31/1/2012 - Mumbles About Nothing

Welcome to another one of those 'Geri rambles on like an idiot about nothing' posts. Nice of you to join me this evening. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin.

I've tried to live this whole trip by the above quote. Sure, when I was hand scrubbing a kitchen floor in New York it wasn't what I'd imagined from travelling, but it's a story, and a hilarious one at that. Mostly I've had good times though, very good times.

I left Bali this morning and got to Singapore this afternoon after managing to fall over on the plane during some turbulence right onto my bum, causing me to get a massive purple bruise on my leg from hitting it on the arm rest and continuing my one woman campaign to embarrass myself worldwide. My last day/night in Bali was nice though. April and I went with a German girl we met to a shopping centre in Denpasar which was a complete failure but it was an experience. Then we asked two separate taxi drivers to take us to a post office on the way to our next destination and neither of them did but we ended up at a much better shopping centre where I got myself a beautiful Balinese dress and some traditional paintings so I can be all pretentious when I'm home. "Oh those old things? Just something I picked up on my travels to Bali. Yes yes quite... Jeeves bring another glass yes please." - as if I could ever be pretentious, I'm from Norfolk for Christ's sake. April and I ended up going to Pizza Hut for dinner last night, after waiting a million hours for McDonalds to be delivered (it never came). As a former Pizza Hut employee, I liked it. Because I've heard that matters to Indonesian Pizza Huts.. whether a British waitress likes their food?! Pfft. It was good, they have chicken in the stuffed crust, if something has extra chicken it generally pleases me. I'm easily pleased.

 I've been craving British things all day today, so I've made a plan when I get home to have a fry up and a cup of PG Tips whilst watching Jeremy Kyle in my PJs. Just now I got an email about a job I applied for, the manager has been trying to get hold of me on the phone but obviously can't... I'm thinking that him emailing me asking to call is a good sign, because if he wasn't interested he'd just drop it, surely.

Dom left England a couple of hours ago and I'll be leaving here in the morning so we can meet by baggage claim tomorrow... he says he has all these surprise things planned for Vietnam, I'm pretty excited. I want to ride an elephant, can you do that in Vietnam? In all honesty, a hot shower is my main priority right now. I don't care how good cold water is for my hair, it makes me shivery. I'm spending tonight watching An Idiot Abroad and feeling that the whole show is just a rip off of my experiences - ha! I wish I could actually go all the places he does... maybe one day huh? I'm sure this isn't the last of my travels.

I've been reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell and after 1984 I'm so disappointed. But I refuse to leave a book unfinished, maybe I'll go for Animal Farm next time. Been making a few plans for when I'm home. Got a Thai night at the pub the night after I'm home, I'm booked in with Nikki for pancake day (it's a little tradition for us - aw!) and then with Vicki before she goes back to Canterbury. Lucy is going to be picking me up from the airport and Rhea is coming to the Thai night. I'll be going to Oxford to visit Jake and Russell is going to cook me dinner. Plus I've got a dirty GY night with Georgia and Shauna planned. Basically I'm going to be a busy girl for a couple of weeks after I'm home. That's not to mention my family!

Tonight I have my hair in a million little braids, like you do when you're a kid, to try and give myself some fake beach hair tomorrow morning. I really need to get some of that salt spray, but for now I'll settle for looking like I'm in a 90s girl band. I mean a different 90s girl band to the one I usually look like I'm in. Other things I've discovered today are airport trolleys. This sounds so silly after travelling for 7 months right? But because I have a backpack, not a suitcase, I guess I never considered using the trolleys. Plus in America they charge for them so I never thought they might be free elsewhere! In Singapore they are, and how nice it was just to stroll around without 22kg on my back, it's nice not to feel like a turtle all the while. I faced stairs with my backpack the other day and genuinely thought I might fall and get stuck on my back, legs akimbo. That really is a fear of mine, as if I don't make a fool of myself enough.

