choice. We asked for a refund and he said we'd have to travel back to the island which we had just come from to get it from there. We refused. We reached a stalemate and he began to have our bags unloaded. We got in. Grumpy, to put it mildly, and I squeezed between who strangers who also lost their fair share of seating space.

We got dropped off in Mataram where we would stay the night before flying the next day. Here our frustration melted again and we met lovely shyly smiling locals who looked bemused at our presence in their rather unremarkable town. We had a coffee in McDonalds for lack of other options and had a right good laugh at the groups of Australian P&O cruise passengers who had been brought into port and had obviously made a beeline for a big Mac meal each. Seriously, you have what like two hours in a place and you go to McDonalds?! For a meal between meals?!!

The icing on the cake however has to be the actual flight out. We were flying "Lion Air". Think of rusty baked bean can with paper wings. It was worse than what you just imagined. I have seriously never been on a more disgusting airplane and I mean I've flown Ryanair and easy jet!

Lion Air beats them hands down...as we sat on the runway waiting to take off I poked around and found a prayer card suggesting the passengers pray for the pilot to have the ability to do his job safely and that we would reach our planned destination. As John has written in the last blog, we would have laughed if we weren't so flippin nervous!

We're outta here!