Hi everyone. In the heat of Rose's medical problems, I forgot one of the most important things going on. Joe, the prodigal son, hasgainful employment on the 120 foot motor yacht Sunchaser. It's a long story, but this is the boat he almost got the 1st mate's job inSingapore. The position opened up again and, bingo, he's in Phuket learning the ropes. The way it works is a 3 month trial as bos'ns mate, and if he doesn't get fired, he's first mate with a raise. The difficult captain even seems to like him. Must be all the training he got on Rendezvous Cay. Not a bad way to jump start one's boat career. (okay I took a little poetic license in the subject, but captain comes after 1st mate). Way to go, Joe, sir.
T
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Bali & Penang May 19 2009
Hello everyone.
A few of you may remember that we wrote Lovina Beach on Bali was as close to
heaven as we've been. SO--we booked a trip down there for 10 days. We
planned to stay a week in Lovina and then segue down to Ubud which is the
arts and crafts center. Our travel agent has been less than stellar so we
missed the $150 flight but got a $200 fare. On the way to the airport at
dark o'thirty, I mentioned to Rose I hadn't flown since we returned from our
around the world gig in early 2006. This became obvious as I unloaded my
pockets and put my carry-on on the conveyor and then walked through the
metal detector. Oops, alarms galore. Forgot to take off my backpack. I'm
still hearing about it. Air Asia is a real cheap cattle car type of airline
that charges for everything including luggage, so we carried on. This was a
bit of a pain as, I'm sure you all know, for some reasons the airports make
you walk about 5 miles to get to customs and immigration. It was about an
hour from Penang to Kuala Lumpur and then a plane change for the 3 hours to
Denpasser on Bali.
Unlike coming in on a boat, you can get a 30 day visa on arrival coming in
by plane--$25 p/p, but they only take Rupiahs or US$, neither of which we had. Left my passport at
the desk to hit the ATM, but it's outside the restricted area. An agent stopped me,
but I just explained I needed some cash, gave her my entire wallet and
grabbed a couple million Rupiahs. Of course, that delay put us at the end of
the immigration line. After about an hour, with little movement, some guy
came up and offered to expedite us for about $15 each. Done. Only took him
10 minutes. It was now about 3 pm, but we found our driver and set off for
Lovina. The hotel cut us some slack and only charged $40 instead of the
quoted $50 and it's a long way. With traffic, the 3 hour ride took 4 hours,
but the scenery was nice. Seems they can't put in an expressway because the
direct route would require tunnels, but Balinese and/or Hindus (I'm not sure)
don't like going underground.
The hotel was Sunari Villas, right on the beach. All the internet and
keepsake maps we had were wrong for almost every hotels' location, and we
thought we would be much closer to the little village we anchored off of in
September, but it was only about a 1 k walk up the beach to the town. The
place was really outstanding. It was billed as a 3 star hotel, but it was
better. Nice pool, massages on the beach, good food--$50 night. During the
season these rooms go for about $150. Then, we befriended the GM who
insisted we upgrade our room and gave us a "pool villa" which is a little
self standing cottage behind a wall for privacy with our own Jacuzzi.
Sweet. We really don't know why this is off season as the weather was the
best we've had in months. Quite warm during the day but nice breezes and
about 70 at night with lower humidity and not a cloud in the sky our whole
stay except the last night. So we shopped, got Rose some pain killers for
her latest incident of the mystery disease, and actually looked at some real
estate which is dirt cheap for what you get. In fact, the real estate guy,
Putu, is the one who introduced us to the hotel GM. Seems they were
shipmates on Norwegian Lines cruises years ago. Anyway, we're toying with
the idea of moving there, but Rose wants to start a business or something, so
we have to wait for her trip to the UK for her to check out the market. I
think I'd stay in a heartbeat, because I don't mind being a bum, but she
wants something to occupy her besides cocktails and massages. Got all sorts
of welcome messages from Celcom, Malaysia and Telekomsel, Indonesia on the
phone, and we were able to receive calls and SMS's. For some reason, though,
we couldn't do any outbound traffic, not even to customer service to figure
out what is wrong. Going to check it out here in Penang and see what needs
to be done as all the Asian companies allow roaming all over.
