The interesting ferry from Lombok to Bali

So on the ferry the danes from our minibus, Resmus and (i cant remember his name and my memory failed me -- emem that is)! Anyway they scored the best seat on the ferry -- the only one with a small table under some shelter. They played a swedish card game for most of the time. The location is a bit noisy and smoky being by one of the two deisel stacks, but we stored our stuff there as well and made that our base for the 4 1/2 hour trip. -- note to future travlers, buy the "first class" cabin once on the ferry or bring a bleacher pad with you -- also a travel umbrella is excellent protection both from rain and from sun.

I also met Christine from Grenobal France who lives in australia now and, Dyce from Amsterdam who also came over from Gili Meno. Dyce was a young guy and was only on Meno for 1 day -- in which time he saw 25 sea turtles! (they had an aggressive turtle re-introduction program after the El nino of 2005 killed all their reefs and sent most of the marine life packing -- the base of their dive tourism business.) I saw 5 sea turtles in my 3 days of good snorkleing, and Ange didnt see any! Anyway, Meno was too boring for him, and he was heading for nightlife in Kuta -- the very city I detested!

Standing at one point on the breezy side of the ferry, these four indonesians approached me and shyly introduced themselves and started to talk with me -- Erdine from Sengigi on Lombok, his brother Ahmed, and friend O-mah-dean (pronounced, who knows how you spelled it!) and unnamed other. I might of been a little nervous to be surrounded by these guys, escpet that they are so small and smiled and were inquisitive, and friendly, not aggressive like the porters. Plus, i probably outweighed the four of them put together!! Anyway, their english was very bad, and it was very hard to communicate with them.. i got that they worked in factories sewing t-shirts and blue jeans, and that they were traveling to Bali to work like this for 2 months earnining about 800,000 rupiah just so that they could bring half of it back to their families on Lombok. 400,000 rupiah is about $35-40, and "family" would mean the large extended family.

Anyway, i couldn't get why they came up to talk to me until it all came together. There were these two indo women i passed occasionally as i paced from one side of the ferry to the other looking for the coolest, breeziest spot outside of the deisel fumes. Everytime I passsed them, they talked to each other, the pretty one would look embarrased and hit her friend quite hard on the shoulder. Her freind came up to these boys and tried to tell them something. They would then say that I should call the shy friend over to me. Well it turns out that I was the targeted husband for the pretty girl, that she liked me, and wanted me to marry her -- a common theme in Asia to bag the rich westerner and thus elevate the whole family out of tremendous poverty. Once i relaized what was up, it was trouble as I had been far too friendly to everyone, giving them the wrong impression. So, then I tried to hide from the woman's friend, but she would find me, showing me texts on her phone, "Devid, I lake you, you are gud". I enlisted Angie to act as my girlfriend in front of them, and then i never saw them again (who knows where they hid on that boat!)

At one point, I had to go to the bathroom. Thank god it was just to pee. The men's bathroom was the most atrocious thing I have ever seen in my life! There were no unrinals, men simply came into the bathroom and peed on the wall. The urine all (eventually) found its way down a hole along the side of the room. There were two asian style toilets for pooping, but no toilet paper, or water for that matter to wash hands or bum after a poo. It DID smell as bad as you are probably imagining, and i dont really want to think what the centimeter or so of liquid on the floor was, but ..... Sorry to gross you out....

ASIDE: i gotta figure a way to the airport as my taxi guy just drove past me with a car load, and .... i have to be on this plane!! (aside from Tonga)

until next time, newo-out