"Hello Misterrr"

"So what do you reckon, should we move our flights to Brisbane forward by a week and leave Indonesia a week earlier?" - That was the question that was on our minds last Sunday in the worry that we were getting a bit bored here, so figured save ourselves a week. "We won't decide tonight, we can give it until at least tomorrow or Tuesday"

But quality opportunities can arise from out of the blue, and that's exactly what happened to us on Monday morning, and how can you turn down an offer like "head to Sumbawa, get on board a pirate ship, help sail it back to Lombok, and keep an eye on the workers making sure that they're doing what they should be and not stealing anything. And just help out where needed. And the room's sweet, flat screen TV, shower....well anything's gotta be better than showering out of a well (our actual current situation), aim to get it back Saturday, but it won't be any longer than a week."

In short, Andy's (at Aquaddiction) Australian friend, Sean, had a leak in his boat, and as a result some of the engine had got salt water in it. Sean was/is back in Perth now, so needed someone to keep an eye on the boat, make sure the work was done (and in some sort of timely manner), make sure that the boat was where it should be, stop it from sinking by draining it, and enjoy the ship, the surroundings, and being Jack Sparrow.

"Yeah, why the hell not" - this makes our decision not to change our flights. "When do we leave?"
"We need someone there ASAP, so today, this afternoon"

Boom! And just like that we'd booked ourselves into another random adventure, and a great excuse to see more of Indonesia....and an opportunity to commander a pirate ship!!!

##If only that's what it was.##

Unfortunately for us, I don't think Andy was given the full information of the situation....

We left Gili T on Monday afternoon, with the plan to meet our lift/engineer over on Lombok and start our 14 hour journey straight away. Nope, this would have to wait until Tuesday morning. No biggie, we have a hotel room in Senggigi, it doesn't bother us. So yeah, we're happy to stay here for the night.

We do eventually meet with Harry (not pronounced 'Harry', it's closer to 'Hairy') the engineer on Tuesday morning. And after he introduces us to his family, we start our drive to Sumbawa, in the back of his truck (honestly, amazing views on the back of that).

Arriving in Sumbawa

Cutting our long story short. We ended up at our location on Tuesday night, but needed to get across to Moyo island where the boat was docked, due to numerous complications, confusions, and conflicts (between locals), this didn't happen until Thursday. After spending a night sleeping on hard speed boat chairs (where I managed to ruin my phone), and another night in a very basic hotel in the middle of nowhere, and over two days of getting messed around and just sitting around waiting, but we did eventually get there, but without Harry wanting to make the trip across to the boat.

But at this point I would like to thank Erwin, at Moyo Dive for all of his help.

To be honest nothing really a problem so far, I mean we did get to the pirate ship on Thursday evening over two days later than planned/expected/hoped, but this is Indonesia.

Did you have a comfortable sleep!!!?!!!

I really wanted it, and I never thought that I'd find it! But I did!!!!

Rest In Peace Steve.

It is at these points of being in the middle of nowhere that I kind of love. I mean you get to see a real country. These people weren't used to tourist. I do enjoy it, but it does have it's time limits for me. But it was kind of amazing being there.

Finally on a boat to Moyo, after waiting around all day on Thursday...after waiting around all day on Wednesday.

First site of the pirate ship

Day 1 on ship: All smiles, look we finally made it here!

I could write for ages here now, but in short, Thursday night on the boat everything's fine, everything's cool. Play with a few of the electrics and boom we can charge our dying phones (well I can't charge mine, but Sandra can). Friday, and the problems start, and the realisation of what is actually really required to be done on the boat, and a massive time scale really involved, and the lack of basic living needs we actually had on board, and the amount of freedom we actually had on board, and the lack of goggles we had on board so snorkelling wasn't an option (there was 1 pair, but no strap), and the realisation of how bored we would get, and how inconvenient it would be to get to shore, and the pressures from the locals, and how hard it'd be to get food, and how we had to leave the ship to do all of these things but how hard it was to leave the ship due to having to keep an eye of who is on board and when, and keeping an eye on the boat making sure that it doesn't sink...etc etc etc. That list could go on and it is intentionally all one sentence. Honestly all-in-all, with all the boredom of essentially being just sat around all week, this has probably been the worst week of my life, needlessly stressful and boring. I think if this was my job and just my job it'd been fine and I could've learnt so much from it, but this was everything and constantly, and just not worth it for either of us. No real benefit to us. Plus we are on a short time scale now in Indonesia and we have things of our own that we wanna do, and this project had no signs of finishing any time soon.

But I would like to add that a lot of the locals, if not most of hem, were friendly, fun and helpful...if not a bit nosey at times.

Computer being silly again...with the angle

Crafty picture Sandra - inside Madi's house, the guy who was/is "looking after" the ship

"We take starting engine to Sumbawa"
"No, Sean doesn't want you to take anything off of the boat"
Gone!

Saturday we did think "screw it" and canoed ourselves to shore to pick up a few things for the boat, and whilst we were there we figured that we may as well walk to one of the two waterfalls located on the island (unfortunately I cannot find the name of it, and I didn't have my camera on me but...). Only to return to find our canoe had been stolen. "Oh haha, a friend use it to go fishing." I dunno if this was true or not, and I dunno how things work over here in terms of "borrowing". But I did know that we were canoeless.

Bored on Saturday

We decided earlier on Saturday that we would leave Sunday planning our route as we went. We ended up taking the buses and boats....only for our bus to break down after only 20 minutes on the road.....for 3 hours. We did manage to get back to Lombok and our chosen destination of Senggigi. Where I am currently writing this part of this post. Sandra is currently snoring next to me, but we're happy cos in an hour I will wake her and we will actually be able to watch the World Cup final. I wanna watch it and, even though she's not too much into football, she has to watch it. So I'm happy to be in a location where we can see it. Being in Asia means I've missed a lot of the World Cup due to the time difference. We will head back to Gili T at some point tomorrow, but no rush, check-out aint till midday.

Our attempt at Indonesian...I already know it's not perfect!
In short "Hay Randi, here is 100,000 for me petrol for Generator
We are going to Sumbawa"
But I later realised that I used the wrong "we" as the "we" we used would include us taking Randi to Sumbawa..I hope that he's still not waiting for  us to take him.

Getting away from Moyo, early yesterday morning! After our canoe back to shore as the sun was rising.

Driving through Sumbawa is 'nothing-out-of-the-ordinary beautiful' and by that I mean, there's nothing special about it, nothing that sticks out, no real need to go out of your way to visit it, but it is beautiful and the locals are extremely friendly and not really used to tourist or white people "Hello Mr".... "Hello Mr"...."Hello Mr"....

Coolest bus ever!!!....

...Not so cool!

Finally leaving Sumbawa...

...And arriving back on Lombok last night, with the sun setting over Mt Rinjani

That was all written last night. We have now arrived back on Gili Trawangan, and are both happy to be here. I woke Sandra up at 2:30 this morning to watch the World Cup final. And after 120 minutes of football, the most German comment Sandra has ever made, with a dead serious expression on her face at the final whistle "It took too long" I just burst out laughing...but she had a valid point. Aber, Herzlichen Glückwunsch Deutschland!

After the game we found another bar that had a few more Germans in it, and I bought Sandra her victory beer. Before we headed back to our hotel room at 8am (after me being awake since 5:45am the previous day) before waking up, checking out, and heading back to Gili T.

Don't cry for me Argentina...obvious quote really!

I think our plan now is to get our Diver's Certificate this week, chill, check out one of the other Gili islands, before leaving for Kuta, Bali, next Sunday.

Let's get things booked and enjoy the last of our time in Indonesia.