At the end of March I had a week of holidays, which I had arranged to spend hanging with my mate in Bali. Although I hadn't exactly loved Bali on my previous visit, it was the easiest place for my mate to get to from Australia for not-much cash.
My mate has a name. His parents call him Matthew. I call him Thommo (pronounced Tomo) but everyone else calls him Tomo (pronounced Tomo).
Thommo is a great mate from waaaayyyyyyyyyyy back - we've been hanging for almost 20 years now. When I visit Australia I normally try and skip-up (not literally) to the Gold Coast to visit him for a couple of days, but I hadn't got there during Xmas holidays, so this was a great opportunity to catch-up.
We had great "plans" for our week together. We were going to do some hiking, head to Lombok, head to the Gili Islands, go fishing and visit Komodo Dragons. We didn't tick all of those boxes as, unsurprisingly, we behaved badly, boozing most nights and the occasional day. We did however have an enormous amount of fun, ticked a couple of those boxes, and ticked a couple of others unexpectedly.
Given that we only had 9 days we did quite well to:
- get drunk 7 times
- only go shopping once
- eat seafood in large quantities
- only lose one ATM card between us (not me!)
- eat pig in reasonable quantities
- not lose any phones
- successfully act as a tout (me) for a seafood restaurant for 10 minutes
- only lose our luggage on a flight once
- survive swimming in the dirtiest water I've ever swam in (at Kuta beach )
- do some networking with school parents
- play guitar on the beach (well I listened and harassed women passing by)
- go big-game fishing
- snorkel with manta rays
- see komodo dragons
- get hit by lightning
It was a very happy time, and even more so in hindsight given that I am alive to tell the tales!
More on some of those in the posts to follow, but a quick mention here of the last photo above.
When we caught a domestic flight to go and see Komodo Dragons our flight was predictably delayed. This meant we spent a considerable amount of time at Bali airport, which has to be one of the worst world-wide considering the amount of tourist dollars passing through it each year. During this time I spent plenty of time talking with strangers. The bloke pictured above was hilarious. He took great pride in the fact everyone thinks he is Japanese despite being an Indonesian from Jakarta. He delighted in telling me stories about how he and his wife (both Muslim) sneak over to Bali once every month or so to eat Babi Guling (roast suckling pig) without being judged for it! The same went for drinking alcohol. His other great talent was spotting women with even less subtlety than myself. He would point one out across the room and say "what do you think of that one?" before giving me his analysis of their sexual history or lack thereof! Not what I expected from him when he sat down next to me! He also provided me with an "in" to start flirting outrageously with the Iranian woman sitting on my other side. This woman was incredibly beautiful (you can see her arm on my left!). I knew she was Iranian because I had seen her passport when she sat down. When I started talking to her she said she was Spanish, but she spoke worse Spanish than me! Maybe she was an international spy? Anyway, my "extreme" flirting was working a treat and we had quite an audience. Unfortunately she was headed to Jakarta but leaving again before I got back. Aaahhhhh....... What might have been????
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