haha. he laughed, a mirthless and bitter cackle of derision. we went to nusa lembongang and it was a pest hole. the people were unfreindly, the beaches looked plesent and white from a distance, but close up the were revieled to be spread with chunks of sharp corral and nasty rocks just below the water line. the water itself, when not flecked with green scum was crystal clear and quite nice. so after giving it two days we left for senur and got a bemo from there to ubud were we leapt intop the place we stayed at before with sighs of relief. something of interest. in senur we fixed a price of 40000rp with the bemo minion and set off. about half way there we were startled out of our reveree by a loud groin from the minon and a mutter of “so far!” or something simmiler. i though nothing of it and we pootled onwards. a bit later he struck up the courage to speak again. he gibbered something to the effect that he had not realised that ubud was so far away and that he wanted 50000rp. this got annika to the boil and no mistake. i calmed her and stated loudly in my best commanding manner that we would pay the agreed price. and the we left it. later we reached the outskirts of ubud, and there we stopped. we had made it very clear when agreeing the price that we wanted to go to the center of the town and the bloke had agreed. but now he had the crust to demand that we get out here a good km from our place and to pay 50000rp. annika was frothing at the gills in anger and i had about as much as i could take. i lunged to the front, gratified that he twitched slightly backwards, and gestured at the map “we will go here and we will pay you 40000” i said calmly thinking of what dirk struin would do in this situation. he said no. i changed tack. “you take us there, or we get out here and pay you nothing!” this seemed to move him as he kept bleating that i was “no good man” but i was unmoved by his blather. and repeated myself. i found i could look him in the eyeball and course him to wilt. after much grumbling and cusings under his breath, he drove on and took us to the place. ofcourse dirk struin would have got out and then not payed the blighter, damn his insolence. but we gave him the 40000.

anyway ubud is nice. we think we will go back to kuta and try and find somewere nice to stay without quite so many cockrouches as last time.

i shall inform annika of cherry picking possibilties, as she will want toil when she returns and it sounds preferable to manderins which flay you alive with there thorns and privalidge of being payed a couple of bent pennies.

my word the tale is looking a bit good. much confusion. i badly want to write something but havent the time. curses.

has anyone else noticed a thing to the left which says “photos” it apears to contain derrigiographic images of liv and some other humans! i shall investigate further.

julio