I've been muttering on for a little too long now and I'm not really sure any of it makes sense after all, so I'm going to try and get some sleep before I get any worse. See you all on the flip side! (Did I really just say that?!)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Publisher: William Heinemann
First Published: 1962
Finished reading: 17^th January 2012
Genre: Science-Fiction Novella
Rating:  2 / 5

What can I say about A Clockwork Orange? I can’t say that I enjoyed the book, but I also didn’t dislike it. It’s very violent, so violent in fact that even I (someone who professes to have a rather strong stomach) almost skipped a paragraph or too. However, in the interest of this TIME Top 100 Challenge, I continued. Aside from the violence though, it was quite a good plot. It draws similarities to 1984 in the way that it revolves around political totalitarianism and the rebellious streak is kind of tortured out of the protagonist.

The setting is not so much a future reality as an alternate one; however there are mentions of things from our ‘real world’, such as the Nazi’s and WW2. However, again similarly to 1984 many new words make the reader almost work to understand some sentences where rot means mouth, viddy means see and horrorshow means good.

A backdrop of drugs, rape and violence surrounds the story of young Alex, of only fifthteen, as he and his ‘droogs’ carry on about their business in this strange world. The novella is split into three separate parts, the first of which being Alex’s world where we are shown what it means to be a young delinquent in near future England. The reader is introduced to Dim, Georgie and Pete; Alex’s friends as such and then shown how he is betrayed by them. The whole first part does paint a picture, this much is true, but it can be challenging to wrap your head around young Alex who despite being intelligent and quick witted is also blatantly a sociopath. In the second part, Alex is taken to prison and taken under the wing of the prison chaplain, who mistakes his interest in the Bible as faith rather than a craving for the violent parts of the Old Testament. By causing interest in his self, Alex is accepted into an experimental behaviour altering programme called the Ludovico Technique which seems to be a kind of aversion therapy. Although brutal the technique is apparently effective and Alex is released back into society after just two weeks. However, the return to society in part three is not as smooth as the technique would quit want as Alex is rejected by his parents and unintentionally encounters his old victims, and pays the price. He is taken under the wing of a political activist who plans to use Alex as an anti-Government tool but it unknowing that it was Alex’s doing that his wife was killed two years previously.

Overall, I am not convinced that I can call the novella a classic, but I can see that it has some appeal. I cannot say though, with full confidence that I would recommend reading A Clockwork Orange.

29/1/2012 - Welcome to my Paradise

So, the Gili Islands were possibly the most beautiful place I've seen so far, the only contenders being some places in New Zealand. One thing the place was lacking though, was varity in music. Oh I sound so pretentious but there really is only so many times I can listen to Wild World or an island song that goes along the lines of "Welcome to my paradise...". I can't really say we did too much in Gili, because there wasn't much to do, but that's just fine. Waking up and going for food, laying around on the beach, drinking lots etc etc. We did go snorkelling one day, which was actually really cool once I got the hang of it. I'm not the strongest swimmer in the world (understatement of the year) but it turns out that with flippers I swim pretty well. Queue the Norfolk webbed feet jokes, some British guys we met have already beat you to it though! I never thought I could get so much stick for being from Norfolk when I'm halfway around the world! Snorkelling though was awesome, I saw lots of coral, fish and even a big turtle, this was all after I'd figured out how to breath through the tube properly, swallowed a good amount of salt water and lost my bikini top jumping over the edge of the boat. All in all a success!

Been Friends quizzing with Atte the last few days (Lucy you would be proud) and we've all been quoitng Lief of Brian at various points ("Are you the Judean People's Front?" "Fuck off! We're the People's Front of Judea!") and just been generally hanging out. April, who the guys met before, joined us a couple of days ago and it was nice to hang out with another girl so we had a wander around the shops and stuff. She's coming here to BIG Pineapple today actually which will be awesome. Went to a couple of parties and got absolutely wasted, to the extent that on the last night I decided it was the best idea in the world to go in the sea in my underwear. Not a complete failure, but when I got undressed back at the bungalow I was soaked and stones literally fell out of my bra. Another tick on the bucket list though! I managed to avoid getting sunburnt quite well for most of the time, but ended up peeling (ew) yesterday and today. And I know you British lot won't believe me but I have a teeny tiny bit of a tan!