So we had a great week in Lovina and checked out where to stay in Ubud. It
was even cheaper, and we found Nick's Hotels which had the "cottages", the
"pension" and a home stay thing. Cottages looked a bit nicer, but the
pension was closer to the town center, and we picked that. It's about 2-2
1/2 hours down form Lovina, and we ended up with our same driver, Komang,
from our last trip. Coincidentally, Our friends, Dave and Judy-Freebird
were at cottages about 1/4 mile away. We met Freebird for lunch, as the
room wasn't ready yet, so we just left our bags for them to put in there.
After lunch everyone sort of went their separate ways, and I went on a
mission to find the same massage place that gave me one of the best ever
last year. Nah, they were closed, but the one down the street was still
pretty good. The plan was to all meet back up at the Mojita bar, a place
called Cinta, which had really good Mojitas two for one 'til 7. However,
naptime came first, so I wended my way back to the hotel through the
shortcut off the main road to the back entrance, which, as it turned out,
was where our room was. Were we pleasantly surprised!!! Unbelievable!!!
From the front, you walked through a few rice paddies and down the hill to
the room. From the back way, you went down a narrow side street to a bridge
over a small river and ravine. Our room was on the side of a hill
overlooking the river with rainforest and Hindu shrines on the other side. Just beautiful
and, better yet, $40/night!!! Had cocktails and dinner and an early night.
Next day, Dave had rented a car and driver to check out another spot as he
and Judy were staying a full month, so we drove all around. Did I mention
all these places include a full breakfast with the rooms, Lovina, too?
While we were sightseeing, the girls were supposed to go to the post office
and shopping but got side tracked at some famous Indonesian "healer" who's
in the well known book, "Eat, Pray, Love". They couldn't resist and spent
most of the day there, and Rose went back again the next day for 4 hours as
it seemed to be doing some good, and the next day the woman took her up in
the hills to the "master" who poked her and treated her spiritually and gave
her a bunch of herbal stuff. Our last night was really rainy so we just
stayed in and got room service--steak, lemon chicken, drinks, trimmings
$10!!!! In the middle of the night, we got a text message that our 7:45 pm
flight from KL to Penang was changed to 10:45. Bummer as there were no
earlier flights, so we hung around the airport for 5 hours. The upside was
Air Asia has an on time guarantee and pays you about $56 in vouchers for
every hour delay. Should cover our trip to Chang Mai Thailand later this
year. No hassles getting back into Malaysia, but we had been well prepared
with all our boat docs as some countries require an ticket out of the
country when you arrive. Got back to the boat at about midnight.
We did a few of the usual things back here. Reflexology, massages, night
markets, etc. We also hit the travel agent to get our China visas. China
doesn't like Americans. My visa was RM500, Rose's RM140!!! We also got
that trip squared away for a week later and finalized our Angkor Wat tour
and Mekong River cruise. Still working on the tour of Vietnam; the cruise
ends at Ho Chi Minh City. Rose has been up and down with this stupid
recurrence of her mystery disease and Tuesday--we got back Friday--she took
1/2 hour to get out of bed so off we went to emergency at Adventist
hospital. They started her on steroids (she finally gave in) and another
pain killer, but it's only at another hospital where they have the one
rheumatologist on the island, and she only makes appointments for Friday.
The pills helped but not enough yet, so we've delayed the trip to China
until this gets sorted.
After the doc, I had to run out to the airport to talk to customs as they
wanted me to get an import permit for the $6 toaster Lizzie sent. I
schlepped all the way out there, only to have the FedEx guy cut a deal with
the customs officer, so with cabfare, my $6 toaster now costs $25, including
the cabfare. I never did talk to customs; they just waived the permit!!!
