Wednesday, 8 July 2009
All good things must come to an end. All we can do now is to dream of our time amongst the Young and the Beautiful - not my description this time but a very presentable young Austrian girl we were talking to on the very last leg of our journey to Seminyak, Kuta, Bali. She expressed, enviously, what we had observed the beautiful athletic bodies of the surfers of both sexes without any spare fat. Kuta Lombok is clearly a Mecca for them, and a step up in challenge from Kuta Bali.
A Perama minibus bus picked us up as planned at 6.30am and took us to Mataram, where we used the 90 mins wait to walk into town and get some breakfast at a Warung - rice, chillier green beans, corn and peanuts was our selection, well We didn't know in advance about the chili!
Another minibus took us to the Indonesian Ferry boat, just 3.1$ each (compare that with the 132$ of the catamaran) for a trip lasting just over four hours, about the same time as our dugout sailing adventure. We have got quite used to sellers on public transport which occurs in all parts of the world, they tried to sell us all sorts of food and fruit and felt certain we would not resist the textiles (there were just two other tourists on the ferry) at prices which showed we had gravely overpaid for machine made textiles on the beach at Kuta Lombok, they wanted just 2$ for two attractive sarong lengths and that was before bargaining!
The Perama office in Padangbai was just a short walk along the only road out of the port but there we had to wait another hour for the minibus to Ubud. At Ubud a further wait for their minibus to Sanur, the airport and then Kuta. We were dropped close to Seminyak at a point easy to find a Bluebird taxi to our hotel at Agung Village, in fact we shared a taxi with the Austrian girl who was staying at Green Room very close by. She recommended the restaurant on the corner between us where you could choose your fish or seafood and buy it by weight at very reasonable prices. So not having eaten since our basic breakfast 12 hours previously we checked into our hotel and walked straight back to the restaurant.
Next day, Sunday, we phoned Ater and he took us to Denpasar where there was a month long series of arts events at Renon. After buying a Bali man's hat we went to see the free opera in a crowded hall, interesting and obviously humorous, but again spoiled by lack of understanding of Balinese let alone Indonesian!
For the evening we took a long taxi drive just past the airport to a place where no less than 19 fish Warungs which sell by weight then BBQ and serve on small tables on the beach, which seemingly stretch for miles. The place is called Jimbaran and is on the western (opposite) side of the Bukit peninsular from Nusa Dua. Ater called it his favourite fish restaurant. It was certainly a good experience once you had passed through the intense smokiness of the kitchens and gained access to the beach.
The next day we checked out of the hotel early so as to spend the morning at Ater's Seminyak English School whilst he taught four French ex-patriates Indonesian on a standard 20 day forty hour course with homework every day. I must say we were both impressed with his skill in getting to grips with the essentials of a language which was deliberately created to be a simple language for communication fwith Malay businessmen and seamen. With only a rudimentary knowledge of French - he used infinitives as if to underline the fact that all this verb conjugation is unnecessary. If it's yesterday, or already, it's past; and tomorrow, or later, is future. It was also obvious to us, which he confirmed that French pronunciation and phrasing (and probably Welsh) was a much better route to Indonesian than English. Lebih (more) he wrote on the whiteboard as
le
bih
as with many other words illustrating the correct pronunciation, phrasing and intonation with great efficiency.
I bought a small textbook 'Instant Indonesian' by Stuart Robson & Julian Millie which uses a similar technique using just 100 keywords as a basis to illustrate the structure of the language and from which they develop 1000 phrases going far beyond the normal phrasebook. I would recommend that book very highly I wish I had had it at the outset rather than my 'Teach yourself Indonesian' which was far too long winded, and my intention to learn vocabulary every day soon fell by the roadside. Their advertising blurb put me off initially 'just 100 words but you need to know which to learn' whereas in practice they introduced nearer a couple of thousand.
Joan had avoided riding a motorbike all holiday for the obvious fear of damage to her artificial knees if she came off - not easy for it is the obvious way to get around, and outside Kuta Bali the only taxis are motorbikes Ojek, or in flat country horse and cart Cidomo. 'Want transport?' they shout in say Ubud but they really mean they want to take you on tours in a people carrier, no-one wants to take you from A to B in the town. Joan broke the rule that very last afternoon at the personal request of Ater who wanted to take us to his favourite Italian restaurant 'Warung Italia' in Seminyak, which operated a 'pick and mix' hot buffet at lunchtime and excellent cooking it was. He told us that he had decided to close his Warung a la Asia, since he had found that his cook had been dishonest and felt the venture was taking too much of his time. He had known of the thieving when we ate there at the beginning of the holiday, but said nothing at the time.
