Thursday 5th September
The navy was in
town yesterday. There were sirens,
military police, armoured vehicles, and some very happy people in the
motorcade:
We were
surprised to see lots of young women, all wearing headscarves, in the red and
white uniform. One of the girls stopped
to ask if she could practise her English, and be photographed with us:
We will
undoubtedly appear on Juni’s facebook page so she can make an appearance on my
blog…
Pete and I were
separated for a while. It isn’t really
possible to get lost in Labuan Bajo, there is only one street, with one-way
traffic doing a big loop up and around the hill.
Some very
cheeky little boys accosted me: PHOTO
PHOTO! They shouted, while their
father looked on apologetically.
They shrieked
with laughter at the sight of themselves in the back of my camera, and then
indicated that I simply HAD to take a photo of the birds on the wire on the
other side of the street:
When I showed
them this perfectly innocuous photo, they laughed so much there were tears and
snot… Still not so sure what was so very funny but I am very glad I was able to
cause such mirth.
Thirsty work,
walking up and down the street looking for large batteries…So we made our way
up (steep!) stairs to the Hilltop Bar where we found – oh how surprising – a
bevy of Rally people, happily sipping on Bintang and watching the workers
below:
I had been
looking for Marilyn Graham, a fellow Tasmanian, travelling on beautiful
Delphian, which is now anchored very close to us. Happy reunion and a bit of photo opportunity:
Please note our purposeful mirror-image hand-on-hip
pose – where on earth did that come from??
Marilyn was
with Trish, a former Tasmanian, and hey had had a most wonderful trip, on the
northern (Saumlaki) route. At one stage
they went high up into mountain country – I think this was in West Timor, but
I’m not sure, maybe it was Flores – where there were 14,000 (yes THOUSAND) people
in local costume, singing and dancing! I
must have another chat with Trish and Marilyn – surely I didn’t get this
right??
I liked this
carefully painted message in the toilet downstairs:
On the way back
to the dinghy I was very taken with this dear little girl, carefully riding her
bike around the wharf:
The little
Muslim girls nearly all wear headscarves (oh so hot in this very VERY hot
climate…) and all of the scarves are more beautiful, elaborate and fetching
than normal unadorned hair – beads, ribbons, sparkly sequins…Doesn’t this defeat the purpose, of
making girls LESS attractive to the male eye??
Back in the
dinghy, back to 2XS, with a detour to Marieke III for sundowners… We had bought
some lovely cheese, and wine, for them from the cool little white shop opposite
the post office. By the way all of the
items we bought from there the day before were delicious – wonderful feta, made
in Bali, very nice wine, made from Australian grapes, in Bali. Tasty hard cheese. And the bacon was the nicest we have had since
– swell probably since Hill Street Grocer!
Nikoni, from
Switzerland, had arrived a few hours before.
Ingvar and Seija had invited Lena and Pieter for drinks too (we weren’t
really invited…we gatecrashed…) and we really enjoyed their company and their travel
tales. Lena and Seija are both Finnish
and I knew they were desperately keen to speak their own language. I assured them I would enjoy this very much,
with my Campari in hand. They took a bit
of encouraging but soon were having a lovely chat while I sat, happily basking in
the female chat without having to contribute or really understand it at
all.
Back on 2XS Pete cooked an exceptionally nice dinner, which
he will probably never be able to repeat.
Very simple – pasta, olive oil, chilli, garlic, a bit of our Bali
bacon. It was all so nice…we happily
slid into our comfy positions on the couch and then snored our way through a
whole episode of Lie To Me before going
to Sleepyboboland downstairs.
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