Sorry, pics coming I hope. When I find card reader etc.

I’m at Kintamani now, at the Batur Mountain View Hotel. It rained heavily at Kuta overnight and it was still raining when we left at 10am. It’s grey and pretty cloudy up here, but no rain (yet). A big mist/cloud rolled in across the lake just after I arrived at 3pm. At 9pm it’s cool! I was sitting at a table area open to the view and it was chilly, and I don’t mean chilli.

I’ve been driven here by Yanick, my friend Geoff’s Balinese transport man. His car is a new Toyota Fortuner 4WD, quite an expensive vehicle, I think. How do these Balinese guys afford to drive such cars? They’ve all got them, flash, new, shiny SUVs. Making money from us tourists, obviously. It cost me Rp.600,000, A$60 to get here. I was hoping that might cover the return trip, but no such luck.

The hotel girl asked me how I’m getting back on Tuesday. I said, “Yanick, at Rp.400,000.” She offers a driver for this trip to Ubud for Rp.300,000. Bargain, bargain, haggle, haggle, I think I’ll take her offer because it doesn’t seem sensible for Yanick to drive all the way up here again, just to take me to Ubud.

We got here at about 3pm and wow, I should have expected it, but steps! This hotel is built down a steep slope and there are steps everywhere. I’d estimate I came down about 30 steps to get to my room and there are about 12 steep steps to get back up to the dining area. I find this very tough going. My right knee nearly gives out on me (sharp pain) and I have to be super careful of my balance. Therefore I won’t be venturing far from my room tomorrow. Huh, I had visions of walking up to the main road and along it, looking for photos, but we’re a good 500m down a steep side road. I just can’t handle the many steps and steep slopes, I’m afraid.

It’s lucky there’s so much to see, then. Trees are in the way, but I can see Trunyan way in the distance (30Km?) on the other side of the lake. I’ve got some good shots already, I hope.

It’s too far and too late for photos, but fireworks are going off on the far side of the valley. At first I wondered what those red flashes and intermittent bangs were, but then I saw a sky rocket and click!

I had a sleep when I got here and I slept two hours! I was awoken to the sound of loud, LOUD, crickets, or a frog. I suspect a frog, because there were regular BINGs, but the hotel people say no frogs here. I find that hard to believe.

We stopped on the way at a coffee and tea plantation, where I tried Kopi Luwak for the first time. This where the raw beans are given to civet cats to eat (I have photos) and they digest the coating and shit the hard inner of the beans out as indigestible. The beans are then cleaned and roasted and are supposed to taste better. Oh, yeah. My palate is not good enough to tell any more, I think. I tried both Luwak and normal Bali coffee together and sure, there’s a difference, but I don’t think either is as good as my Italian capsule coffee at home. The cup of Luwak coffee cost me Rp.50,000 ($5), by the way.

We stopped for lunch (for me only) at a nice restaurant, near Mas, I think. I was just enjoying the Balinese music playing on the speakers when LOUD music started up on the grassed area below, Western style music. Huh.

So now I’ve eaten: omelette for starter, then nasi campur, and a BIntang besar, and it’s time to try to find a TV channel to watch. Crumbs 60 channels, but most of them empty, blank, and all the others local Indonesian programs. The PayTV box captions show that there should be CNN etc available, but nothing shows up.

As for internet, sure, I can wi-fi connect to their router, but it just shows “No Internet”, so forget that. To ask, I would have to go back up those steps. No can do. No phone in the room, no fridge, no power point near this table to charge the laptop, no lamps next to the bed to read by. Light switch on wall opposite the beds. Only one small glass in the bathroom. No bottled water. I’d like some hot water to make my chamomile tea, but how do I ask? There’s no phone, so am I supposed to go outside and shout? Bit annoying for A$50 per night. Oh well.

Singapore cranes (C) PJ Croft 2015

Hooboy, walkin’, walkin’, tired. I’ve walked nearly 3Km today. Many people would say, “Is that all?” but for me it’s hard going and way beyond normal. I slept well last night and that helped, but I soon tire, within 5 minutes.

I walked from the hotel off Jl. Bakung Sari to Discovery Mall on Jl. Kartika Plaza, looking for an SD adapter that will let me get my pics and video off the Panasonic camera. No luck, of course. I even tried an Apple computer store in case the all powerful Macs might do it, but, nah. Therefore, sorry about the relative lack of new Bali pics, but at the moment I can’t access them.

Then about 1345 I asked at the Kura Kura (KK) bus counter when the next bus was. Ooops, just missed one, next one is 20 mins away. OK, I’ll go and sit down in the mall.

15 mins later the girl came and found me to tell me the bus was there. Wow, very pleased with that service. That’s the thing here, everyone wants to help, to be polite and friendly. I wish there was more of that at home. One Perth airport woman bordered on the sarcastic to me last Sunday morning. It wasn’t friendly and polite at all.

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I caught the KK bus because I wanted to do a big loop as a sightseeing tour. Good plan, but 2½ hrs later  I just wanted to get home. The tour was instructive, shall I say, but we were just bogged down in heavy traffic all the time, travelling at walking pace or less. The seats were small and hard, the vision was obstructed by a low window line and the KK music was repetitive and boring.

I was amazed at the Legian/Seminyak areas. I had a mental image of um, “normal” width roads and relatively widely spaced shops and hotels. After all, it’s 35 years since I was last up there.  Instead I saw narrow, traffic choked streets, Kuta mark II; endless shops jammed side by side all selling the same things; tens, no hundreds of thousands of motorbikes both on the streets and parked, like rows of sharks teeth; and traffic jams. It’s almost impossible to get around. Oh well, seen it, that’s enough for me.

