travel diary — day 265

In australia, travel on 16 December 2009 tagged air north, australia, bali, beach, beer, bemo, blackout, cafe, chess, chicken satay, coffee, darwin, delay, denpasar, dorms, drinking, flight, homestay, hotel, immigration, jetstar, kakadu trek, kennis, kuta, lonely planet, medewi, minibus, negara, nightmare, passengers, photography, room mate, singapore, sleep, surf town, surfers, swim, taxi, tickets, travel, wifi, yelling, yha, yobos with no comments

day 261 — today was my last day in aus­tralia. i packed and checked out of my room. i had a cof­fee in town and met ken­nis for lunch. she’d just returned from a kakadu trek, which she said was fant­astic. we had chinese for lunch and spent the after­noon together. we chat­ted until my air­port bus arrived, i said good­bye and went to the airport.

i want to tell a strange story. dur­ing my stay in the yha (youth hostel aus­tralia) there was another guy in my dorm room. our room had 8 beds and this one guy was in the bunk oppos­ite mine.

i’d been there one night when i was awoken in the early hours of the morn­ing. the guy in the oppos­ite bed was yelling in his sleep. he was yelling “help! help me!”. then he’d kick the wall or shout. this went on for about 30 minutes or so. then he finally quietened down. i ignored it, as one of those strange things, and for­got about it.

the next night he did it again. this time much worse. he was shout­ing and yelling in his sleep. he said quite a few things, includ­ing “help! help me!” again. he hit the wall next to him and a few times he kicked the bunk bed above him (which had someone sleep­ing in it). then the guy got out of bed and star­ted walk­ing around the room, talk­ing and shout­ing … and he was still asleep!!

hon­estly, i was actu­ally a little scared. i didn’t know what the hell was going on. even­tu­ally (maybe 30–40 minutes later) he went back to bed and quietened down. i got back to sleep.

in the morn­ing the other guys in the dorm room star­ted talk­ing about the guy. i was hav­ing a laugh about it, but another roomie was angry. a third roomie imme­di­ately moved out and reques­ted another dorm room. the guy who had the yelling night­mares woke up and i told him about what he’d been doing. he said ‘sorry’ and actu­ally knew that he had this prob­lem. i felt sorry for him … hav­ing this prob­lem and not being able to con­trol it … and, espe­cially, not know­ing whether you’d slept quietly or had been noisy.

i told him it was cool … even though i knew the other guys in the room were unhappy about it. i was leav­ing any­way, so i didn’t care. poor bas­tard. that’d be a really shitty prob­lem to carry with you … espe­cially trav­el­ing and sleep­ing in dorms.

when i went to check in, jet­star were indig­nant that i needed an out­bound flight. they refused to check me in. although i was angry, they were reas­on­ably help­ful and let me use their inter­net to try and get an out­bound ferry or flight. i couldn’t book any­thing online so i had to buy a $75 flight to singa­pore. i was pissed off at hav­ing to spend the money, but had no other choice. i went through immig­ra­tion and cus­toms and waited for the flight.

the flight was delayed three times (mech­an­ical fail­ure and then time to shift lug­gage to a new plane). the other pas­sen­gers were get­ting angry at the delays and spent the extra time drink­ing. as a res­ult, many pas­sen­gers had drunk a fair bit of beer by the time the plane finally got in the air. i was stuck sit­ting next to two drunk young guys who yelled and shouted to people all over the plane. the flight was hor­rible, the food had to be paid for, the guys next to me were stu­pid and drunk, and i was still angry at the money i’d paid for the second flight.

when i arrived in bali, immig­ra­tion never asked me about the out­bound flight. they didn’t care. i even asked the immig­ra­tion officer and he said they never ask. god fuck­ing damn it!!! i made the decision never to fly jet­star ever again. hear that jet­star? fuck you! you can stick your shitty budget air­line up your arse.

*i dis­covered too late that i could have got a cheaper flight (air north) to east timor. i’d really wanted to go to dili instead of bali, and that pissed me off too.

i shared a taxi into town with a cana­dian couple. it was nearly mid­night by the time we arrived in kuta (thanks to jetstar’s con­stant flight delays) and i stayed in a hotel i had found in lonely planet. it was late, i was angry and tired, and i wanted to sleep.

day 262 — my first day abroad again — i got up and went to find the beach. i was not in a beach front hotel (there are none near where i was) and i walked through the nar­row roads to the beach. i went for a long walk along the beach and watched the surfers. the café next to my hotel had wifi, so when i returned from my walk i had some lunch and checked email. i had an after­noon sleep, fol­lowed by din­ner and a swim in the hotel pool. i read my book and then went to sleep.

day 263 — i went for another long walk along the beach. this time i took my cam­era and pho­to­graphed some of the surf­ing. i got a shoes­tring south-east asia lonely planet. it was stink­ing hot, so i went for a swim in the pool, relaxed at the hotel and decided to spend the after­noon catch­ing up on chess games.

day 264 — i spent the morn­ing hunt­ing around for inform­a­tion about how to get to medewi. the tour­ist offices were quot­ing ridicu­lously high prices. i put my pants and didgeri­doo bag in for alter­a­tions, went for a swim, read my book, checked email and got a fairly early night.

day 265 — i picked up my pants and bag, packed and checked out.

i figured the cheapest way to get to medewi was by bemo (local minibuses which act as pub­lic trans­port). i got a bemo from kuta to den­pasar. once there, i had to get a dif­fer­ent bemo which took me all the way to medewi. the whole trip cost me about $7. the reason i’d decided to go there was that i heard it was a small, surf town which was largely off the tour­ist radar. i was com­pletely caught off guard by how small medewi was. there was one decent hostel, two small ‘homestay’ style places and an expens­ive hotel on the beach. there was also a small res­taur­ant and some ultra-cheap rooms around the corner on the beach. medewi was one street, mostly vacant land. i hadn’t brought enough money and there were no facil­it­ies in the single street town. so, i checked into the hotel and jumped on another bemo to the nearest town, neg­ara, which was 20kms away. it cost me about 50 cents each way. i got off the bemo in neg­ara, took money out at the nearest atm, bought a coke, and walked a few blocks to the bemo stop going back towards medewi.

when i returned, i went for a walk along the beach. then i returned to my hotel, had a nice chicken satay and rice for din­ner, with beer, and read my book by candle­light (since the entire street had lost power since the early even­ing). i got talk­ing to a south african guy, who was there to surf, and then i went to bed.

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