The actual biggest problem we had in Gili was that the boats back stopped running for a few days because of the weather and a really big wave between Lombak and Bali, apparently a ferry had sunk already. It wasn't such an issue for me to be stuck on a beautiful island, but Taneli and Atte have a flight today so needed to get back. Even more frustrating was that the boat company's office always seemed closed so we couldn't even get any information. As I may have mentioned however, I am back at BIG Pineapple so let me tell you The Treacherous Tale of a Long Return to Bali. We had finally caught the OceanStar office open on the 27th and the woman in there told us a slow boat, that took 3 and a half hours instead of 1 and a half was going on the 28th and to come to the office in the early morning. Something you should all understand about Indonesia is that things will get done, but they generally won't be done the way you expected them to be. It will probably involve what seems like a bit of dodgy dealing but what is actually just the norm here.

We waited around outside the, still closed, OceanStar office for a while when a guy who told us he'd been on the phone to the OceanStar woman told us we had to get the public boat to Lombak and go from there and that OceanStar would refund us. We weren't on our own, there was an American couple and a British couple too, making seven of us. We hung around for a bit longer, went down to the public harbour, then this guy returned and told us a speedboat was coming for us from Lombak, where we would then get a shuttle to the ferry terminal and get the ferry back to Bali. The seven of us ended up on this little speed boat, but to be fair it was really fast, and I can't say I felt great. Hangover + lots of waves does not equal anything good. I'd don't know what's happening with my backpack, but I swear it's got heavier since leaving Australia. But I haven't bought anything new or heavy so I have no idea, but I pretty much struggled all day. Or maybe I've just got weaker. So we tried to get in our car shuttle thing at Lombak, but the guy drove off. Excellent start. By now I was so tired that I was giggly, but the driver came back and life was all good again. I had thought we'd be in the car for maybe 20 minutes, but it was two hours. Two hours of rolling hills and lots of little corners. This did not bode well for me feeling ill. Turns out the traffic was terrible, as it often is in Indonesia, but this time there was a reason; everyone wanted the ferry. Our driver however, decided we wouldn't be waiting in traffic, so he turned around (mid flow) and squeezed his way back between all the trucks. Hilarious/dangerous/skilful driving all in one. We ended up taking the back streets through a little village that got us there in time though! You've got to hand it to these guys, they know where they're going. The ferry was old, that's a given, and we made our way right up to the top deck which was pretty much green metal and was scorching hot since it was so burning in Lombak, hotter than both Gili and Bali. We pretty much set up our seats for the whole trip by leaning against our backpacks and sitting on various items of clothing so we didn't burn our bums. Loads of different Indonesian guys were gesturing to how big the waves were and how much the boat would rock, so I decided that eating something may possibly settle my stomach. It helped a bit and for 5000rp I got some Nasi Goreng (which I've really taken a liking for) in a little brown paper parcel.

The next 5 hours, yes 5 not 3 and a half, were spent laying in the sun pretty much. I only got a little burnt on the back on my hands (because who even remembers to put sunscreen there?!), had a little sleep and laughed at the guys walking around on the swaying boat, which made them look pretty drunk! The trip dragged quite a lot, and we got into Bali at 7pm after having left Gili at around 8am. It had been a long day on a boat which may or may not fall apart at any second. But as I keep saying, it's a story! Luckily, our shuttle had arrived to take us back to the hostel, but there was a bit of confusion over who had paid and who hadn't since the lady on the island took our tickets from us. About an hour and some Bali traffic, which still frustrates me, later we got back to BIG Pineapple and I was so pleased to find that Megan and Anna are still here, especially since the guys left. But BIG Pineapple was full. Shit. Mia told us about this place down the road, so we made our way there in the rain. I did have a spark of genius though and decided to leave my horribly heavy backpack at BIG Pineapple ready for today. So on the way my handbag broke. It really had been one of those days. We got to the new place and it was full, where on earth were we going to sleep? We resolved to head back to BIG Pineapple and possibly sleep on the sofa but on the way we found some bungalows. I'm not going to lie to you or mince my words, the place was a shithole. The cieling fan looked as if it could fall off, the door had no outside lock and it had a squatter toilet. We were all going to share like before, but when we decided we wanted two rooms I had the task of explaining to the non-English speaking staff/residents. To which they actually kicked two people out of the room next door, who I think were their friends who were using the room for there own enjoyment. We just left them to it in the end and went to get food with the others at the Cat and Fiddle. After a mushroom, cheese and tomato toastie (which was much needed) and making sure I used the bars bathroom (no way was I using the one at the bungalows) we headed back to our hellhole. I actually slept pretty well all in all, but it wasn't without cars coming and going, hearing people right outside our room and some weird bangs and crashes. It was all a bit shady to be honest.

