On an island in the sun...

We are now on Lombok, a little island just to the east of Bali. We had to get up at 3:45 AM to catch the flight which had a 2 hour layover in Sudihaya, which gave us the chance to grab a bite, then off to Lombok... well not quite. Once all of the passengers boarded the plane and we got onto the runway, we noticed that there was no A/C working on the plane, so it was back the the terminal so the mechanics could work their magic. Now, if you had 80 people jammed tight in an aluminum tube sitting on a black ashphalt tarmac in + 34 degrees heat with no AC on the plane, would you deplane them or let them raost a little longer?? We ended up roasting a little longer, but as it turned out, they had it working in about 50 minutes and we were really on our way.

Our driver met us at the airport and drove us the 30 minutes to the resort, and what a place! This is the most extravagant hotel we will be staying in for the entire trip, and likely the nicest accomodations I will ever stay in. When you walk into our little piece of heaven, you find yourself in a covered open air kitchen and living room, overlooking our own little "plunge pool", and past the pool is our enclosed air conditioned bedroom. The room (it should really be called a small compound) is very private, or at least it is meant to be... there are 10 foot walls all around with a number of trees and other plants to provide us with even more privacy... but there is a two story guest house being built just to the side of us and the workers were putting the finishing touches on the roof. I think that once one of the young lads saw Cat prancing about, the rest of the work crew decided that the roof would be a great place to take a coffee break and have a gander. While this did provide me with a bit of entertainment, Catherine reminded me that they might not all be looking at her, so we spoke with the manager, who had made arrangements that no work was to be done on the second floor, and she got us our privacy back in our little slice of heaven.

We spent the rest of the day doing a bit of a hike into town, then back to the resort for a beautiful sunset, a delicious meal and of course, a bintang or two. We tried our best to stay up past 8:30, but the travelling and the heat had beaten us into submission. Slept like a log.

Today we told ourselves we were gonna do nothing but relax, suntan (burn), dip into the ocean, send a few emails and make a few skype calls. For those that have never tried this, and that included me until a week ago, this is a free internet video messaging system. Basically, you get a web camera, plug it into your computer, download the skype program, and start looking up your friends who have it and start chatting. David and Elaine mentioned that this is how they contact their families when they are on vacation, so we thought we would give it a try. We sent out a few emails and set it up so others would be online for 10:00 AM our time here. There were a few glitches as the internet signal here fluxuates depending on where you stand, but we were able to talk with Cat's mom, Ken and Noreen, and we could see David and Elaine, but they couldnt hear us... we will be trying again soon to get it working proper. All in all, it is pretty amazing that I can sit here by the pool on the other side of the planet and have a face to face conversation with someone back home.

Anyways, after the skype calls, we accomplished what we set out to do ... nothing. We snorkeled, ate, had a beer, made a tee time (golfing tomorrow), felt sad about the Oilers, and got a sunburn. Pretty full day really :)

Well time to go have some dinner... chat soon!

Tim