7 – Within 4 Hours

Phuket to Bali

It has been many years since I felt the thrill of anticipation before getting on a flight, especially when the flight requires a 3am alarm call. The person who invented the “red-eye” has a lot to answer for. The “taxi” arrives; an unmarked car of some fashionable metallic grey – blue neon illuminates the underside and once inside, a series of gauges show diverse and various critical measurements for high speed travel, no doubt including air speed and doppler maps.

Thankfully our Schumacher wanna be is quite sleepy and our hop to the airport is sedate. The streets are mostly deserted, that beautiful pre-dawn time when the world just seems a better place.

Within 4 Hours of our little beach resort in Thailand, we arrive in another country, another culture, different architecture, landscapes and chaos.

The Afterburner – Phuket

As a kid in Scotland my life was within 4 hours of home – how far I could walk in the mountains above the village, or get lost in the woods playing Frodo and fighting imaginary orcs with a tree branch sword.

I realise as we negotiate customs and the inevitable shakedown that I have to re-activate my chaos rating system for these travel updates. I have been to Indonesia many times over the years; Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, but never to Bali, but the traffic and scooter chaos that is the normal state of being is a notch up from Thailand, and perverse compared to western Europe.

Its nearly a month now since we left our little village of Luarca in northern Spain, and our life has flipped 180 degrees.

An hour long taxi ride, through haphazard streets, ubiquitous temples of worn red brick, ancient gnarled trees dripping in orchids and creepers, and we arrive in a remote corner of Ubud. Our cottage in the woods is hard to find, and the driver misses it twice. But we settle into the rustic traditional Balinese room; birds call, frogs croak, insects buzz. The mozzie nets drape the bed and there is no AC.

I set up my camera out on the balcony and watch the sunset; taking exposures to capture the red sky and others to catch some details in the shadowed palm trees. Night falls, as it does in swift fashion, and a little under an hour after the sun has dipped over the horizon, the milky way is shining above us.

Fireflies pulse their way around the ten acre clearing, playing merry havoc with my night shots, but such a wonderfully humorous “problem” to deal with. Does this count as light pollution.

It’s not all sunsets, suntans and swimming pools though – work continues with long days in front of the computer. There is usually time in the evenings though to take a wander down to the beach before dinner and take a few images. Juanli and I still feel out of place with the rest of the visitors, all heavily into holiday mode, whereas our time here seems more work-related.

This morning we take a trip across Denpasar to the Thai Consulate to attempt to get Juanli a visa for our next leg of travel in late November. Seemingly routine, a couple of thumb lengths on a simplified map, a simple form, a common process. But they say no – she has to apply in China, so I hand over my passport and switch on plan B for her.

There are many interesting and exciting things that can be achieved within four hours. Getting a Thai Visa for a Chinese Passport holder in Bali is not one of them.