Had a chat with an elderly Dutch couple on the bus. He’s driven a camper van from Sydney to Melbourne, then to Uluru, then flown to Cairns, all on a holiday. He knows Australia quite well. He learnt to drive in Surinam, a former Dutch colony in South America, where they drive on the left. Curious (about driving on the left, I mean). Japan does too, and here in Indonesia, and Malaysia, and India, and Singapore, and the UK and Australia. So take that, USA.)

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Singapore yellow (C) PJ Croft 2015

Ooops, 7pm and I nearly fell asleep. Time to walk out for dinner. There’s a restoran right next to the hotel entrance.

I bought a Blu-Ray movie today, Lone Survivor, just to see if they’re really Blu-Rays. I can play them on this laptop. The price was Rp.50,000 or $5 approx. Plus two normal DVDs, Left Behind and Last Knights. I’ve belatedly realised that I think I’ve seen the latter one. Oh well, at $1, too bad.

I can’t be bothered finishing San Andreas. What a waste of good plastic.

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Normal Karma will be resumed as soon as possible. (C) PJ Croft 2015

Another sleepless night! Not entirely sleepless, I guess, I do vaguely remember dreaming, but I felt awful when I got up at 0730. Had my first shower in this tiny, claustrophobic shower recess. No bath mat, slippery tiles, move very, very carefully. Not good. At least the bed’s comfortable, though not soft.

Then found I hadn’t asked for paid breakfast for the room. They want $7.50 for buffet, choice of Corn Flakes or Corn Flakes, watermelon or honeydew, brown or white bread. At least there’s cheese, but it must be local – it’s bland and tasteless. If I want bacon and eggs, that’s extra. I think I’ll walk out onto the street for my remaining brekkies. I’ll get better value, I reckon.

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I went back to bed with another valerian and I feel better now at 1230. Rain! Beautiful rain. Heavy and steady for about an hour, I think. Nice and cool now. I love it. I think they need it here, too.

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To make myself tired I watched the movie San Andreas at about 3am this morning (on the laptop, my bought DVDs). It’s another ‘camera in a cinema’ illegal copy. The quality is awful! A shadow comes across and repositions the camera at times.

But the movie is a joke anyway. It’s terrible! Badly acted, based on a love story and the search for the daughter among all the ruins of LA and San Francisco. No attempt whatever to show anything about the social and political effects of a massive 9.5 Richter earthquake that ruins California. It’s the equivalent of a cat-up-a-tree fire brigade story, all emotion and gooeyness. Don’t bother. The effects are done purely because they can, I reckon. Way overdone. It’ll go straight into the bin when I’ve finished it. If I finish it.

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… baby that was years ago,
I left it all behind for my,
Cheap wine and a three day pass
Cheap wine and a three day pass
Come on, come on, come on

Cold Chisel

i went to Bali Mall Galeria this morning and bought a three day Kura Kura bus pass. $27 for unlimited travel today, tomorrow and Sunday. Trouble is I’m being taken up to Kintamani at 10am on Sunday, so that day will go to waste. I got this bus back to this street from the Galeria, so I’ve used it today. I’d better do some serious bus travelling tomorrow.

The ‘Cheap Wine’ is actually cheap spirits. In the Galeria, spirits are half Perth prices, I reckon. Average prices for whisky, gin, vodka, bourbon etc US$21 or A$27. I didn’t buy any – I’m not a big drinker any more, but it’s an eye opener.

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Crumbs, there are two women sitting virtually outside my sliding doors to the pool and they are talking, talking, talking non stop! Bloody hell. There is just no break in the conversation. Loud. I hope they pack up soon.

Combined with pool noise, loud bangs periodically from somewhere out the back, a wailing, yowling cat (all night last night) and music from the bar/dining area and this hotel is noisy.

Sanur Bali (C) PJ Croft 2015

Glum, glum, gloom.

First, when I checked out of the Aquarius Hotel in Sanur this morning, they charged me Rp.650,000 ($65 approx.) per night. I was sure when I booked it was Rp.500,000 or thereabouts, and for the past few days I’ve been considering what I should write for a review based on that price. To be charged a higher price is very annoying. But I had no way to prove it – my laptop was in my bag and I didn’t have the printout of my booking sheet. I just had to make a polite protest and say I’ll come back to them about it. That upset me right away.

Then I taxiied to what I thought was going to be a good standard hotel that I’d booked in Kuta, The Oasis. I was going by the photos on the internet. But when the taxi arrived at the Kuta address, we found the hotel’s down a lane so narrow that the taxi couldn’t go in. No problem I guess, there was a guy there to pull my bags. (Gawd, is that all he does all day?)

The lobby looked a bit gloomy as soon as I walked in, not the standard I expected. Then I’d asked for (booked) a first floor room, but there’s no lift. I’d assumed from the internet pics that there would be one. OK, ground floor, but that costs another Rp.50,000 (it’s only $5!) a night.

As soon as I saw the room I felt bad. It’s smallish and the bathrooms are tiny. Bathrooms, plural? Yeah, shower on one side of the entry, washbasin and toilet on the other. And I have to sit at an angle on the toilet – there’s not enough room for my legs, and I’ve got short legs. An Aussie 6-footer would hate this!

The fridge is small and I thought it wouldn’t be cold enough for my insulin, but after a few hours, it’s just adequate. It’s at max cold, though.

There’s no table or easy chairs! I’m writing this at a small pullout table just big enough to take the laptop, and sitting on a plastic chair from outside. The table is too low. My back is hunched and it’s awful. I’ll have to ask for a table to be brought in.

Aaaah, thank goodness. When I first plugged my UniPal universal battery charger in, the plug kept falling out. After a few of these power glitches, the charger wouldn’t power up. Disaster. I need it for both my cameras and my phone. But I’ve just fiddled with it yet again and suddenly it’s working. Phew!