I left him with a present of my remaining Indonesian currency which and proved a happy way of settling his additional expenditure. His last email said 'See you in Swansea', I wouldn't put it passed him. Just over twenty four hours after setting out by Bluebird taxi for the Kuta airport I was waiting for Joan outside Tesco, whilst she picked up essentials like decent bread, bacon and milk (all unknown in Asia outside international hotels) when Jan and Ivor from U3A French came by. That convinced me we were home.
A Perama minibus bus picked us up as planned at 6.30am and took us to Mataram, where we used the 90 mins wait to walk into town and get some breakfast at a Warung - rice, chillier green beans, corn and peanuts was our selection, well We didn't know in advance about the chili!
Another minibus took us to the Indonesian Ferry boat, just 3.1$ each (compare that with the 132$ of the catamaran) for a trip lasting just over four hours, about the same time as our dugout sailing adventure. We have got quite used to sellers on public transport which occurs in all parts of the world, they tried to sell us all sorts of food and fruit and felt certain we would not resist the textiles (there were just two other tourists on the ferry) at prices which showed we had gravely overpaid for machine made textiles on the beach at Kuta Lombok, they wanted just 2$ for two attractive sarong lengths and that was before bargaining!The Perama office in Padangbai was just a short walk along the only road out of the port but there we had to wait another hour for the minibus to Ubud. At Ubud a further wait for their minibus to Sanur, the airport and then Kuta. We were dropped close to Seminyak at a point easy to find a Bluebird taxi to our hotel at Agung Village, in fact we shared a taxi with the Austrian girl who was staying at Green Room very close by. She recommended the restaurant on the corner between us where you could choose your fish or seafood and buy it by weight at very reasonable prices. So not having eaten since our basic breakfast 12 hours previously we checked into our hotel and walked straight back to the restaurant.
Next day, Sunday, we phoned Ater and he took us to Denpasar where there was a month long series of arts events at Renon. After buying a Bali man's hat we went to see the free opera in a crowded hall, interesting and obviously humorous, but again spoiled by lack of understanding of Balinese let alone Indonesian!
For the evening we took a long taxi drive just past the airport to a place where no less than 19 fish Warungs which sell by weight then BBQ and serve on small tables on the beach, which seemingly stretch for miles. The place is called Jimbaran and is on the western (opposite) side of the Bukit peninsular from Nusa Dua. Ater called it his favourite fish restaurant. It was certainly a good experience once you had passed through the intense smokiness of the kitchens and gained access to the beach.
The next day we checked out of the hotel early so as to spend the morning at Ater's Seminyak English School whilst he taught four French ex-patriates Indonesian on a standard 20 day forty hour course with homework every day. I must say we were both impressed with his skill in getting to grips with the essentials of a language which was deliberately created to be a simple language for communication fwith Malay businessmen and seamen. With only a rudimentary knowledge of French - he used infinitives as if to underline the fact that all this verb conjugation is unnecessary. If it's yesterday, or already, it's past; and tomorrow, or later, is future. It was also obvious to us, which he confirmed that French pronunciation and phrasing (and probably Welsh) was a much better route to Indonesian than English. Lebih (more) he wrote on the whiteboard asle
bih
as with many other words illustrating the correct pronunciation, phrasing and intonation with great efficiency.
I bought a small textbook 'Instant Indonesian' by Stuart Robson & Julian Millie which uses a similar technique using just 100 keywords as a basis to illustrate the structure of the language and from which they develop 1000 phrases going far beyond the normal phrasebook. I would recommend that book very highly I wish I had had it at the outset rather than my 'Teach yourself Indonesian' which was far too long winded, and my intention to learn vocabulary every day soon fell by the roadside. Their advertising blurb put me off initially 'just 100 words but you need to know which to learn' whereas in practice they introduced nearer a couple of thousand.
Joan had avoided riding a motorbike all holiday for the obvious fear of damage to her artificial knees if she came off - not easy for it is the obvious way to get around, and outside Kuta Bali the only taxis are motorbikes Ojek, or in flat country horse and cart Cidomo. 'Want transport?' they shout in say Ubud but they really mean they want to take you on tours in a people carrier, no-one wants to take you from A to B in the town. Joan broke the rule that very last afternoon at the personal request of Ater who wanted to take us to his favourite Italian restaurant 'Warung Italia' in Seminyak, which operated a 'pick and mix' hot buffet at lunchtime and excellent cooking it was. He told us that he had decided to close his Warung a la Asia, since he had found that his cook had been dishonest and felt the venture was taking too much of his time. He had known of the thieving when we ate there at the beginning of the holiday, but said nothing at the time.I left him with a present of my remaining Indonesian currency which and proved a happy way of settling his additional expenditure. His last email said 'See you in Swansea', I wouldn't put it passed him. Just over twenty four hours after setting out by Bluebird taxi for the Kuta airport I was waiting for Joan outside Tesco, whilst she picked up essentials like decent bread, bacon and milk (all unknown in Asia outside international hotels) when Jan and Ivor from U3A French came by. That convinced me we were home.
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