All change

22/7/11

We are supposed to be leaving today but James is far from right and my stomach is playing up a bit. The thought of two days on a boat traveling to Flores is not appealing even with the stop to see Kimono dragons. So rising early I begin to change the plans. Now most travels don’t book things in advance so there is nothing to change and nothing paid out. We do and most of the time this provides huge benefits in terms of always having somewhere nice to stay. So I find myself having to try an cancel the boat trip to Flores along with the flights we have booked to in Flores and the flights to get us back to Bali before heading off to Oz.

The phone calls are not going to be easy. Companies like to take you money but to give it back well the English previously spoken well seams to evaporate! With this in mind I enlist the help of the hotel manager and use the hotel phone passing it over to him when the language barrier becomes an issue. We manage to secure an 80% refund for the boat tickets and I agree to go to the neighbouring island the next day to collect my cash. The internal Flores flights appear not to be able to be refunded but at 20quid I am not too worried. The expensive flight back to Bali is another matter. So the owner talks in rapid Indonesian and we reach a compromise that it may be possible to get a 50% refund on these but they will have to call us back. Amazingly a few hours later they are good to their word and we get a call back and arrange to collect the refund when back in Bali.

Well with the best part of the morning gone I source some breakfast for James and then settle into a good book. In the afternoon Carol Skyped us on what can be described as the worst connection we have ever had. Getting only 9 words out of 10 mead for a difficult conversation! Later I trot round the whole of the idyllic island we are staying on marvelling and the blue sky and sea. Sometime later I arrive back at the apartment with food in hand and James and I recline on the bed and watch a movie.