B day is here! Wooohooo - Saturday 3rd September

Well, it's Saturday morning and, as usual, Tiz packed yesterday and I'm still at it.
I think I've got everything, e.g. lappie, power supply, external hardrive with enough movies and TV shows to last 5-10years, spare USB's with movies and TV shows to last 5 - 6 aircraft circumnavigations of the Earth, power adaptors, two phones, passport, wallet, new book by Joe Colella ...... oh yes, a spare of underwear and a toothbrush ....... so I have definitely left something out. I'll find out what it is when I get there.

As is my want, I got up this morning and decided to become a little less hirsute for the holiday.

So......

from this .....

to this!!!

To which Tiz said "You're not going to leave it like that are you?"

Nah, but yeah for a few days. Just for a giggle.

Both very similar to my ID photo below, don't you think?

Enough of this banging on, there's a big flying bus to catch!

More tomorrow, from far closer to the Equator than Melbourne.

We left home at 3pm as Tiz believes in getting there a little earlydoes no harm.

The trip there was quick and comfortable. We hired a private cab to take us, which turned out to be a nice young guy in a late model Lexus 4WD.

I was quite impressed by the luxury and quietness of those things. 

We got to the airport at 3:30pm and we took off at 7:30pm, instead of the scheduled 5:45pm.

One of the passengers waiting patiently

The plane was late in arriving then we had a young girl have a panic attack as we were boarding so they had to go through all the luggage to remove hers and her Mums, as they decided to abandon the trip, and then we had someone with a new drone that had a huge lithium battery, which they were undecided as to whether they would allow it on. 

They eventually allowed it but a lot of us were bracing ourselves for the worst, as we know that large and charged lithium batteries are occasionally prone to spontaneous combustion.  

We had the two seats just inside the door and the third seat was occupied by a lovely lady called Jillian Wright, who co-owns Lily Lane Villas in Ubud.

We decided that after talking to her we would visit her in Ubud, even though we had not planned to visit Ubud this trip.  

... and here is that patient passenger in Denpasar, finally.

We were met by Adi, our driver and taken to the villa in Seminyak through resonably light traffic.

Mrs. Wayan met us and showed us around the very familiar layout of the villa and left us to our company.

I know the area well as it just around the corner from where we have stayed many times as well as being 2 minutes walk from Made's Warung, a very popular eating place.

Yes it was now 2am on Saturday morning BUT we are now in Bali AND we have two litres of gin to drink BUT we had no tonic water.

Seminyak has a lot of 24 hour convenience stores and there is one about 100m. away, so off I went.

Blow me down if this was the only convenience store without tonic water OR lemonade! They probably didn't have any cheese either.

I bought a cold Hieneken "long neck", 750ml to you non-Aussies, which they sell in convenience stores here. Very civilised.

I then proceeded to go for a dip in our private pool and drink the whole "long neck".

I was definitely on holidays now as I did three things that I just don't normally do - be up at 3am, drink that much beer in one sitting and swim in a pool.

Off to bed for a seriously good sleep.