We had already driven around an hour early in the morning, squashed in a van with 9 seats and 42 people 6 board bags and a small petting zoo, the heat/humidity was like the inside of a coke bottle that had been left in the sun for the 3 hottest days of summer.
We had thought to go to Lombok only a few days prior to escape the filth sex pit of kuta. It was a shotgun plan and like all shot gun plans was made to be the cheapest and least researched possible. Once we were on the boat we realized that we were among 1000 locals and 10 other westerners who also looked like the types to cheap a quick trip with out thinking. This boat was massive almost like one of those old rusty red and black oil tankers that you see in movies except with out the usual suspects set in the foreground. The down stairs was filled to the brim with humans and chickens alike their was no pecking order, if a pig or a dog said you were in his seat you kindly apologized and moved on remembering the last time u tried to argue a locals authority.
Only minutes into the trip all three of us were feeling a little peckish (considering the last thing we had eaten was 12 or so hours ago and in the Bali spirit was probably evacuated quicker then it was entered),oh oh the selection was limited to beng bengs a rice chocolate treat or rice and spice in a banana leave, being over indulging westerners we gluttoned up and purchased both. Beng beng as always delivered a three way of smiles (yes much to our mothers dismay we had broken the dessert before dinner rule). The rice and spice I'm sure would have been great if they had remembered any of the ingredients other then hot, Soren (one of the friends) being the experienced globe trotter amongst us swallowed and took it as a means of survival, I chose to go hungry and Ken took a mouthful wigged out wiped his eye with chili hand and before me and Soren could appreciate the hilarity of the situation went on a step further and poured a littler of water into his eye socket getting about 10mls on the wound and the rest everywhere, it drew much attention from the locals so post haste we retreated to higher ground and found our way to the top floor. There was no man in a tux who opened the elevator doors and said "top floor kabana and pool area", there was no elevator... there was no floor. It looked like what was once a deck worthy of swabbing, had been high pressure hosed with sulphuric acid every chance the skipper could get....shit was rusty and dead looking. We also found this was common whitey hiding grounds. There was no shade, everyone was burnt and atop their burn more burn. At the front of the ship looking comfortably at home a expat of some sort who was either in his sixties or had just been on this boat ride for long enough to experienced a sulphuric shower, his old once white birken stocks and hemp shoulder slung bag let us all know whilst we were well outside our comfort zone, that rusted out seat he was laying on was as home as a mothers hug. A scatter of euro travel dogs were living up to their south-east asia trekking cliche, possibly having a story battle about how far they had rode or what monk they had drunk monkey blessed green Sumatran rhinoceros teak sap tea with. Finally the last couple were the butchest/loudest most American Harley riding lesbians Ive still to this day ever witnessed, they were trying to buy some of the riceospiceo mix but like so many idiot westos do they were having a crack at speaking the local tongue- getting to a word they didnt know and just finishing in English making it impossible for us to understand little own the poor lady that was resting 57kg of rice and heat on here head.
I'm tired now and need to sleep, i could go into even more detail to outline how fucked it was but the climax of the story is once we final got to the port we had to wait a further 2 hours to be docked we could see land..fuck we could see our names on the card the taxi driver was holding but i think if it had not been for this final straw myself,soren and ken would have never learnt that in these times the only cure is laughing at how utterly fucked the situation is we spent those two last hours on that boat crying from laughing so hard and from this point on in all my bad situations i have either gotten goose bumps from an epiphany from being so deep in thought i touch lava, or cried and pissed my pants with laughter that from the experience on that boat the only way is up and I'm still climbing the ladder and hope never to reach the top floor.
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