Oh, I forgot to mention, this hotel required payment up front. Yeah, in advance. Grrrrrr. That means if I complain, I’m stuffed. They’ve got my money. This is bad enough that I’d consider moving somewhere else, but that would be difficult now.

OK, bad start to the day. Walked out along the alley, 25m, and I’m in a street just chock full of shops and restorans. Including a Circle K mini market right there. Good, shampoo.

Lunch of nasi campur and a small beer, then back to the room for a 1hr nap, then a swim. Boy, this pool was made for water walking. It must be 50m long but only 1.3m deep, max. That means you can just walk the length and back. This is good for me, the exercise my doctor recommends.

It’s 6pm and loud disco style music is blaring away. Uh oh. I’m in a room closest to the reception and restaurant. I hope this isn’t going to be a problem.

And, the bathroom (basin and toilet section) floor is wet. It’s a leak from that awful douche device, I think. I hate this. As well, there’s nowhere to hang the towel. No towel rail or hooks at all. There’s no wardrobe – at first I thought there were no coat hangers, but I’ve found a kind of chromed prong sticking out from the wall in the room with about four coat hangers. No ice cube tray in the fridge either. No kettle for my chamomile tea. This is terrible! They’ll get a bad review from me. I wouldn’t stay here again in a fit.

I’ve just spent an hour trying to find an acceptable wi-fi internet speed and this one seems to be just acceptable. There are six choices, I assume spaced along the block. One of the weak ones seems the fastest. Here goes.

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I forgot to mention: I finished The Martian movie last night. It’s good, and I’ll buy the Blu-Ray version and watch it again, but it’s nowhere near as good as the book. The book is one of the best I’ve read in years. It’s not literature, but it is great writing. It’s the stream of thoughts of an astronaut who’s accidentally left for dead on Mars after the other five have to an emergency blast-off (oh twaddle – I can’t believe it would have happened and the scientific opinion of the movie is that a dust storm that fierce couldn’t happen – the “air” is too thin).

Anyway, he survives for nearly two years, growing his own food, generating oxygen, making water and so on, solving real scientific and engineering problems. This is the best thing – new problems come up and he thinks it through each time, coming up with credible solutions. It’s a bit techo, for sure, but to sustain this through 450 pages or whatever is great writing, I say. I highly recommend reading the book. Probably before you see the movie. I dunno.

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Oooooh, this is so uncomfortable. The plastic chair is cutting into my legs. I don’t know how I’m going to survive 10 days in this hotel. I hate it already.

Cool dog Minnie.

I’ve just been reading about dogs. Someone commented on the origin of dingoes.

As in: “Didjer goada the rices Saddy?” “Nah, dingo”.

I laughed out loud.

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I’ve just had lunch at the Sports Bar across the street. One of the regulars, a big Aussie woman who I’ve seen there each night, came over and asked me how I am. I said, “Good thanks.” She said, “You seemed to have a tummy upset the other night.” I said, “Oh, I’m fine now, it was nothing. You seem to like this place.”

She said, “I’m the owner.”   Aaaaaah.  Her name’s Carol.

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The hotel staff are cleaning all the pebblecrete paving. They all said hello as I walked past and, thinking myself clever, I said, “Santik, ya?” thinking it meant clean, healthy. Hah! So much for my Indonesian. It means flint. Where did I get that from? I seem to remember it from some sign, years ago. Anyway, clean is bersih. (Not cantik. I know that one. I’m thinking it all the time when I see these local ladies. Cantik, cinta!)

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I added a whole, little bowl of raw, full strength chili to my nasi goreng. Now I’m feeling a little bit of tummy upset.

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And now the sun’s out. This is the first time. Maybe I’ll get a bit of that Bali tan.

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A final bit for the day. It’s been pretty quiet and I head over to a different hotel in Kuta at midday tomorrow. Jalan Bakung Sari.

I’ve just heard (on Facebook) of the death last April of a really nice Dutch guy who was the supervisor in charge of film processing and film makeup (inserting the film commercials) for many years at Channel 7. He was unfailingly polite, a real gentleman. He used to bob his head to me and say, “Good morning, Pe-ter”, in his Dutch/European accent. He had a goatee beard and for years I used to think his surname was Vermeer – he looked as if he should have been an artist. It was really Vermazen, Jan Vermazen. I didn’t realise he was born and grew up in Indonesia. He died in April and left instructions that there was to be no funeral and no tributes. Wow, Jan, you really were a self effacing gentle man. RIP.

Sanur beach, Bali, midnight. The weird colour is due to sodium vapour street lighting.

I’m writing this at 5.30am after another sleepless night. I just couldn’t get to sleep! Maybe I dozed, but it didn’t feel like it. I’ll crash after breakfast, but that’ll mess up the pattern. Dang.

Anyway, I’m just reading the ABC News report of the Geminids meteor shower last night and some Australian locations got some good shots. See the ABC News web site.

I actually went down to the beach-front here in Sanur at 11.30pm and sat there for a good hour trying to photograph anything that happened, but it was a waste of time. The air is so cloudy and misty that I couldn’t see any stars, let alone any meteorite trails. The shot above shows what I was seeing.

Sanur midnight.

These are terrible photos. I shouldn’t show them, but you can see the clouds. The title refers to my track record of years of missing astronomical events for one reason or another. This is just another dead duck night. All is not lost, there are two more nights of it to come, apparently. I’ll try again tonight (Tuesday night).

The camera was on a tripod but the shots are still shaky. Why? Because the adapter plate won’t lock firmly into the base, for some reason. It was too dark to see what was going on, so I’ll try to fix it today. Also, I had all sorts of trouble getting my Olympus camera to focus. I only got one or two acceptable ones. The Panasonic FZ1000 seemed much better from what I could see in the darkness, but I still can’t get the pics off the SDXC card yet, not until I can buy a proper adapter. Maybe I’ll go into Denpasar today.

