It wasn't easy. It felt like we had to pry ourselves out. But three days ago we packed everything up and moved off Quantum Leap, our home since July 13th. We left a day early because, despite putting my best efforts into cleaning (including laundering the sheets and towels in the tub!), we knew that Bette Lee would need to come through and do it all over again herself!
We moved ashore to a room at the new Villa Karung, a hotel just to the left of the harbor distinguished by it second floor restaurant. Our very simple and affordable room cost us about $45 a night, and just relaxing in and beside the handsome infinity pool was worth the price. Pretty impressive for a backpacker destination!
We stayed the extra days instead of taking off for Bali right way in order to take some steps to facilitate the paperwork surrounding our being removed from Quantum Leap's crew list. In most countries, it is a big deal to try to check out and be short any of the people you came into the country with. Oddly, for red tape-loving Indonesia, this doesn't seem to be a big issue. We'll all find out for sure down the road.
A very nice bonus of staying the few extra days is that finally some of our old friends -- specifically Rick and Robin of Endangered Species and Mark and Laura of Sabbatical III -- caught up!
NEW PLANS
Meanwhile, plans for the 2Cs' immediate future have suddenly taken shape.
Tomorrow, we make like backpackers ourselves and take the ferry to Bali and a connecting bus to Ubud, the cultural center of Bali. We have no reservations, so hopefully we won't be sleeping in the Monkey Forest. We plan to stay there a week doing tours, catching all the various dance performances, shopping for some unique Bali crafts and hopefully getting in a visit to one or more Bali coffee plantation.
Then, we come back to Gili Air for one night aboard the 60' power cat Daedalus and accompany them across to Lovina Beach, the rally anchorage on Bali's north coast. This will give us the chance to see the boat's systems in action, because on arrival, we will yacht-sit Daedalus for a week while George and Melinda do their own Bali tour.
THEN we will move over to Ivory Street, a 57' luxury cat from New Zealand and help her family of three -- Greg, Chrissie and Michael -- with the passages north to Singapore. This means we will get to stop and see the famous orangutans of Kalimantan, something we were hoping not to miss. We should get in to Singapore the first week of October.
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