"What time is it?" I whine.
"Six."
"Augh," I say pulling the extra pillow over my head.
By the time I wake up the complimentary breakfast is almost over. I rush downstairs and fill my plate. I borrow Stacy's lap top to try and skype home. My mother's the only one who comes to the computer which is probably for the best. It makes it easier, being away from home for Christmas, when no one is missing you.
After breakfast we take a walk down the beach from Legian to Kuta, stopping to buy a bottle of wine at the circle K on the way. This makes it easier to feel okay about the fact that no one's missing you.
The beach is grey sand and full of litter. The water is also grey and empty pop bottles, plastic bags and food wrappers bob up and down in the surf. Bule's line the sand like beached albino seals and and the touts flock around them like seagulls hoping for some leftovers. In exchange they offer bracelets, t-shirts, sunglasses, umbrellas and when you shake your head "No" they just say "You're beautiful, I love you." I wonder if that ever works for them.
In Kuta we try to find a travel agent to tell us what time the ship leaves for Flores but it's Christmas day and most of the agents are closed. We find a tour agent who tells us there are no ferries to Flores between Christmas and New Year's. This seems ridiculous but we change tactics and start looking for an agent to find out the cost of flights.
As we wander I shop and stop for the occasional drink. There are three kinds of shops in Bali. Sarong shops for clothes, souvenir shops for obscene bumper stickers and dildo bottle openers and art shops for pastiche art of Bali beach babes. I eventually find a comfortable pair of pants, bargain the price down to $5 we focus on the travel plans.
Adik takes us to meet her friend who works in a hotel and says she will try to get us quotes on flights for the next day. None of us has a working phone at the moment so she takes Stacy back to the hotel on her ojek so she knows where it is if she needs to find us.
Adik and I are to meet them outside the Hard Rock Cafe but we beat them there. I spend almost forty minutes sitting on the curb having my picture taken by Asian tourists who treat me like a cardboard cut out or mannequin in Madam Tussaud's museums, some of them not even bothering to ask before draping an arm across my shoulder and snapping the picture. I watch a circus parade of people pass by; overweight middle aged women in dresses like sausage casings, barebacked geriatric men in cut off jeans, chip n dales clones in sexy Santa suits and sunburned valley girls in thong bikinis. The cardinal sin of socks with sandals is committed ubiquitously here and almost everyone has a party horn or noise maker. There's a group of college kids pushing their rented car down the street and a very inebriated Australian taking a piss in the gutter. I
When Adik's friend and Stacy show up the friend already has plane tickets lined up for us but I don't like the price and am too hungry to make a decision. I suggest we go back to the hotel and go for dinner. I invite Adik's friend and she agrees but when I say we will meet her there, we want to walk down the beach she insists no, she will take us one by one on her ojek. When we insist that will take as long as walking and waste gas and besides we really want to walk down the beach and watch the storm that's rolling in she gets angry and shouts at Adik. I decide I don't like her and am not concerned when we never see her again.
The storm is brilliant, swirling sand at our feet and lighting up the navy sky and when it finally hits shore the rain is cold and hard sending everyone, except us, running for cover.
At the hotel we ask for the name of a good Mexican restaurant but when we find the place they recommend, the menu consists of wienerschnitzel and borscht. The decor is definitely a contrasting Santa Fe bohemian and there is a mariachi band playing "O Holy Night" but we decide to head back to a deserted Mexican restaurant we'd passed on the way.
Here Adik has her first taste of Mexican cuisine, a chimichanga, and I scarf down a whole plate of nachos. On the way back we stop at another tour operator who offers to sell us $100 ferry tickets but we decline as this is almost as much as a flight. We stop at a bar on the way home and I drink two screwdrivers in hopes they will help me make a decision but, by the end of the night, the only conclusion I've reached is we won't be leaving for Flores tomorrow.
Back at the hotel we ask at the front desk about ferries -are they running or not- and after making some calls they conclude that they might be but probably not and we should probably go to the terminal and check.
I give Stacy her Christmas present -the turtle ashtray and a bracelet from Borobudur- and call it Christmas.
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