This post was due last week, but due to unforseen internet circumstances I have been unable to post until today. I will post some follow-up blogs about my time in Bali in the next few days, for now enjoy reading and please don't forget to leave your thoughts at the bottom!
Right now it is Monday 21st December at 10:00am although you will not read this for maybe a few days as I am sat in the bus station in Surabaya, on a bus that I have been on for 2 ½ hours waiting for the scheduled departure time which is 10:00am, this being Indonesia it is still waiting to leave and we have many street sellers on board (authorised by the station) trying to sell me everything from water to fruit to horny goat weed! Yes that’s not a typo.
I needed to charge my cell phone as the battery is running on prayer alone, luckily it’s a blackberry imitation and is charged using USB, and I decided to make use of the laptops generosity by using it to write part of my next blog post.
So far I have been travelling since 3pm yesterday and I am expected to arrive in Bali at 8pm tonight but I expect the arrival to be a little later. I have spoken to Ashur who is already in Bali and he said he will meet me in Kuta and take me to a hotel that he knows will have rooms available.
I have been running an impromptu conversation class here on the bus as I am the only bule on board I am very popular and people have been coming to chat to me, and then more people joined in and we were talking about various topics from London to the climate change , a Londoners view. Interesting and I would love to have continued the topic but I am exhausted having not slept much last night on the train. It was very strange as when I got on the train with help of a station assistant who just grabbed my bag and said he was helping me, for his generosity he demanded 50,000 to which I replied no, you forced your help here is 6,000 now on your way my good man (the last part is my artistic licence and in hindsight I should have uttered it).
So I sat in my seat and another man sat next to me, after 5 minutes he was telling me he was going to Jogjakarta with his wife and his daughter (sat next to his wife in the row aside us) was going to Surabaya. I am sure if I had questioned further he would have offered his daughter for sale or something similar. 10 minutes later he got up and walked to the front of the train where I assumed he went to the toilet, he never returned. That was beneficial as the leg room on the train was amazing the seats are designed for persons of a smaller stature than myself. So after 2hrs, a fair time to steal the seat I thought, I lifted the arm and moved over slightly into the middle.
Shortly after the stewardess appeared with a warm meal, I asked her how much and she said free so I tucked in to a steak, chips, egg and salad. Not great I would make comparison to an airline feed, this was followed not long after by a steaming hot sweet coffee which I am now blaming for not sleeping much.
I was busy using my video camera to capture any interesting things in the outdoors and occasionally indoors but as the night drew in I decided to call the camerawork a night and put it away.
I must have tried to sleep in 8 different positions during the night and that includes the foetal position I adopted by curling up on the two seats. Another thing the train company provided was a blanket and not the sort you might have used had you been a Boy Scout or Girl Guide, remember the hairy ones, this was like a sleeping bag but just a blanket.
As always when travelling I slept and woke, slept and woke, finally staying bangun (awake) at around 4am, partly due to the urgency of needing the bathroom, which I hasten to add was a delight to use. I wouldn’t say I want the same bathroom at my home in Jakarta but comparing it to a train bathroom I used on my overnight journey from Paris to Barcelona in February of this year it was clean, non-smelly and had toilet paper which is strange as in this country a traditional toilet has just a bucket of water, go figure!
So apart from feeling really tired right now, I am happy to be on the road finally heading to Bali.
My ticket was in my opinion very well priced 140,000 and that takes me all the way to Denpasar, from there I must take a taxi or bemo (3 wheeled car, bigger than a Thai tuktuk and has a route it follows) to Kuta to meet Ashur. The ticket actually includes a meal for which I have just been given a ticket to give to the cashier at the stopping point.
A word of advice, whilst food is often included on these long distance journeys drinking water is not, so bring plenty or expect to pay an inflated price, still cheap but if you want to budget, bring your own, also I have brought my own food, 4 egg salad sandwiches and some cold backed potatoes just in-case I feel peckish along the way.
That’s all for now, I will continue at a later journey point.
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