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I went across the road for drinks and dinner last night and the couple I saw on Sunday night were there again. It’s a real Aussie hangout. Gawd, we’re an ugly lot! We’re all overweight, me included, but some are gross. Terribly dressed, ugly people. But we spend the big dollars, don’t we?, so to the Balinese, we’re all walking ATMs.

The lady told me about a homestay place just nearby called the Duck Inn, which she highly recommends at $33 per night. It’s run by an Australian woman and her Balinese husband. Maybe I’ll go and have a look for future reference.

I’ll also go and see if I can find the British/Australian/Perth guy I dealt with in early 2011 over a property here. Really nice guy. I know where his villa is, but I suspect age and infirmity might have caught up with him. Crikey, he was 83 when I knew him. I heard his wife had breast cancer.

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 My run of faulty appliances continues! Last Friday I was in the chemist and noticed a thing called Pain-eeze or something like that. It’s a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Neural Stimulation) pad, about a hand span in size, with sticky pads that you place on any painful area and it stimulates the nerves and muscles to stop the pain.

My right shoulder and forearm have become painful recently, I assume due to prolonged mouse use, so I made a spur of the moment decision to buy one, at $55.

The first time I used it, it seemed quite good. It runs off a CR2032 button battery, and you press +/- signed buttons to set the stim level. It all worked fine on Friday and seemed to help.

I brought it with me and I tried to use it again yesterday, but it’s dead! Damn. No stimulation at all. What’s happened? Maybe the battery has gone dead? If I were at home I could measure it, but here I’ll just have to buy another battery to test that theory. It won’t cost much. But why would the battery run down when it’s not in use? It switches off automatically after 20 mins of use and it’s kept in a hard plastic case, so the switch shouldn’t have been activated accidentally. Maybe it was. See the next exciting installment of this saga.

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 8.30pm: back from dinner across the road. Prawn cocktail $3.50 and chicken curry $4.55. Not bad but nothing to write home about (sez he, writing home about it 🙂 ) One more night here: I must venture further afield. There’s another restaurant about 50m further up the road called Nook. It looks good. Must try it tomorrow night.

I slept during the day to make up for last night, but that’ll mess me around tonight, I fear. I brought a box of chamomile tea with me. That seems to help. I also had another good swim in the pool today, again as the only one. Then a fairly sweaty walk down to Jalan Tamblingan to buy anti-cramp medication (at $7 for 10 tablets, it’s worth a try. Sez he, assuming it won’t poison me or interact with my other meds :-} ).

I found a DVD shop and bought The Martian (for $1), plus a 2-disc set of The News Room; a 3-disc set of a TV series called Dark Matter; and the new movie called San Andreas, about an LA earthquake. Seven discs for $5. Can’t argue with that. I’ve already found an oddity with The Martian: Chinese characters keep appearing at the bottom of the screen and the pictures, although quite good, are a bit soft. Aha, it’s a copy of a pirated copy for the Chinese market. Oh well, I’ll still buy the Blu-Ray version at home when it comes out so they’ll get my money.

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I said I’d go to the beach again tonight at midnight to see if I can see any meteors, but I don’t think so — I don’t think it would be any clearer than last night. No chance, in other words.

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I’m just reading an article about the search for Extra Terrestrial radio signals that’s ramping up in Australia using the Parkes radio telescope. There’s a lot of scepticism, even among scientists, about this. Many think it’s a waste of time and money. Despite decades of searches so far, nothing has ever been found.

To me, it’s not hard to see why:

• The Earth is a very young planet, 4.5bn years old, in terms of the length of the universe, 13.5 billion years. That’s 4.5/13.5 = 33.3%.
• Humans have only been on Earth (since we evolved, I mean) for about 60,000 years out of the 4.5 billion years of the age of the earth. That’s 0.0013% of the age of the Earth. That’s a blink of an eye, nothing.
• We’ve only been looking and listening for about 50 years. That takes our listening window down to 50/60,000 or about 0.001% of the 0.0013% of the age of the Earth. That’s not even a nanosecond, not even a picosecond, a tiny, tiny time slice.
• I seriously think we’ll blink out of existence within another 1,000 years or so. Our decline is happening already. There will be a mass extinction for sure. We will die out.
• That means for Earth, the time slice, the window that we’ve been looking, is infinitesimally tiny, and we’ll disappear soon in galactic terms.
• The distances in the universe are so huge that radio signals, obeying the inverse square law, are so weak as to be beneath the noise floor within a small radius around us. in other words, even though we’re listening hard, it would take a new concept in radio astronomy to hear anything above the noise. Might happen, but not this year or next.
• I seriously do believe we are not alone, and that other worlds have come into existence with intelligent life on them. But they face the same statistics we do: they blink into existence, flare like us, then die away, just as we will.
• The chances of two life flare ups occurring simultaneously, within a listenable radius, are therefore even tinier than the tiny percentages I’ve shown so far. Almost no chance, in other words.
• So I’m sorry to say, although I firmly believe other life has existed and will exist, there’s almost zero chance we’ll meet up with it.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

I slept so well last night that when I awoke, the dawn was already over. I missed that one, but I’ve just walked down to the beach and back and it’s so cloudy and misty that there’s no chance of any good photos.

I walked to the beach, 200m, because this hotel doesn’t have a restoran. They have an arrangement with a beach restaurant so you just present a voucher. (I’m beginning to see why this hotel only has one star. It’s fine. More on that later.)  It was a nice brekky and the exercise does me a heap of good. I’ve seen the pool here and although it’s small and looks shallow, I’ll go in after this.

