16. Homeward bound

30 days, 10 flights (once I've completed the final 2 tomorrow!), 9 hotels, one dive liveaboard, taxis, a coach and many many boats, 5 manta rays, 2 cuttle fish and so many puffer fish and this travel adventure is drawing to a close. I’m currently reclining (in a far less comfortable chair than that makes it sound) in Bali’s international airport awaiting my, currently, hour and a half delayed flight to Kuala Lumpur. There, I’m staying at an airport hotel over night then start the trek back to London, via a stop (hopefully only an hour or two in length) in Dubai airport. I shan’t be venturing out or officially entering the UAE, just passing through as form everything I’ve researched, they have still omitted to add in any soul and it remains a thoroughly unwelcoming place for me!

Bali and SE Asian Buddhist or Hindu countries, in general, remain, I think, my most favourite of travel destinations. There is so much soul, welcome, openness and incredible culture, practise and beauty here - along with reminders on how lucky I am and the desperately different lives, level of wealth and poverty and conditions people around the world live in.

For our final few days and second stop in Bali, we’ve been in a town called Seminyak. We came here to have ‘nightlife’ options for Shelley’s 40th as that’s what she wanted - and the birthday rules entirely dictate that you should get to do whatever you want for your birthday (and a week long trip and multiple cakes and dive celebrations for her in Komodo weren’t enough 😂). It’s been a really lovely, chilled out and prefect place to relax for our final few days of holiday after the amazing places and opportunities I’ve had.

Having said that, it is by far the least cultured, peaceful or authentic part of Bali that I’ve ever been to. This is tourist central and like it or not, it seems to be where the entire population of Australia prefer to decamp to for there holidays. I think this may be to the Australians what Majorca or the Costa del Sol are to the Brits who consider themselves ‘cultured travellers’ because they flew to Spain for up to 2 weeks and spent the entirety of their break in an all-inclusive hotel, complete with a heaving kids’ clubs and who’s restaurant serves a menu that consists of chicken nuggets, burgers, chips and fried breakfasts. Being judgy is obviously entirely unlike me but, just to share them, some of my favourite overheard Aussie tourist conversations these couple of days are: (all to be read in your best Australian accent…. On indeed, all tuw be rid een your biyst Aurst-ray-leeean axs-sent

A: this is the best holiday I’ve ever been on (a waiter has just delivered his cocktail to him in the pool while he shouts to his kid to go and play at the other end of the pool where it’s ok to be noisy, necks his entire drinks and puts his cup on the side of the pool where it is immediately washed over the edge and rolls away on the floor and is picked up by another waiter, who the man totally ignores).

B: you only arrived 3 hours ago!

A: yeah but I’m just going to do this all day every day for the next two weeks

B: yeah, fair point.

C: there’s something wrong with my phone

D: shit, what is it?

C: I’ve turned data on but it keeps coming up with the same message that’s wrong

D: have you turned it on and off again (world wide solution!)

C: yeah, but it just keeps popping up the same message

D: what is it saying?

C: it just keeps saying ‘welcome to Indonesia’ with a load of info on charges

D: oh, that’s not right

C: I know but I just can’t get it to know we’re in Bali.

The town here is also littered with Aussie sports bars, where the Aussies like to go and watch various sports fixtures including a sport called ‘Aussie rules’, which I think may be their own variation on a combination of football and rugby only absolutely mental and something no one else can even begin to understand.

Fortunately, there are also plenty of alternative venues and some really nice people also here and enough places to go to escape the most extreme of the Aussie tourists (who I suspect are what may be know as as ‘boguns’ in Australia). You just step a few feet out of the hotels and resorts and it’s mostly back to a marginally more authentic Indonesian place. There’s very little in the way of Indonesian food and everything seems to cater to the tourists who don’t want to try different things. We’ve been to come lovely restaurants - although meals here cost closer to £8-10 each than £5 - but they’ve all been from alternative cultures; Australian, Greek and Mexican!

Anyway, none of that makes me pleased to be leaving or for my adventure to be ending. I’m at the airport, I’ve found myself a coffee shop that sells what they called English breakfast tea - it’s not, at all, but it’s close enough to or be too dreadful - and am now on some of the chairs I assume they install with the full expectation that most flights here won’t run on time. They look like they going to be quite comfortable but I’m wondering if I’m a little too short to make them work well. They have footrests but are also leant back quite far. My feet only just reach the end of the chair when I sit back in it and I don’t seem to get any purchase so I just slide down until I would actually slither off the end until perhaps my feet hit the floor. Alternatively, I can bend my legs and prop myself up with my feet. The man in the chair next to me, whose mask keeps giving me a tiny fright and need to double-take, is clearly the correct build for relaxing in the seats! The man who has just sat down on the other side is long enough to hang one of his feet over the side to the floor and keep himself in place. He has also just done a bevy of sneezes, with his hands covering his mouth at least, then proceeded to wipe his hands up and down his trousers in an apparent attempt to manage the considerable amount of cleaning they required. I think for now, I’ll be off to get a refill of my not quite delicious but passable tea and hope my flight isn’t any further delayed ….

*****

We ended up being around an hour and half delayed so not too awful and immigration and baggage (it feels like a little miracle that I still have my bag!) was all quite smooth at a Kuala Lumpur airport. I’ve found my (ever so fancy!) airport hotel and got the kettle on (realised the one bottle of mineral water provided was not going to be enough, trotted back to reception with my empty drink bottle to request drinking water only to be told that a further two more bottles of mineral water would be delivered to my room!). In fact, this hotel is so fancy, you plug the entire tea tray in to get the kettle going. I wonder if it’ll actually make the tea for me too?! Got around 8 hours before I need to head back to check in for my big flights back to the UK.  My bag in Bali was 400g over its 25kg limit (it’s the souvenirs!) but the human at bag drop let me through. I’m fairly sure this airport has automated bag-drop desks so I need to calculate 400g to either ditch or add to my horrible heavy hand luggage!

So for now, or for these travels at least, I shall bid you farewell and leave this as my final report. I’ve got more adventures planned and in the pipeline within the next year already (which is how long I’ve paid for this blog site to run for - lucky you!). If you’ve made it all the way to the end with me or have checked in, looked at any photos even along the way or are still reading and have got to this end blog, let me know. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented, logged in and liked or sent me messages about the blog - it’s been genuinely lovely to know you’re there. Obviously it’s possible that you’ll all have seen the mother’s various comments, reflections, memories and questions that she likes to pose in the comments on most posts, presumably thinking that this is really all just one big private chat between her and I!

In roughly 30ish hours, I hope to be home and most likely climbing into my comfy bed - one of the things I really miss. I’m bringing home mostly clean clothes as an excellent lady in the laundry shop in Bali charged me £3.50 to wash most of my 5kg of clothes and swimwear and dive wear for me so they’re all bagged up and clean. Worth every penny. However, one (used to be white) shirt is very much stained with suncream, dirt, sweat and all sorts of niceties so that one’s coming straight you, Mum, for some of your bleaching magic. Thanks 😘