Lembongan

I jumped in the vehicle and we were off. 

The driver seemed cool- chatty and young. It probably only took us an hour to get to the harbour /HQ of the boat/resort. It seems the resort and the boat(s) and pontoons where you alight to hop into a smaller boat are all owned by the same company. What was cool was on the big boat to the pontoon, I met again an Australian couple that I had done the bike ride with the previous day. It was nice to have some company and conversation.

I made it to the resort, which was really nice. On checking in, they wanted my credit card details for security - standard practice at hotels. It was then that I discovered my Credit Card had been blocked, despite the fact that I had advised them that I would be travelling to Indonesia, and my travel dates. Turns out it had been blocked prior to my trip when someone random had tried to use my details. The hotel was good about it, but of course it meant I couldn't use it for the rest of the trip. Luckily I am a man who has contingency plans, needless to say, someone got a bollocking on the phone once I got back to New Zealand.

As I said the resort was nice, and there were several activities you could do. There was about an hour or two before I could access my room, so I tried to do some of these, as well as having the complimentary first day lunch.

One of the activities was a banana boat/biscuit ride. I had always wanted to try it, but it didn't live up to the expectation - I was on the back of it, and physics isn't my friend, so it was 'sinking' underneath me, whilst the front stuck up in the air. This meant I was more concerned about hanging on for dear life, and fighting the resulting urge to be sick.

Another activity was a drive around the island. To be fair, this was also a waste of time, as they took you just down the road to a big yellow bridge, waited there for about 20 minutes, and then returned back to the hotel. I did try and explore the island myself a day or so later, but to be fair, it wasn't really an explorable place, as the layout wasn't conducive, things looked the same, and not tidily laid out, and the island was bigger than it appeared when I originally looked at it on a map.

I can however say, conversely, the food on the first day was a great buffet, as well as the other meals I had while there.

My room was amazing, it was a bure. Underneath there was even an outdoor lounging area, but being a single traveler, that pretty much went to waste. One of my regrets was it wasn't really a place for meeting people. I spent a lot of time on Tinder trying to remedy that fact, however I did spend a lot of time reading and napping.

It was a lovely place to be, although the snorkeling out from the resort was fairly average as it had a bit of an undertow, as well as a bit of traffic.

I ended up going out several times with the people doing scuba trips, which was good, got to see some more interesting areas, albeit, it was naturally disappointing only getting the 2D experience when they got the 3D. The highlight was just before hopping back on the boat the last time I believe I saw a small tortoise. 

On the day I was to head back to the mainland I asked if they could take me back to the pontoon a couple of hours early, so I could enjoy some of the attractions there - such as the water slide and the snorkeling. From memory the snorkeling was actually pretty good.

Anyhow, eventually I hopped back on the big boat, and was returned to the mainland.

Once there, it took a while to find the person who was actually my transfer to my next hotel, and once I did, it was a bit of a drive (due to the traffic, and the fact it was rush hour) and I had to make sure he was dropping me off at the correct place, as like I had found with Ubud, there were places with similar names.