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.
