Island Hopping for money

23/7/11

In order to secure the refund I had across to the next island on the early boat. Unfortunately like the busses in Sedbergh it only remains there for 15 minutes before retuning. This is not enough time to find the office, get the refund and visit a cash machine so Doreen and I opt to stay for the day. We take a relaxed approach to life and spend the first 2 hours sipping coffee talking about the fall of the Berlin wall. It is interesting to talk to someone who at 13 at the time of the wall coming down has lived through a huge part of European History. Doreen grew up in East Berlin and remembers vividly the wall coming down, her first trips to the west and how life changed after the collapse of communism. My trips to Russia as a boy also provided some common experiences so it was in this vain that the time flew by.

After coffee we found the office and amazingly my refund was waiting for me. The company will be getting a good trip advisor review for that. The cash machines however proved to be a little less cooperative. The first two did not work and with the prospect of running out of cash all together during the extended stay on Gilli Air we were somewhat relived to find an ATM that actually worked. The end result was 6,000,000 rupiah in the wallet all in 50,000 denominations. This I mused must be what it is to be wealthy as one cannot close ones wallet.
By now it was lunch time and the island we were on was far busier than its sleepy neighbour. All things are relative mind you as you could walk round in 2 hours. The island also attracts a younger party crowd so there were plenty of magic mushroom shakes on offer along with a host of young men offing “good hash, very good hash.’ Opting for a more conventional drug we sat down to lunch and enjoyed a beer or two.

Later we returned to Gilli air and I found James still in the bedroom. He had ben adventurous as far as the sun loungers but was still feeling fairly rough. The sight of 6,000,000 rupiah did however bring a smile to his face was we fanned it out across his body and took photos of him lying on a bed of cash. If only they were pounds!