Never. Never ever.

But today is a new day. Taneli and Atte have just left for the airport to go to Thailand and I'm going to go shower because it's been a rough few days. Plus I'm going to clean up my feet because I've got a couple ofcuts that I left for too long with sand in them. Am I a real traveller yet? Ha! Hopefully I'll see the guys in April when they have a 30 hour stop over in London so I plan to give them a whistle-stop tour of Norwich and all it's glories; the puppet man is a must! Anyhow, I'm looking forward to getting over to Vietnam because apparently Dom's got all these surprises planned? I dunno. What I do know is that I'm home in 19 days! Who is excited about that, cos I sure am! I mean, the novelty will probably wear off pretty quickly though. I also get to Skype with Mum today and since it's been a while that's exciting. Possibly wandering into Ubud with Megan and awaiting Anna's arrival. That's my day!

20/1/2012 - "No thank you"

My last few days in Australia were lovely ones, and I thoroughly embraced being mothered by Lyn (thanks Lyn!) since it's been so long since I've seen my own Mum. My weight loss is going.. I can't say well but it's definitely going, albeit very slowly. It's happening though. It was really difficult to leave Australia, I cannot believe how quickly the six weeks I was there went.

Yesterday I spent the whole day travelling. Got up at 4am, to get on the train at East Hills at 5.03am, to get to the airport for 5.30am to fly at 6am. After the two hours to Brisbane, I got the T-Bus to the international terminal and got in the biggest queue of my life to check-in for my flight to Singapore. 40 minutes of queueing with my bag later and I'd finally checked in and headed through to departures to get a coffee. Of course I forgot about security so had two sips of it then had to throw it away. Bugger. Anyhow I boarded and as expected, Singapore airlines was lovely, and the stewardess uniforms were just beautiful. It was seven hours to Singapore, with two meals and I watched lots of films. One of them was One Day with Anne Hathaway. I like Anne Hathaway and I liked her character in this but what I didn't like was her accent. To put on a British accent is fine but the accent she put on was occasionally Northern and just wasn't right.

Then a change at Singapore which had me sprint across the airport. The real kicker was that I could see my gate from the gate I arrived at, but if you imagine that the airport is in a horseshoe, gate 42 I could see through the window to be all the way around. Anyhow, the last flight was okay, even more airline food and another movie and I got into Denpasar at around 7pm. Everyone had told me I'd practically have to fight my way through the airport to get to my bag, then to a taxi, but it was fine. Hectic? Sure, and it was no Heathrow but it was fine. Got my visa and picked up my bag, realising it was unbelievably hot and I was wearing a hoody. It was unbelievably busy outside, people everywhere, but I found the taxi shop and got my fixed price (95,000rp) taxi to BIG Pineapple Backpackers in Sanur. If you've travelled a lot, you'll know that when you get to your accommodation you get a gut feeling that it will either be good, bad, or just okay. This was brilliant. It had a pool and the owners were lovely, besides that it had the same kind of feel as Sequoia Lodge in Picton had, just chilled and awesome. I had to get some sleep, so the real fun started the next day.

