The Honeymoon is over

No spaces for us to dive, so we hire a moto with full tank of fuel for about £6 for to explore Lembongan.   Driving the thing comes back very quickly to Adrian, (mis-spent youth), Amanda is still rubbish at it.but a great pillion.  We spend a happy few hours riding past mangroves, up & down very steep hills, and a lot of paths that seem to go nowhere with stunning views. Pretty much covered the lot.  So we get back to base on our quiet road and Amanda heads off again on her own to practice, leaving Adrian looking anxiously as she speeds into the distance...

Some 1/2 hour later she returns on the back of someone elses bike.  Adrian still looks anxious.  It's OK,  Yeoman kindly brought her back for the money to buy fuel.  Yep, remember if you are going off on your own, check the tank, take some money & a telephone, doh.  I may be rubbish at driving the thing but I can push them for miles!!

Passage back from Lembongan to the mainland a little late but uneventful until we landed in Sanur - to the grand finale of the village festival, having cleverly missed the entire 4 day event.  People, kayaks, jukungs, kites, everywhere on the beach, in the sea & every restaurant in town had some kind of live entertainment.  We opted to go back to the MataHari on the beach for dinner as remembered the wi-fi connection was good and the food reasonable. (These are our main criteria for selcting any eatery at the moment until we get in to our own condo with wi-fi on tap.) Except for today as special eat as much as you can buffet with entertainment thrown in all for 4 x the price.  Oh dear, we get up to leave.  But fear of losing our custom the manager allows us to go a la carte (very reasonable).  We have ringside seat for the very loud 9 piece gamelan orchestra accompanying the very cute traditional balinese dancers.  They were enchanting so caught up on the emails in between sets. Adrian can't resist spotting Clare on-line gives her real time skype view.

The Staff at the Puri Kelapa seemed happy to see us back again (for the third time) as we settle in to yet another room.

So this is reality now,  the Symbiosis itinery has ended, up to us. We hit the street to visit another batch of centres on the list and see what the shops have to offer if you actually want to live here.  Hardy's is THE supermarket. This is supermarket the Balinese way.  A kind of department store with very few of the departments you'd expect to find.  Yes it has food & clothes.  And stationery and some homewares and endless aisles of decorative artefacts.  All thrown together in a most haphazard way.  But no linen or crockery or cutlery or anything particulary useful. Although Amanda manages to leave with a new pair of shoes  - how did that happen?  (they're only flip-flop type things in the sale)

Time to change rooms again...  Our new home for the next 3 days is opposite a nice coffee shop (with wi-fi of course).  Over elevenses, make friends with Leo, who runs the place.  He's a dive instructor with large SSI centre and he gives us loads of helpful gen and says to come back later as there'll be free whisky, mmmmmmmmmm

Before that we have to go to town, as in Denpasar, as Amanda's phone SIM is dead, defunct completely kaput. Poo. You have to go to Telkomsel HQ if you want to keep the number.  Which as we've given it to everyone is important.  Arrive, take a number for the queue - 306.  Take a seat.  "Now serving number 241" OMG.  It's 2:30, they shut in 2 hrs...  Whatever you do at this point don't give up and definitely don't fall asleep.  You have a very short window of opportunity to notice your number being called before they move on to the next - several people must have done as there seemed to be an emergency queue of red faced bods either embarassed or angry,  hard to tell.   4 o'clock our turn.  Hooray.  Determined to make good use of the Customer services. New sim, register both to us for security, pump for info on using GPRS & small Bahasa lesson to boot.

Back to the coffee shop.  The party is to mark the passing of 3 new SSI instructors.  We are joined by the examiner and ex PADI rep for the area.  As we polish off I don't know how many bottles of Jack & Jim we note that Koreans really aren't very seasoned drinkers - most amusing.  And so to bed...