Everything was packed and prepared. I saw my girlfriend with her friend was sitting in the terrace facing the beach. They were having cup of tea and cookies. I came to join in and then soon we have pineapple to share. We knew that we need to go to the airport as soon as possible. However, we keep on procrastinating as spoiled by the beauty of Bali.
In couple of hours later, we were outside of the bungalow complex with our backpack and hand bag. Al though the man who rent us a scooter suggest us to take a bus from the Bungalow, it seems it’s going to take an hour or two to wait for the bus. Therefore, when we saw a police mini truck park nearby Bungalow complex and just about to leave, without much thinking, we approached them, trying to hitchhike! Yes, this is how random and spontaneous our trip was. Interestingly, the policemen allow us to go with them until the roundabout! Yup, the roundabout where we were caught by them on our first day in Bali! And it wasn’t the only story. On the 4th day in Bali, we came back to our Bungalow in the midnight. I believed there would be no more police at this late night. However, I need to convince myself twice that we were in touristic place. The policemen are always around the town. On that night luckily I saw them from far away, and I managed telling my girlfriend to jump out of the scooter. I was confidence! But I should know that the policemen are not stupid. They stopped me and they knew that my girlfriend was with me. The worst was, they were the policemen who caught us on our first day in Bali. They completely knew everything about me. I was ready to pick up my wallet and spent some more money. Fortunately, the policemen just let us go. The main reason remains mystery, but I thought it was because we look so damn poor.
After we arrived at the roundabout, we took a bus to go to bus station in Denpasar. We were arguing before we took a public transportation to the airport. My girlfriend was insisting to try hitchhiking, her friend tried to be rational to take a taxi, and I suggested them to take the public transportation. We were arguing for 10-15 minutes until I was really upset and drag them all to the public transportation. I didn’t want us spending time for small things. Every day was challenging in Bali. The first day was with policemen, exhausting and horrible journey. The second day, we missed each other. The third day, we were struggling in finding the cheapest available hotel in Denpasar after we realized that we were too exhausted to go back to our Bungalow. The fourth day, again! We were missing each other. That time it was even more terrible as my girlfriend was separated from us and she brought nothing, not even a penny. I had enough with all of those adventurous situations. I hoped our last day in Bali would be at peace. Yet, since we were in the public transportation, we could not stay in peace. We were so nervous because there was a long traffic jam on the way to the airport. We were kind of relief after the driver made an initiative to jump into pedestrian walk and made our journey as if in Rally Dakar! “Grushak..grushuk…bump..bump…. “ was the familiar noise along the way to the airport. Eventually we arrived at the airport on time, two hours before our departure. We were so happy and thinking about souvenir to buy. We entered one souvenir shop on the airport and spent a lot of time there. We started to be panicked when we realized there were 20 minutes left to go for check in. We were rushing to our airline counter, running like crazy. We were so glad that it wasn’t that far from the souvenir shop. Finally we reached the airline counter and telling in a hurry that we wanted to check in. Suddenly the officer of the airline told us that we were in a wrong counter! We were in domestic flight counter and we need to move to international flight counter! We were extremely panicked; we were running out like crazy! By the time we arrived at the international flight counter, it was 5 minutes late for check in.
Ilman Nafian D