The first visit, was 3 weeks in Bali, with the highlight, and primary reason for this visit being the wedding of my brother Brendan and Linda.
The short reel of the 11 days with family in friends includes the Buck's day, white water rafting, parasailing, and a variety of forms of being towed behind a boat on something inflatable, one of which took flight. My dad upheld tradition by falling out of the boat while rafting, and unfortunately found a submerged rock with his ribs, no major damage, but the extended period of discomfort he suffered would suggest a minor fracture to a rib or two.
The rest of the time involved much poolside relaxing, sunset cocktails, the occassional massage, and chasing after children (1/3rd of the guests at the wedding). My nephews and nieces made up 7 of the 13. After trying to get a table for 20 at a restaurant one night and dinner not arriving until almost 9pm, we gave up on tribal meetings over food.
The wedding was fantastic, outdoors, facing the beach at sunset, the bride and her maids looked stunning, and the ceremony was done twice, with a short Indonesian version following the first effort. A couple of Brendan's friends contributed significantly to the bar tab, and the cocktails flowed through the night, and the dance floor was rarely quiet. The resort did 5 weddings in 5 nights while we were there, and we definitely had the liveliest crowd.
The after wedding recovery was a day at the Waterbom park, with a dose of adrenaline, frequent cool water dunkings and some exercise up all the stairs was enough to revitalise and then tire everyone out again. Those too hungover to go anywhere (aka Krystal) had managed to surface by mid afternoon when we all returned.
As the crowd of family and friends dwindled, I started looking to escape the horrendous tourist Mecca that is Kuta, and with the final departures imminent I took a bus to Lovina on the north side of the island, a town you could circumnavigate on foot in about 25 mins.
After a day scuba diving I was on the move again and spent the ridiculously early hours of a morning climbing a dormant (but still warm and smoky) volcano with 2 Swiss girls I'd met the day I went diving. Fortunately all the walking around Kuta / Legian and the day at the water park climbing stairs meant that I was up for the climb, but by the top I was showing the strain more than my mountain bred climbing companions.
A couple of days wondering around Ubud and I was back to the southern beaches, this time at Sanur to catch up with friends, which was far nicer and more relaxed than the nearby Kuta area.
My return to Indonesia only two weeks later was to help out a friend, and by now I was leading the life of a vagabond (aka homeless, unemployed bum).
My first jaunt on my travels was to be a field assistant and pack mule for my friend Nat who is conducting a PhD thesis on the connectivity of coral reefs from the WA coast and Indonesia. I was tasked with keeping her safe (dive buddy) and being an extra pair of hands to assist with collecting coral samples for genetic analysis. Oh, and the pack mule thing, but when you have a pet Yeti for a friend, you may as well make the most of it :-)
Exploring the Timor area of Indo and staying in a remote dive camp on an almost private little island off Alor and a surf camp at Nemberala on the island of Rote. I was happy with this plan as it was much more my style of travel then the previous plan of hanging around Bali some more, where I was originally going to be doing my assisting. Nat's brother will now be doing that bit after I leave.
Back on the topic of coral sampling, we had a few hiccups along the way, days not going to plan because the locals seemed to not consider that getting the boat out before low tide would require moving it before it got stranded 30m up the beach above the water line. Strong currents and limited numbers of the required coral species also challenged my fitness and Nat's morale respectively. The other main limiting factor was aligning airline timetables to get to the remote locations in the first place, and booking the flights before they filled up ... Oh, damn!!! We got there, just not as quickly as first planned.
But success has been had, samples have been collected to be added to the large swag of Aust and Indo sites already sampled, and with just Bali / Lembongan to go, Nat is just about done ..... the field work that is, lab work and thesis writing, while already well under way, still requires a lot more work.
Fortunately for me, my work here is done, and I'm off again ....
