The journey was the usual rather painfully slow drive that seems typical in Indonesia.
The driver insisted on trying to get us to buy tickets from his friend's shop in Padangbai but they were asking 175k, when we knew the public ferry was only 36k. We escaped and sat in a warung for a quick meal before the boat trip, which we knew would take 4-6 hrs to Lembah on Lombok.
The boat trip was fairly uneventful, entertainment being a looped Bollywood movie on TV. We seemed to be on schedule for a 4 hr crossing, but we then stopped just off the pier and another ferry appeared and docked first. So that took the best part at 2 hrs, and by the time we'd disembarked it was completely dark at about 6.30-7 pm.
The port was a large open area with warungs on either side to left and right with some buses and trucks parked in the middle.
To the left there were some offices and a line of minibuses and as we approched the mini-bus touts descended.
We fended them off briefly but they soon returned and were quoting some rather high prices.
We decided to ring a Bluebird taxi, and told the touts, to which they were saying no taxis were allowed in the port.
Just then a taxi turned up to drop someone off, but they wouldn't stop to pick us up, as the touts seemed to push them out. Great.
We decided to walk out of the port and get a taxi from the main road, and as we left the touts aggressively chanted we'd have to keep walking.
A couple of the drivers kept following in their vans quoting increasingly lower prices that we could easily afford, but by now we felt rather pissed off and determinedly kept walking to the main road out of the village to a large market store which was brightly lit and seemed like a good point for a taxi to find us.
We called a cab and described the location, and Eunmi and the girls went into the shop to get some things.
I stayed outside and looked after the bags, surrounded by a small mob of local boys who bombarded me with questions and were doing their best to extract some money from me.
Their numbers seemed to increase the longer we waited and they got more boisterous. Finally the taxi arrived but Eunmi was still stuck at the checkout which was operating very slowly.
I'd loaded the bags into the taxi and waited impatiently, gesturing Eunmi to hurry up.
The girls were with me and obviously quite uncomfortable with the attention of the group of boys.
Next thing a large vehicle pulled up across the market forecourt and started giving the driver a hard time.
We couldn't tell what was being said, but the upshot was we had to unload our gear from the taxi, to the driver apologised and left.
I was trying to ask the bloke what the fuck he was doing, and was quickly joined by Eunmi who went off on one at him big time, but clearly he didn't understand what we were saying, and didn't give a shit anyway.
We were absolutely fuming and the guy eventually left and we were standing there wondering what to do.
Fortunately Eunmi had our couchsurfing host's name and number so we eventually got through to her, and she arranged for a relative of hers to arrange the taxi pickup.
There was a long and somewhat anxious wait until the taxi driver got there.
Another young local guy came over to talk with us and had reasonable English. He explained the village had some sort of co-op arrangement that excluded taxis and that it was some sort of rule or law.
We explained our position though, that it should be our choice of transport, and that we're not going to be held captive by the co-op.
Also that we had no way to verify that it was a real valid rule, and that their attitude would drive tourists away from using that route so they'd lose out in the end.
He seemed to grasp that idea well enough. No wonder so many people just went direct from Bali to Gili Trawangan and bypassed Lembah.
After a while the taxi arrived and slipped down a side road out of site. We followed it down, and after a bit of misunderstanding, and a further hassle with bemo that turned up, who also tried to gouge us for more money, we were on our way.
No comments:
Post a Comment