I was checking my emails when two girls, now I know they were Anna and Nicole, asked if anyone else wanted to get a driver with them for the day and go out. 'Getting a driver' all sounds very posh, but split between us it cost 80,000 (around 6 pounds) to have him for 8 hours, and there's no way any of us could drive in Bali traffic. Already I've seen a whole family on a moped, and they carry ridiculous things on them too! Anyhow, our guide was called Wyan (which means first born in Balinese) and our driver was called Gidday. The first stop was a traditional Balinese house, where a family of painters lived, but not before we picked up two more guys at the hostel, both from Finland. The paintings at the house were so beautiful, I think I will buy one before I leave because they are amazing.They talked to us about the different stages of making them and I had a go at playing some Balinese music.

I was obviously a pro.

After that, we headed out to see the rice paddies, even though it wasn't the season for it. It's the wet season here so it rains lots. This is where I first encountered the peddlers trying to sell you things, the amount of times I've smiled and said "No thank you" in the last few days is silly. At first I felt bad, especially when they were kids, to say no, but I literally could not buy all of their things even if I wanted to.

Soaked through.

The next stop was a coffee plantation for Bali coffee, which is apparently made from Mongoose waste. The conversation with the girl there was hilarious as she obviously had a speech, complete with actions, for it. "The mongoose selects the best beans, he eats it, it ferments in his tummy, then it comes out."  I must have heard that five or six times until Anna said "So it's shit?" and she said "Yes, it's shit."

This guy roasts coffee all day!

Mongoose coffee and sweet potato snacks.

Different kinds of coffee/tea for us to taste.

I ended up buying some chocolate coffee, ginseng coffee and cocoa which were all lovely. Next stop, the monkey forest. I'd twisted my ankle the day before, so I'd been limping around like an idiot and it really had started to hurt. No worries though, I powered on through. The monkey forest was really cool, they're sacred animals here so can go pretty much where ever they want. I did not want one on me though, so gave them a wide berth.

Look at the baby!

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

 After the monkey forest in Ubud, the rain had finally stopped and we went and had a drink up at the waterfall. Wyan told us the water was usually clear but because of the rain it had gotten muddy.

Our last stop was Jimbaran beach, where we'd been told you could get the best seafood in Bali. And it sure was good. Our table was on the beach, there was music and dancing and fireworks in the background and we were maybe 10ft away from the sea so the waves were crashing. No only that but the platters we had ordered were just delicious, as well as my drink being a young coconut, quite literally. It was paradise.

Before

And after.

These guys were great, they played Wild World for us!

That night we were all pretty exhausted, so we spent it drinking beer and laying in the pool watching movies. It's such a hard life huh? Me and the guys went on a mission for more beer at around 2am, because nothing ever shuts in Bali, and I ended up going in my pajamas. Excellent. We'd booked Wyan for the next day too and he was coming at 9am, which was a bit painful to say the least.

The next morning came however, and we went to see an hour long dance/play in Balinese masks and such, joined by a Canadian guy called Kevin. I can't say it was bad, the actors/dancers were very talented and the costumes were beautiful, but I definitely didn't understand what was going on and our guide sheets only offered a limited explanation of good and bad spirits, nonetheless I enjoyed it!

The tiger and the monkey.

Being chased by a witch.

The band.

A Ranga (a bad spirit)

Another Ranga

For lunch that day, Wyan showed us to a restaurant overlooking the second biggest(?) volcano is Bali which was surrounded by a beautiful lake. In all honesty, the food wasn't great and I'm sure Wyan got commission for taking us there, but the view was magnificent. 

Just breathtaking no?

Our final stop for the day was Padang-Padang beach, apparently the nicest beach in Bali. It was small and cute, the sand was white and the water clear. It was paradise. I swam, but hadn't changed before we left or bought a towel, so that was fun getting changed underneath my clothes and being wet the whole way home... so worth it though.