Technology’s marvellous, ain’t it? I’m sitting here listening to ABC Radio 720Perth as if I were at home. No wires – the laptop connects to the internet by wi-fi with minimum fuss and it’s faster than I get at home.

I took some shots at the beach but I’ve just discovered that my SD card adapter can’t cope with my SDXC UHS3 card. I’ll have to use a cable. Coming up. (Later: Grrrr, I’ve realised that the Panasonic camera uses its own special “USB” connector and I didn’t bring that cable. I’ve never had to connect to the camera before so I just didn’t think of it. OK, I’ll have to find a computer shop and buy a new USB adapter card to cope with SDXC cards.)

I weakened on the way back and made the mistake of talking to a shop owner about T shirts. I didn’t want one, but in a fit of madness, I found myself inside the shop, seated, trying on besar T-shirts, 4XL. Three against one, all the women imploring me to buy. But the opening price was Rp. 380,000. What?! That’s A$38. I said NO, that’s more expensive than at home. No way. I offered 50,000. Ooooh, sad faces. And so it went on. The final price was Rp. 200,000 = A$20 approx. And I didn’t even want a T-shirt! It’s not bad, it’s heavyweight cotton, a pale grey-green Billabong design. Plus, they all wanted a tip – “You give one dollar, mister?” That added another Rp. 30,000. I’ve never done this before. I weakened. It’s Xmas, I suppose.

On the other hand, I was rummaging through the pockets of my venerable shoulder bag at the brekky table and I found 85,000 rupiahs. That was a bonus. I had no idea it was there. Therefore redistributing some of it seems reasonable at Xmas time.

That venerable bag has been with me since 1990, I think, when I bought it at Tang’s, Orchard Rd in Singapore. It’s a great bag, just the right size and obviously well made and durable. Real leather flaps and fittings. Good value.

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At breakfast I was reading the Weekend Australian magazine, an article about the Australian born Lebanese guy in Sydney who drives Ferraris and thinks he can take over an entire street for his wedding reception. The article is scathing in its exposure of the corruption which is going on in these Sydney suburbs which are virtually controlled by Lebanese & Chinese property developers. They have gained election to the council and they just make the rules as they go along, enriching themselves and their friends, ignoring the community. How do they get elected and continue being re-elected? Why does the community allow them to do this stuff? I guess the answer is that people don’t vote in local government elections and the powerful people organise their friends to vote for them. Ordinary people could put a stop to all this if they (1) knew what was really going on, and (2) got off their backsides and voted for decent, honest candidates at council elections.

However, let’s never forget that this Liberal federal government is running a hugely expensive royal commission trying to show corruption in trade unions and to link it to the Labor Party. Trying to damage Bill Shorten.

But they just ignore this blatant corruption by property developers, most of whom are Liberal Party supporters. The former NSW Liberal Government even passed legislation which gave councils and property developers carte blanche to change rules to benefit themselves. Will we ever see the Liberal government trying to expose that? Not likely. These people are in each others’ pockets. Corruption is rampant in Liberal ranks. Bloody hypocrites!

I recommend reading this article. It’s an eye opener.

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Back to this hotel: it’s only rated at 1 star, yet the rate is approx. A$50 a night. I chose it for location, really, and because the photos of the rooms look really nice. It lives up to the photos. The room is big and the bed is a huge four poster complete with canopy and curtains. The mattress is a bit hard, but OK.

As I said, it turns out not to have a restaurant which is a little disappointing, but there’s the Sports Bar directly across the street and a mass of restaurants 200m down the street at the beachfront.

The bathroom is good – all modern, with a good shower. No standing in a bath to have a shower, which I hate.

I’ve just spent nearly an hour in the pool. It’s small, only about 10m x 8m, but adequate. I was the only one there. There are guests here, but it’s very quiet. The pool is good exercise. I just went slowly round and round, using muscles that rarely get used. At one stage both legs cramped, the muscles at the back of the thighs, and they would not unlock for five minutes or more. Oooww. Slowly they came good. I’m really having trouble with cramps.

So far I’d say the price is too high for what you get, but it’s about par for the area. I’ll think about that more, later.

I had a slight panic this morning. I realised I’d locked the safe and messed up the procedure when I set the code, so I couldn’t open it again. I had visions of having to pay a locksmith. But the hotel guy peeled off a label on the safe door and used a special key, then deleted my code so that I could set it all again. Phew.

I also realised this morning that the room has a back door to an alley for the cleaning staff, and the door hadn’t been locked overnight, until I found out after breakfast. Phew again.

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I’ve also found that an 8GB USB thumb drive that I had loaded with stuff I want on this trip is not where I thought it was. I must have left it in the PC at home. Boogah. It’s not vital, but it’s annoying.

Pheeee-ew. I’m in Bali at last. I don’t know that I can handle all the stress of travelling any more. I’ll come back to that.

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Sanur at 4.30pm having had 2½ hours sleep. The problem was, with the plane leaving at 8am I had to be at the airport at 6am. That meant leaving home at around 4.30am. I got three hours sleep from 9.30pm to 12.30am but that was all I could manage, hence I was drooping on the plane. Add on a loooong walk to the immigration desk here in Bali, a long wait for my case to arrive, a nosy bag check man who wanted my suitcase opened even though I went through the green channel, a long walk to a taxi and I was knackered by the time I got to the hotel. Then I had to organise the fridge to make sure it could keep my insulin cold (and the bottle of gin, of course. PS: yes, it’s great), set up my CPAP with power adapter and cord, and I was ready to crash. Too old for this.

