July 21 Day 157
After
the boat trip we thought it was wise to leave an unplanned day before flying to
Singapore and this was it. Initially, the
plan was to visit any area we missed on our boat trip or wanted to revisit but
with the ground still swaying under our feet it was destined to be an
unambitious day spent in the town of Lubuan Bajo.
We
had breakfast in the open hut by the kitchen and talked to an older guy with
good English whose job it seemed to be keeping the students under control. We then walked downtown and found that it was
small and didn't go too much further than the restaurant where we ate the night
before. We had to turn right when we hit
the harbour and saw stalls that probably hosted a night market but was quite
inactive in the morning.
We
passed a graveyard that was a dumping ground for BBQ equipment and various
garbage. on the way back we stopped into
a small church and talked to a woman there who Meg eventually donated her
pencils to, groups of children looking for gifts had not been finding it. Meg also speculated that the churches in town
were quite boxy so as not to call attention to themselves in a Muslim country
which has not always been friendly to Christian groups.
We
had no trouble finding our way back and settled in a cafe to do some work on
the computer and take a break. It was
still having difficulty charging but we managed to get some stuff done.
Walking
back, we tried to locate a good restaurant mentioned in the guidebook but the
town didn't match up with the Google map.
We found a better map at the closed tourist centre and managed to find
the place on a quiet sideroad and get a reservation for dinner. On the way back we had a solid lunch at a
local place that had more staff than customers but was willing to revise their
dishes to Meg's vegetarian specifications after going through three different
staff members before getting one with enough English to understand "is
there meat in this?".
Back
at the hotel, Meg napped while I tried to get stuff done. A summer student was in reception instead of
the guy who spoke English and was trying
to print to plane tickets I had e-mailed them.
He was spending a long time staring at them and seemed relieved when I
asked to sit at the computer and try to figure it out. The printed had a pile of papers on it as
well as a fair layer of dust but made the right noises. I had three flights to print out and managed
to get the first two done when the printer ran out of paper and no one knew
where more might be. I put my other
tickets in again to get two sided print outs but the printer couldn't handle
the small picture that was on the e-mail and the e-mail wouldn't let me delete
the picture so I gave up. Printouts were
often necessary at airport as security before entering the building required
them and wouldn't let you get to the desk without them. At least we would be alright in Indonesia.
Back
at the room we packed and relaxed until dinner time. The restaurant was fancy and had a reputation
of being one of the best around. The
food was very well presented and was very good up until dessert. The desserts were fairly plain and the staff
had trouble understanding what was wrong with Meg's cafe au lait when it was
given to her sans coffee. Considering
how many staff were constantly walking through the place it took a long time to
pay our bill as only one person worked the machines. The first one didn't work and gave us the old
wrong PIN error which we knew was the machine's fault.
Much
of the restaurant was taken up with a large bar which could have been shrunk to create more table space. People were even eating in the group room on the side which still held a pile of furniture at one end.
We had our lights with us for the dark walk back to our room. We packed for our big travel day, ordered a nice early breakfast and went to bed.
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| The grounds of our hotel. |
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