Wednesday, we did have a bit of excitement. I was going below to take a
shower and saw a sizable lizard scamper down the hall into my head. These
are not geckos, folks. They are about a foot long and have a mouth like a
crocodile with very sharp teeth. We found the front half of one sort of
mummified in the sail (we figure a bird dropped it there sometime), and they
are nasty. Even the guys at the marina we called to get rid of it trod
lightly. They said if the thing gets its teeth into you, it's hard to shake
loose. So, about 8 guys came down to the boat with nets and one of those
snake hook things--things are slow down here at the marina. It was sort of
a Malaysian Ghostbusters. Anyway, they couldn't find it, but I did a few
minutes later--hiding under the toilet brush holder. Now, however, the guys
wanted to get some kind of pincher gadget to grab it with. I said I'd pay,
and two of them returned with one of those things you use to get stuff off a
high shelf along with a giant bag. Well, after all sorts of banging around for
about 10 minutes, up they came with the thing in the bag. They'd let it get
out of the head, but I had wisely closed my cabin door. They broke my
"grabber" and deracked all my clothes, but they got it and now Rose is
happy. I was drafted by her to get pictures of it in the bag!!! What a
chicken!
Okay, so it's Friday the day we were supposed to leave for China, but went to see the specialist instead. I have to preface my remarks by saying (and Rose would probably disagree) that every time we see one of these doctors, they invariably seem to find something wrong with her that is in their specialty. That being said, with some healthy skepticism, the rheumatologist seems to be on the ball and everything fits. First of all, the steroids have markedly reduced Rose's aches and pains. The guy on Tuesday started her on those. So the diagnosis--and this is the first time we've had a firm one--is rheumatoid arthritis, albeit more rheumatism than arthritis. After a long wait, they snuck us in this morning and, after a thorough debriefing, the doc ordered more blood tests and x-rays. Unlike in the states, the results were in this pm, and the doc made the diagnosis. All the symptoms, the ups and downs, and the tests seem to confirm this, and it's pretty easily treatable, initially with steroids tapering those off as the other pills (sulfazine), which take a couple of months to reach effective levels, kick in. The sulfazine has minimal side effects, but the poor woman isn't supposed to drink. While I would probably shoot myself, Rose is more circumspect!!! Just the relief of knowing what's going on has been a boost, and the treatment promises pretty much a return to normalcy over time. This disease is an autoimmune deficiency, and we still come back to the damn tick bite screwing things up, but at least now something is being done.
So, the trip to China is back on. We just need to rebook with the travel agent and she is working on it. Hopefully we'll depart mid week next week and return just in time for Angkor Wat, our cruise down the Mekong and Vietnam. The extra week here has allowed us to get out Viet visas now instead of between trips.
So we'll report more exciting news as it occurs, but we wanted to give everyone the "Rose" report.
Cheers
Tim & Rose
A few of you may remember that we wrote Lovina Beach on Bali was as close to
heaven as we've been. SO--we booked a trip down there for 10 days. We
planned to stay a week in Lovina and then segue down to Ubud which is the
arts and crafts center. Our travel agent has been less than stellar so we
missed the $150 flight but got a $200 fare. On the way to the airport at
dark o'thirty, I mentioned to Rose I hadn't flown since we returned from our
around the world gig in early 2006. This became obvious as I unloaded my
pockets and put my carry-on on the conveyor and then walked through the
metal detector. Oops, alarms galore. Forgot to take off my backpack. I'm
still hearing about it. Air Asia is a real cheap cattle car type of airline
that charges for everything including luggage, so we carried on. This was a
bit of a pain as, I'm sure you all know, for some reasons the airports make
you walk about 5 miles to get to customs and immigration. It was about an
hour from Penang to Kuala Lumpur and then a plane change for the 3 hours to
Denpasser on Bali.
Unlike coming in on a boat, you can get a 30 day visa on arrival coming in
by plane--$25 p/p, but they only take Rupiahs or US$, neither of which we had. Left my passport at
the desk to hit the ATM, but it's outside the restricted area. An agent stopped me,
but I just explained I needed some cash, gave her my entire wallet and
grabbed a couple million Rupiahs. Of course, that delay put us at the end of
the immigration line. After about an hour, with little movement, some guy
came up and offered to expedite us for about $15 each. Done. Only took him
10 minutes. It was now about 3 pm, but we found our driver and set off for
Lovina. The hotel cut us some slack and only charged $40 instead of the
quoted $50 and it's a long way. With traffic, the 3 hour ride took 4 hours,
but the scenery was nice. Seems they can't put in an expressway because the
direct route would require tunnels, but Balinese and/or Hindus (I'm not sure)
don't like going underground.