To be honest, packing and arranging the details of this trip have been quite stressful. I did what I said I would yesterday, caught bus and train into the city, then walked from the Murray St station to Thrifty Rentacar at 198 Adelaide Terrace. That’s 1.7Km. I had to stop and rest a few times, but I did it, walked all the way. I need to build up my strength as much as possible.

OK, so I got there, expecting to get the Corolla I’d ordered, but what they gave me was a Ford Eco Sport.

“But I thought I was getting a Corolla.” “Oh, we’ve given you an upgrade, sir.” Well, I took it, but what a crap car. Ugly as sin. Brakes grab. Twitchy steering. Tiny figures that I can’t read, in a very small LCD multi-function display. Bugger. I was looking forward to a current model Corolla. I’m going to send them a complaint – don’t substitute without asking me or telling me!

Oh well, I drove home via friends’ place in Scarborough for a social visit, then drove it into my garage, finding both vehicles fitted nicely. This was a good test because I’d wondered whether, and how, a second car would fit. Now I know.

The rest of Saturday was occupied by packing. Kerrumbs, it’s not simple for me. All my medications in their tablet containers, five weeks’ worth to be safe. Just doing that alone (popping the pills out of their blister packs into the compartments) took more than an hour on Friday. Then I realised I’d missed getting supplies of one of them, a diuretic. It’s not vital so I’m not panicked and I’ll probably be able to get it here. It’s a common one.

Then a small collection of bandages and antiseptic stuff just in case I have any leg ulcers. Not likely: I seem to have overcome that, thank goodness. Semi-daily application of Dermeze. Great stuff. My skin on my legs seems to be much more supple and not prone to breaks any more. This time last year, on the big cruise, I’d just had a week’s course of daily intravenous antibiotic and my leg was bandaged when I left on the trip. But no trouble this year. (PS: I tripped and fell on my front steps on Saturday and grazed my first two toes on my right foot. Of all the times for it to happen. Antiseptic soap, Betadine, and my one remaining Band Aid on the worst one. They’re very small wounds, but a diabetic in the tropics can’t afford to take risks.)

Then organising a freezer pack, a foldable, flexible thing that fits into a waterproof bag labelled Sanofi Diabetes, to keep five weeks’ worth of insulin pens cold. It’s just to get them through the flight and into the hotel fridge, but it all adds weight, takes up space and takes time.

Then this laptop and its power stuff, mouse, thumb drives, extra 2TB hard drive, etc etc etc. All adding weight and having to be organised. Camera gear in a separate bag. I’m taking the bare minimum, two cameras with attached lenses and one extra lens, but add the tripod, filters, memory cards, adapters, charger and the weight piles on. I haven’t even mentioned clothes.

Finally, I was so tired that I went to bed at 8.30pm, lights out at 9pm.

I beat the alarm and got up at 3am, unable to sleep. Out of there at 4.45am for the one hour drive to the airport. It’s a long way!

I got to the rental car drop off car park at 5.45am expecting to see a Thrifty office open, but no, it was closed. What do I do? I saw a metal box. “Place keys in envelope provided” and slide box closed. What envelope? I didn’t have one in the documents and I couldn’t see any way to get one, so I just dropped the keys in the slot and closed the drawer. They can sort it out.

One odd thing is that you have to take a ticket to enter that parking area, but what do I do with it? It’s still in my pocket. How are they going to collect any fee?

Then it was a walk of at least ten minutes, towing my luggage, no trolleys that I could see, to get to the International Departures area. It was not too crowded at 6am, luckily. I was checked in and away by 6.05am. My bag came in at 19.3Kg, and my carry on bag was 7.3Kg. Plus my shoulder bag with my insulin. I kept that out of sight.

The downstairs area of the terminal is still a shambles, a year on since I was there last year. When will they ever finish? Even if they do, it’s still a rotten design of airport. Bali is bigger and better.

The departure lounge used to have food available and I was quite hungry, but it’s all gone now. You have to have eaten before you reach the immigration (sorry, Border Force) counters. At least that was fast moving. I got quite a friendly greeting and send off from the guy. I’ve done quite a few trips, to put it mildly, over the years and their computer must know me by now. It’s all new and swish, with new gates, and no longer that annoying walk down steps to reach the aircraft, but it’s barren.

So then a long wait for the gate to open and I was drooping. It was hard to stay awake. I heard them telling one guy his cabin baggage was far too large and with too many pieces and he couldn’t take it on board. He’d have to pay an extra $150 for them to take it as extra baggage. Good on ’em. It’s amazing what people want to carry on board.

So, finally, we were away, right on time at 8am, in a twin aisle A330. But those aisles are very narrow. I had a seat against a bulkhead so I could recline the seat without worrying anyone behind me. Not so the kid in front of me. As soon as he could, he reclined his seat back in my face, almost. I hate that.

But the row spacing was such that I could get my tray table down with space to spare. Luxury. I watched the movie Kingsman. Not bad, a good laugh.

It’s 6.15pm now and I’m famished. More to come day by day in the travel sagas of PJ Croft. Cheers.

9.30pm: I forgot to mention cramps. Aaaaarrrrrgh. This is not new, but very much worse on this flight. My left arm seems particularly badly affected, but my calves and ham strings are bad too. My fingers were twisted up at really odd angles, such that I had to massage my arm. Magnesium, I think, is what I need, and I have a large bottle of tablets at home, but of course I didn’t bring it.

I’ve just walked across the street, literally, to have a drink or two and some dinner at the Sports Bar across the street. I got into conversation with some Aussies (of course!) and learnt that they live here. We talked at length about the ins and outs and I must admit I’m a bit fired up again. There’s no way I would have had that kind of conversation at home.

We talked about pets (there was a beautiful Beagle on a leash doing the rounds of the tables but she wouldn’t come to me). They said even though it’s illegal to bring dogs here, you can do it by paying the money. They brought their cat in this way, even though it was 12 years old and has died now. There’s even a recognised business doing it! It matters not to me now, of course.

