Sunset on the ferry to Bali.

02.11.11

Neil and Beth had decided to leave with us to go to Bali, so we

had arranged for Made to drive us to Lembar and stop off at Sade,

a Sasak village near Kuta.

When we arrived we were met by one of the villagers who showed

us around his village. Firstly we walked in to a small

square with the 'chief' villagers house at one end and a

terrace at the other, which was the village meeting hall. He then

took us around and through the 150 houses, all very similar, that

housed the 700 residents of the village. He explained that

people married within the village. He showed us a prism shaped

building on stilts built from long grasses that housed 6/7

families' rice, so these were spread throughout the village.

Each house had 2 rooms; the first room at the front of the house

was for sleeping, the parents on one side, on the floor, and the

children on the other. You then went up some steps to a second

room where meals were prepared and there was a shielded part

'for the women'. The houses all had a pitched roof and used

buffalo manure to make the floor, which they 'topped up'

every few weeks. Suprisingly the floor was smooth and solid and

there was no smell! Traditionally this village weave and they

go to the beaches to sell the sarongs/blankets they make.

Our tour was only brief and we hopped back in the car for the hour

or so journey to the harbour. Made kept us entertained along the

way.

When we arrived at about 11am the ferry was just about to depart

so we hurried on. We rushed up the gangplank, being gestured

at by the staff to go on through. We were faced by a wall of lorries

parked at various angles, with mopeds somehow squeezed in between.

We looked at the lorries, looked at the staff who were still

shooing us through and wondering what we were waiting for! So we

slid off our packs and began the slow process of ducking wing mirrors

and squeezing between cargoes until we reached the steep steps to the

passenger deck. Meanwhile the staff were trying to work out how

they were going to get another motorbike on!!

Upstairs we found a table outside on the first deck. This ferry

was different to the previous one, the top deck had no seating and

just had a cabin for crew. So we got comfortable and were pleased

when the ferry sounded it's horn and chugged slowly in to the harbour.

Off we went!

Or so we thought for a whole five minutes until we realised we'd

shuffled round in a circle and had then gone back to dock. And there

we sat for another hour. An extremely loud screeching noise marked

the couple of announcements that were made, but unfortunately these

were all in either Indonesian or Balinese so we couldn't understand.

All we could do was sit and wait patiently.

Eventually we did get going and to our suprise 3 and a half hours

later we could see Padang Bai harbour. Unfortunately, it stayed

the same distance away for the next 5 hours! We were unable to find

out any information for a couple of hours, until a fellow passeneger

was able to tell us that we weren't going to dock until 8 o'clock

but he couldn't tell us why. The good news was that Neil discovered

there was wifi on board and managed to get the code!

So the ferry bobbed around, along with several others, for hours until

at about 7.30pm (which we were very impressed with, because we thought

if they'd said 8pm that probably meant 10pm) the ferry's engines

started up and we headed with purpose towards the harbour and

to moore.......where we sat for another half an hour waiting for

another ferry to leave.

Finally, at 8.30pm we were off the ferry, being pursued by various

people shouting 'Room, room' or 'Transport'. We headed

away from the harbour as fast as we could, so we could find a room

and Beth and Neil could find a taxi to take them to Ubud. We went

out separate ways and Martin and I ambled through the small

town of PadangBai, which seemed to have quite a lot going on. We found

a nice harbour view bungalow at Billabong's, dropped our stuff off

and went in search of dinner.

There's lots of nice restaurants and funky bars in PandangBai, for it's

size. But we'd got used to paying 10,000 rupiah for a meal so we

trying to find a local warung, which was closed. So we decided that

we would have to pay tourist prices and headed for one of the

restaurants by the beach, Puri Rai. It was good to have something different to

eat and the food was very tasty and good portions.