That night I stayed in because my ankle was giving me so much grief, I even bandaged it up for support. The others went out though, to Manic Organic to do salsa dancing. I wish I could of gone but I only would have hobbled around the dance floor, more ungracefully than I usually do. Besides that, I still hadn't recovered from my day of flying. In the morning though, I met the others at Sanur beach, where we spent most of the day laying on sun loungers drinking beer and listening to music. Like I say, a hard life. They were all having lunch when I found them but the heat is making me not want to eat so I had a liquid lunch. We wandered back into town and I was going to get a hot stone massage with Anna but actually couldn't be bothered to walk there it was so hot outside, so I stayed with the guys and had a beer and some homemade potato chips with aioli which were possibly the best bar snack I've ever had! After Anna came back, we decided on pizza for dinner. Actually everyone else did, I just had a beer, again. We started walking back then the guys decided to get their tickets to the Gili Islands, I'd been debating on whether to go with them or not so I went with them to book it and figured I'd decide on the way. When we got to the place, after a bit of haggling, the guy said 550,000rp, but 500,000rp for three people. I didn't really have any choice after that though huh? So despite having to be up at 6am to get to the harbour, we recruited Meagan from Australia and went out to Kuta that night to what Kevin called 'Five Floors of Fun' or officially, the Skydome. It really was five floors of bars and cheap drinks. We stuffed five of us into a four person taxi and Kevin bartered away with the driver for what turned out to be a rip-off price. Sadly, I went to the ATM and realised my credit card wasn't in my purse and freaked out just a little. Actually, I handled it really well and finally accepted that it probably hadn't bee stolen, more like I had left it in the ATM because in Bali, the ATM gives you your money first and takes ages to give you back your card. I wasn't the only one who had done it either. Decided not to worry about it too much and proceeded to get absolutely wasted. We ended up on the SkyTerrace which was the top floor, watching the fire dancers show when we realised we had lost the others, who after five floors of searching were nowhere to be found, so we got a taxi back. Drunken haggling was no better with us still paying 100,000rp back to Sanur. All was well.

Until the next morning when Mia woke us up to tell us our taxi driver to the harbour had been waiting for 20 minutes. Fuck. I'm not sure I've ever got dressed/packed so quickly in my whole entire life, but we did okay and got out pretty quickly. It seemed like ages to the harbour and I still hadn't cancelled my card because I have no money on my phone or internet, so I was worrying about that. We got to the harbour on 2 hours of sleep, and some random guy took my bag. Bali 101 is do not let people take your bag but I was just so exhausted. I was lucky, he worked for our boat company. After waiting for a bit we got on our speedboat across to the Gili Islands. I don't get seasick, but the speedboat mixed with last night's alcohol was deadly, so I curled up in my chair and went to sleep, sucking my thumb apparently as an incriminating picture reveals.

When we arrived we found some accommodation pretty quickly, our own bungalow without minutes of the beach for 200,000rp a night. Sweet as. We're on the middle sized Gili Island, of which there are three, and it is just phenomenal. People are so lovely, the guy who seems to run our bungalow is so friendly as is literally everyone else here. It's funny though, everyone will offer you weed. The guy at the bungalows was onto it within the first half an hour, then some other guy came along offering us mushrooms and telling us about the full moon parties and trying to talk to me about the drug scene in England, as if I have any idea. He finally took no for an answer and left though. So that was yesterday. We spent the rest of the day sitting around drinking, smoking, watching How I Met Your Mother and avoiding the rain. We did venture out for food and internet but the rain kinda put a downer on things.

Today started with breakfast on the beach then we took a walk around the whole island which at my guess took around 2 hours with a couple of stops for drinks, since it was so freaking hot outside. And that brings us up to now. I think we might go out tonight but if not then c'est la vie. I've probably missed out a million little details that I wanted to tell you all about but which I have forgotten, but my credit card problem has been fixed since I have my emergency one and my Mum is an absolute superstar and sorted it all out at home with cancelling the card etc. Then hopefully Dom will be able to bring the new card to Vietnam in 9 days - exciting stuff!

PS. I'm home in 27 days, who's excited?!