The people, the guy, said he’d had medical troubles here but he was very happy with the cardio treatment he got at a hospital in Denpasar. It costs, of course.

To be honest, I worry about how I’m going to cope when I get really wobbly. One answer would be to live here and employ carers. You can’t do that at home. And lease, don’t buy. Just a thought.

10pm: I’ve just read that we’re going through a meteor shower at present, and the further north you are (in Australia) the better view you’ll get. Well, you don’t get much further north than here (in this context 🙂 ). The times are 11:30pm to 1am our time. I don’t think I have the energy tonight, but Tuesday night is the peak.

Next is the reason I wanted to be here in Sanur near the beach – the dawn. Will I have the stamina to get up before dawn and walk down there? Depends how I sleep, I guess, which has been very poorly recently.

I wrote of my difficulties getting out of the airport onto Tonkin Highway. Above is the map. I invite you to try to figure out which way is the right way.

Here’s the map in the newspaper last week:

I challenge you to work out which is the correct path to take from this. I know now, but until I did this research, I could NOT tell from that.

Yesterday I got the microSD card out of my Navman GPS and found I’d recorded the whole trip. I found the section in question and reviewed my path. (Bloody marvellous technology! At the same time that I’m seeing what the camera saw in High Def video, the Google map is alongside the vision, showing my path on the map as the car moves along.) I wish I could post the video but the file is 722MB. Could be done, but I don’t have time.

So this is the path:

What I learned is that I was on the right road all along. I was just thrown by that crazy tight loop to get back onto Tonkin Hwy. I lost my sense of north-south when I went around there and couldn’t work out which way I was travelling. I was actually going OK, but thought I was going the wrong way. If I hadn’t taken an exit onto Gt Eastern Hwy at the top of the map here, I would have been fine.

I still think the road design is very poor and the signage is inadequate. I think any driver could be confused, and having to slow to 40Km/h on that tight left loop is crazy for a major intersection. Bad design. Seems to be the norm for WA – bad airport design, bad roads, bad signage.

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I’ve said before that I have a low opinion of the level of intelligence in WA. I find the letters to the editor in the West Australian newspaper are mostly idiotic. But one writer took us to new lows on Tuesday.

He thinks the weather forecasts put out by the Bureau of Meteorology are no good, and he used the cancellation of the Xmas Pageant due to the forecast of bad weather, when it turned out to be fine, as an example. OK, so a storm didn’t eventuate, but it was still cool and windy.

His solution? We should boycott the weather forecasts by switching the TV off at the end of the sports section and refusing to watch the TV weather.

Bloody hell. This guy should be turned into a weather reporting station in Antarctica for five years, I reckon.

Postscript: today’s letter section carries another four letters supporting the guy above’s view, that the weather forecasts are useless. Well, I’ve spoken to a friend and we agree, the forecasts are excellent. Sure, sometimes they’re wrong, but it’s the weather, innit?

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I watched episode 9 of Fargo last night on SBS. Holy smoke, what a gore-fest. It showed a massacre between police and crime gangs in Sioux Falls, N. Dakota in 1979. They reckon it’s a true story. Good ol’ USA. Guns are the answer to everything. When it finished I noticed my pulse was raised.

I say again, what a double standard. TV stations can show this extreme violence, admittedly with an MA 15+ rating, but there are strict limits on anything of a sexual nature being shown. It’s not as strict as 20 years or more ago, but there’s still subtle censorship and it’s much tighter than for gun violence and the like.

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I’ve caught Channel 7 in another case of showing the same episode of Big Bang Theory almost consecutively. It was two nights separated by one night, on different digital channels, but even so.

I must admit Seven and Nine are showing a wide range of episodes, more than I thought, but when they’re showing up to six episodes a night between them, and I’ve been watching the show for five years or more, repeat episodes crop up all the time, even if they’re spaced a couple of months apart. I’m writing down the episode names and it will soon become clear how many repeats are being shown and when. I won’t keep this up for much longer. It’s easy to do, but it is a time waster.

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I’ve also watched two episodes of Bangkok Airport on Nine, and what a showcase of the difference between Thais and Europeans.

The Thais are unfailingly polite, fun loving, friendly and absolutely free of swearing and rudeness (unless they’re doing it in their own language, but I don’t think so).

In contrast, the Europeans, Poms and Aussies, are slobs. Foul mouthed, bad mannered, temper tantrum throwing, low intelligence idiots. They get robbed, lose their passports, lose their luggage, run out of money and come to the airport with injuries and expect the Thai staff to solve their problems. Which they mainly do. But when, sometimes, they can’t help, they get scowls and bad tempered remarks.

I realise that we’re only seeing the low life people and that there are thousands of nice Europeans (like me), but I don’t believe there would be any badly behaved Thais as passengers at other world airports, throwing tantrums, swearing and treating airport staff badly.

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Lake Batur, Kintamani © PJ Croft 1985, 2015

I made another hotel booking in Bali yesterday, for a hotel on the crater rim at Kintamani. It would be somewhere in the left foreground in the shot above, I think. It’s just for two nights, hoping to get some dawn shots over the lake, maybe. I still have the two night booking in Ubud on the way back. I just need to organise transport to get there and back, now. A friend has given me contact details of a guy he uses. He’s incredibly enthusiastic about this Bali driver so I’d better use him or have a good excuse why I didn’t. Apparently his parents live in the Ubud area so he can make it a visiting thing while transporting me.

Crater Lake Storm © PJ Croft 1985, 2015

These two shots were only about half an hour apart.

