Padangbai - Ferry and White Water Rafting

Padangbai is the first stop after the ferry from Lombok. We were a bit tired after being spoiled by the Perama boat on the way to Gilli T, that had its own beach on the upper deck (complete with beach mats) that went direct to the island. (The Captian allowed me to drive the boat for a while so he could light up a big spliff and tell me how he fell asleep at the wheel one day and the passengers woke him up, then the boat started to go around in circles, got to love these people!).



Getting the public ferry on the way back was a bit of a shock. We took a boat at 8am from a local dive shop to Lombok then a bus to Sengigi, where we got off and were planning to hire a car to tour Lombok. After talking to about 5 people and the same jeep turning up, we realised that there was only one car in the whole town to rent and it was double the cost of the same car in Bali. Bugger this we thought and ran (as fast as you can with a massive backpack on your back) back to the bus stop.

Lucky we did decide to leave Lombok as the ferry stopped running the next day for four days due to bad weather and the lorries were lining up 3km outside of town waiting to get there, so we would have been stuck on Lombok with our flight in Bali. We found the Perama bus had left for Bali but the guys at the shop were really nice and arranged a car to take us to the next stop where we picked up the original bus. I think we held up the bus as we had lots of backwards looks. So after catching the public ferry and being very nervous as we had had horror stories about it (thanks Mari - made us really paranoid and it wasn't so bad, talk about putting ideas in our head! - El), not to mention two ferries sinking (one a few days ago) and three planes crashing over the last few months.

The ferry turned out to be OK, just hot and long.

Padangbai turned out to be a nice and sleepy town, so after a day we decided to do a white water raft. You should have seen El's face as we walked down a beautiful slope to the river and were presented with two 6-ft drop rapids right at the start. LOL (laugh out loud).

The event turned out to be more peaceful than scary, with the occasional WEEEEEEE! but still really nice to float down a river for an hour or so! The guide was lovely with a big Bali smile and he would keep on shouting out crocodile and slapping the water with the paddle, scaring El every time and shouting out BOOM every time we hit the side of the canyon.