gone living

today was the first "lost day" of the trip. by lost day, i'm referring to those days when you're done staying in one place, you have your transport planned out to get to your next place, and... something goes wrong. you miss your train, or you get on the wrong train, or the ferry doesn't show up, or whathaveyou, and it's going to take 24 hours to make thing right again and head off to your destination.

in this case, the plane tickets for today were sold out to get back to the island of bali, and i was too late for my back-up plan, the $18 USD, 11-hour adventure of shuttle boat -> bus -> ferry -> bus -> hostel. so, i ended up spending another day at gili trawangan, hanging out on the beach, doing a little writing, and enjoying the monsoon-like rain that suddenly began to pour down on us this evening.

i've been through much worse lost days -- the nights spent in train stations in romania and croatia come to mind first off. of course, no day is truly "lost" on a trip like this, but it always throws an unexpected crimp in the usual vacation plans... the thing that makes any lost day a little annoying is that i've psyched myself up to leave and move on, and then i'm here another day, usually at the expense of whatever i had planned for the next day. ah well, part of trips like this learning to go with the change instead of fighting it too much.

so tomorrow morning it's back to kuta (instead of seeing the monkey forest at ubud, as previously planned) via that 11-hour route i described above, followed by an early night, and then i'm off to kuala lumpur, malyasia the next day.

back to drinking beers under shelter at the dive shack!