a helping hand

so ashley and i have made it safely to bali.

incredibly enough, it was cheaper (by about half as much) to [1. walk a kilometer to the harbor 2. jump on a fishing boat to lombok 3. haul ourselves (with luggage) another half a km 4. wait 2.5 hours for a car and driver while chatting with the locals (until they all left for prayer) 5. take said car an hour south to mataram 6. jump on an airplane to bali 7. get a taxi to drive us 20 minutes to our hotel] than it was to just take a boat straight to bali. wow.

we had a little "incident" in the airport. we got there 1 hour before our flight and went to check in... we're pretty used to the process here in indonesia, and we never have any problems. this was not the case yesterday as we tried to secure our boarding passes. we had purchased our tickets through a travel agency on lombok, and they had given us the e-ticket thingys. ashley and i had identical paperwork, minus the fact that mine had my name and ashley's had hers. naturally. ashley went to check in first, and they promptly proceeded to tell her to leave her bags and follow them. slightly concerned for my friend's well being and expecting the same fate myself, i stepped up to the counter and presented the lady with my papers. i received my boarding pass nearly immediately. so i waited for ashley. 10 minutes went by. 20 minutes went by. at this point i was nearly envisioning her locked in an interrogation room somewhere having bamboo shoots shoved under her fingernails as airport officials tried to extort money out of her. (ok, so indonesia is corrupt, but probably not quite THAT corrupt.) so i sms-ed her. she told me she was just outside, so i grabbed her luggage and went to find her. apparently, the travel agent did something wrong and her ticket was void. some poor guy who spoke hardly any english was trying his best to sort it out. our plane was leaving in 30 minutes. now, i have seen God's hand at work in our trip thus far, working tiny miracles to keep everything going smoothly in a country where smooth is a foreign concept. as the man picked up a telephone to make a call, right there in the airport, i bowed my head and i prayed, "God, i don't know who this man is calling or if they can help, but i know that YOU can. You've worked so many miracles on our trip so far, and i pray that You would do one more. i ask that this one phone call would clear everything up, that ashley and i would be together on our plane to bali in 30 minutes. and thanks." i opened my eyes. he hung up the phone. he handwrote ashley a new ticket, and we got on our plane. (btw, the 30 minutes left us with plenty of time to find our gate - the airport only has 2. TWO!)

last night ashley and i went out for indian food (salatiga desperately needs an indian restaurant. or maybe i just desperately need salatiga to have an indian restaurant....) and on our jaunt back to our hotel, we were doing some shopping - window and otherwise. ashley was having a rough go of it, knocking clothes off racks, dropping things on the floor, etc. very not normal ashley. i, of course, was having a good time teasing her about it and pretending to be embarrassed to be seen with such a klutz. but the best was yet to come..... we were in a very trendy/pricey clothes store. ashley decided that she liked the tube dress on the mannequin in the window, so she leaned over to check the price tag. as she did, though, she managed to halfway disrobe the poor mannequin, as the dress slid down to her waist. i hightailed it out of there, and ashley followed suit. as soon as we hit the sidewalk, we burst into uncontrollable laughter. i, naturally, took a picture of the scandalous mannequin. ironically (or maybe horrifically) enough, it is an indonesian holiday this weekend, and so there are TONS of muslim people here from java on vacation. ashley's justification for leaving the mannequin half-naked in the storefront window of the second busiest street in bali? - "but i was only trying to help the muslims have a better holiday!"

i am still laughing.

home tomorrow!