Off to the Gili Islands

Well today we are leaving our little villa by the sea and heading across the straight to the island of Gili Trawangan where we will spend our days diving. Our time on Lombok has been great so far, we made it out golfing on Friday at the Kosaido Golf Course about 1/2 an hour away from the hotel. While neither of our scores were particularly amazing it was pretty wonderful to be able to say "my golf ball landed just below that palm tree," and "the pin is up there about 30 feet this side of the ocean." The Indonesian golf tradition is that they send a caddy out with every golfer so as we left the club house two Indonesian men hopped on the back of our cart and proceeded to hand us clubs, give us tips on the greens, and find our golf balls when we shot them into the bush. On the first hole Tim promptly sliced his ball - and there was a chorus of "too bads" and "nice tries" from the gaggle of local children surrounding the cart. I made one of 3 good shots all day off my tee shot on the first hole and got a bunch of suprised "nice shot!" and "ooohhhh-ing" from the peanut gallery followed by polite clapping. We realized fairly quickly the role of the small children was not to provide the cheering crowd noises, but was to retreive lost balls that our caddies were unable to locate, and show up at the next tee box and sell them back to us for 2000 IDR or about 20 cents. Sure enough a water hazard or two later and there were shiny white, barely used, Maxflis waiting for us at the next hole. Relalizing that 20 cents was actually a pretty good deal, we rewarded the hard work and bought a few of the balls. Our caddies quickly realized that we were not undercover PGA and LPGA players and took far to much pleasure in telling us our scores at the end of each hole. I didn't know that you could actually get a 10 on a par 4, but apparently you can. By 11 am we were thankfully finishing up and the heat of the day was upon us. It is not easy to golf in 35 degree heat, so future tee times will continue to be as early as possible.

We aren't sure what we will have for internet connection while we are on Gili Trawangan, so we may or may not be posting over the next few days - if we aren't able to our next update will be on Thursday from Bali. Talk to you soon!

And just so you know, we have been trying to upload pictures and haven't been able to. We will try again at the next internet site - hopefully with more luck!