The hotel was Sunari Villas, right on the beach. All the internet and
keepsake maps we had were wrong for almost every hotels' location, and we
thought we would be much closer to the little village we anchored off of in
September, but it was only about a 1 k walk up the beach to the town. The
place was really outstanding. It was billed as a 3 star hotel, but it was
better. Nice pool, massages on the beach, good food--$50 night. During the
season these rooms go for about $150. Then, we befriended the GM who
insisted we upgrade our room and gave us a "pool villa" which is a little
self standing cottage behind a wall for privacy with our own Jacuzzi.
Sweet. We really don't know why this is off season as the weather was the
best we've had in months. Quite warm during the day but nice breezes and
about 70 at night with lower humidity and not a cloud in the sky our whole
stay except the last night. So we shopped, got Rose some pain killers for
her latest incident of the mystery disease, and actually looked at some real
estate which is dirt cheap for what you get. In fact, the real estate guy,
Putu, is the one who introduced us to the hotel GM. Seems they were
shipmates on Norwegian Lines cruises years ago. Anyway, we're toying with
the idea of moving there, but Rose wants to start a business or something, so
we have to wait for her trip to the UK for her to check out the market. I
think I'd stay in a heartbeat, because I don't mind being a bum, but she
wants something to occupy her besides cocktails and massages. Got all sorts
of welcome messages from Celcom, Malaysia and Telekomsel, Indonesia on the
phone, and we were able to receive calls and SMS's. For some reason, though,
we couldn't do any outbound traffic, not even to customer service to figure
out what is wrong. Going to check it out here in Penang and see what needs
to be done as all the Asian companies allow roaming all over.
So we had a great week in Lovina and checked out where to stay in Ubud. It
was even cheaper, and we found Nick's Hotels which had the "cottages", the
"pension" and a home stay thing. Cottages looked a bit nicer, but the
pension was closer to the town center, and we picked that. It's about 2-2
1/2 hours down form Lovina, and we ended up with our same driver, Komang,
from our last trip. Coincidentally, Our friends, Dave and Judy-Freebird
were at cottages about 1/4 mile away. We met Freebird for lunch, as the
room wasn't ready yet, so we just left our bags for them to put in there.
After lunch everyone sort of went their separate ways, and I went on a
mission to find the same massage place that gave me one of the best ever
last year. Nah, they were closed, but the one down the street was still
pretty good. The plan was to all meet back up at the Mojita bar, a place
called Cinta, which had really good Mojitas two for one 'til 7. However,
naptime came first, so I wended my way back to the hotel through the
shortcut off the main road to the back entrance, which, as it turned out,
was where our room was. Were we pleasantly surprised!!! Unbelievable!!!
From the front, you walked through a few rice paddies and down the hill to
the room. From the back way, you went down a narrow side street to a bridge
over a small river and ravine. Our room was on the side of a hill
overlooking the river with rainforest and Hindu shrines on the other side. Just beautiful
and, better yet, $40/night!!! Had cocktails and dinner and an early night.
Next day, Dave had rented a car and driver to check out another spot as he
and Judy were staying a full month, so we drove all around. Did I mention
all these places include a full breakfast with the rooms, Lovina, too?
While we were sightseeing, the girls were supposed to go to the post office
and shopping but got side tracked at some famous Indonesian "healer" who's
in the well known book, "Eat, Pray, Love". They couldn't resist and spent
most of the day there, and Rose went back again the next day for 4 hours as
it seemed to be doing some good, and the next day the woman took her up in
the hills to the "master" who poked her and treated her spiritually and gave
her a bunch of herbal stuff. Our last night was really rainy so we just
stayed in and got room service--steak, lemon chicken, drinks, trimmings
$10!!!! In the middle of the night, we got a text message that our 7:45 pm
flight from KL to Penang was changed to 10:45. Bummer as there were no
earlier flights, so we hung around the airport for 5 hours. The upside was
Air Asia has an on time guarantee and pays you about $56 in vouchers for
every hour delay. Should cover our trip to Chang Mai Thailand later this
year. No hassles getting back into Malaysia, but we had been well prepared
with all our boat docs as some countries require an ticket out of the
country when you arrive. Got back to the boat at about midnight.