Speaking of transport, I’ve found the Kura-Kura mini-bus service which I wasn’t aware of before. It not only covers the Kuta and Sanur sides, it also goes to Ubud. Not only that, its routes go right past my hotels. And, and, it has an Android app showing all the routes and timetables and telling how long until the next bus. How about that?

I’ve installed the app on both my phone and my Samsung tablet. I wasn’t too fussed about using this tablet, but I’m swinging around to using it. I think I’ll take it, with my laptop too. Crumbs, laptop, tablet and phone, all doing similar things. And, two full sized cameras, plus the cameras in the tablet and the phone. How crazy is this?

I initially thought I might take my GPS as it has maps for Bali, but Google maps really does all I need and it’s on my phone. So the GPS will stay home.

I took a drive out to the airport yesterday afternoon to check the new road into the place. It’s all changed recently and I don’t go there often.

Going in was dead easy, but I’m glad I checked because there’s a specific lane marked for rental car returns. Now I’m prepared.

I just drove into the carpark then straight out again, within the 10 minutes allowed for drop offs, so I didn’t have to pay anything.

But going out of the airport, heading for home again, I got completely bamboozled. I was in the left lane of a two lane section when I came on a split into two single lanes. The left lane was signposted Armadale and the right lane to Midland. I didn’t want to go south to Armadale so I hurriedly switched across to the Midland lane, thinking I was going to go via Roe Highway or whatever.

But my choice of lane started to veer left and went into a very tight 40Kmh 270deg turn! I couldn’t work out which way I was going and there was no choice, I just had to keep going. I was swearing and cursing because I’d lost my sense of direction. I didn’t know where I was going.

It soon became clear that I was headed for Great Eastern Highway, going east. I turned at some traffic lights, thinking I’d find a way to go north or west, but once on Gt East. Hwy you’re constrained by the railway line on the left. I just had to keep going, trying to find a way back to Roe Hwy. My GPS was no use as it was still trying to direct me back to the airport and it’s too risky to try to reprogram it while driving.

To cut a long story short, I reached Guildford before I was able to turn left over the river bridge and rejoin Roe Hwy. What a debacle. All because I was confused by that sudden split into two lanes back near the airport. They are utterly confusingly signposted.

I won’t be caught like that next time, and I may be being picked up when I come back from Bali so I won’t be driving, but it’s possible I might need to do the rental car thing in reverse. I mean book a car to be picked up at the airport on my arrival about 11pm and drive it home. Cost – $52. Cheaper than a taxi.

Holy smoke, the distance from here to the airport is 55Km and takes a full hour to drive. I’m a long, long way out. On the way home my GPS suddenly said, “You have been driving for two hours. Please consider stopping for a rest.” Two hours and I was still on Reid Highway.

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I don’t like blowing my horn at other cars but I had to yesterday. The right lane was stopped at the lights at Quinns while the left lane, my lane, was clear and green. There seemed to be some problem with a car at the lights in the right lane and the tail back drivers were getting frustrated.

So one of them tried to suddenly cross into the left lane just as I was coming up at about 60Kmh. I had to blow the horn and brake a bit. He stopped his move and it was OK. But the thing is, if he’d just moved out slowly, I would have let him cross in front of me, given way to let him out. But no, he had to move suddenly, which surprised me. Fool.

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Is this winter again, or what? Funny weather. Rain, rain, grey clouds. Good for the gardens and lawns.

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I was using spray on lawn fertiliser from 2 litre containers on Saturday and was about to start, with the hose snapped on, when I was distracted and put the full container, with the hose attached, down on the garden wall (about 300mm high). I forgot about it and didn’t notice it again until yesterday.

The wind must have knocked it over and I found it upside down on the lawn next to the garden wall. But when I picked it up, it was empty, and the lawn where it had been was completely black in a circle about 100mm across.

It seems that all the fertiliser had leaked out from the holes in the container cap, onto that spot of lawn, and burnt it black. All 2 litres of it. Wow, this’ll be interesting, because that area of soil will be saturated with this full strength fertiliser. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I might get a big burst of growth in that spot.

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My blog seems to have picked up a couple of followers and one has obviously been doing an awful lot of reading, because he’s commented on a post from last Xmas. Thanks mate, and I hope you’re enjoying what I’ve written. Boy, I’ve written an awful lot – 1156 words in this post alone. I’ve been writing it for six years now. All my posts are quite long and I’ve done about 735 by now. When I use Blog Booker to make a book out of it, it’s thousands of pages. I wonder if anyone will ever read it after I’m dead and buried, like in 100 or 500 years’ time.

I’ve read a bit of Samuel Pepys’s diaries written between 1660 and 1670 and they’re fascinating. I’ve got a BBC set of CDs of the diaries being read with atmospheric sound effects, and it’s 11 discs! That’s more than 12 hours of material. I’ve only just made a start on them. I find it hard to concentrate and stay on the voices unfortunately. My mind wanders and I have to go back and replay sections.

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Bali next Sunday and I’d better start my packing. I need to take an awful lot besides just clothes these days. All my dozen medications, tablets, my insulin injectors and the means to keep them cold. Some bandages and Inodine patches (iodine) just in case. Pill containers, with enough spares for another week in case the ash cloud delays the return flight.

All the camera gear, but besides that, two chargers and power cords. My laptop with power brick and cords, and an HDMI cable to plug it into the hotel’s TV if I can.

My CPAP machine with all its hose, mask and power cable. A power board so as to avoid needing too many power plug adapters.

My tripod and head.

Phew, clothes and toiletries are the smaller part of packing these days.

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My Sony phone is not proving itself very reliable. Three times now it has locked up completely, such that I can’t even turn it off. I’ve had to take the back off and press that tiny reset contact while pressing the power button to make it restart. Luckily it comes up OK, but this is not good. Bad dog, Sony.