We did a few of the usual things back here. Reflexology, massages, night
markets, etc. We also hit the travel agent to get our China visas. China
doesn't like Americans. My visa was RM500, Rose's RM140!!! We also got
that trip squared away for a week later and finalized our Angkor Wat tour
and Mekong River cruise. Still working on the tour of Vietnam; the cruise
ends at Ho Chi Minh City. Rose has been up and down with this stupid
recurrence of her mystery disease and Tuesday--we got back Friday--she took
1/2 hour to get out of bed so off we went to emergency at Adventist
hospital. They started her on steroids (she finally gave in) and another
pain killer, but it's only at another hospital where they have the one
rheumatologist on the island, and she only makes appointments for Friday.
The pills helped but not enough yet, so we've delayed the trip to China
until this gets sorted.
After the doc, I had to run out to the airport to talk to customs as they
wanted me to get an import permit for the $6 toaster Lizzie sent. I
schlepped all the way out there, only to have the FedEx guy cut a deal with
the customs officer, so with cabfare, my $6 toaster now costs $25, including
the cabfare. I never did talk to customs; they just waived the permit!!!
Wednesday, we did have a bit of excitement. I was going below to take a
shower and saw a sizable lizard scamper down the hall into my head. These
are not geckos, folks. They are about a foot long and have a mouth like a
crocodile with very sharp teeth. We found the front half of one sort of
mummified in the sail (we figure a bird dropped it there sometime), and they
are nasty. Even the guys at the marina we called to get rid of it trod
lightly. They said if the thing gets its teeth into you, it's hard to shake
loose. So, about 8 guys came down to the boat with nets and one of those
snake hook things--things are slow down here at the marina. It was sort of
a Malaysian Ghostbusters. Anyway, they couldn't find it, but I did a few
minutes later--hiding under the toilet brush holder. Now, however, the guys
wanted to get some kind of pincher gadget to grab it with. I said I'd pay,
and two of them returned with one of those things you use to get stuff off a
high shelf along with a giant bag. Well, after all sorts of banging around for
about 10 minutes, up they came with the thing in the bag. They'd let it get
out of the head, but I had wisely closed my cabin door. They broke my
"grabber" and deracked all my clothes, but they got it and now Rose is
happy. I was drafted by her to get pictures of it in the bag!!! What a
chicken!
Okay, so it's Friday the day we were supposed to leave for China, but went to see the specialist instead. I have to preface my remarks by saying (and Rose would probably disagree) that every time we see one of these doctors, they invariably seem to find something wrong with her that is in their specialty. That being said, with some healthy skepticism, the rheumatologist seems to be on the ball and everything fits. First of all, the steroids have markedly reduced Rose's aches and pains. The guy on Tuesday started her on those. So the diagnosis--and this is the first time we've had a firm one--is rheumatoid arthritis, albeit more rheumatism than arthritis. After a long wait, they snuck us in this morning and, after a thorough debriefing, the doc ordered more blood tests and x-rays. Unlike in the states, the results were in this pm, and the doc made the diagnosis. All the symptoms, the ups and downs, and the tests seem to confirm this, and it's pretty easily treatable, initially with steroids tapering those off as the other pills (sulfazine), which take a couple of months to reach effective levels, kick in. The sulfazine has minimal side effects, but the poor woman isn't supposed to drink. While I would probably shoot myself, Rose is more circumspect!!! Just the relief of knowing what's going on has been a boost, and the treatment promises pretty much a return to normalcy over time. This disease is an autoimmune deficiency, and we still come back to the damn tick bite screwing things up, but at least now something is being done.
So, the trip to China is back on. We just need to rebook with the travel agent and she is working on it. Hopefully we'll depart mid week next week and return just in time for Angkor Wat, our cruise down the Mekong and Vietnam. The extra week here has allowed us to get out Viet visas now instead of between trips.
So we'll report more exciting news as it occurs, but we wanted to give everyone the "Rose" report.
Cheers
Tim & Rose
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