Sun, Sand and Smiles - VII

I'll never get the order of Sun, Sand and Smiles correct, each post has a different name and I'm too lazy to go back and correct it. Anyhow, you get the idea right. There was a lot of sun, as our very very tanned faces showed by the end of those 7 days. A lot of sand, i still find it here and there in my house (!) and a lot of smiles, the proof is our crazy active WhatsApp group and Prem Agam jokes makes their appearance here and there :)

Our second day in Mentigi. We woke up early-ish. The boys from the villa had made breakfast for us. For all the care and discipline I maintain in my daily diet in Singapore, i let loose when I was on this vacation. It's been ages since I've had that much bread, butter and jam. We'd picked up a few bottles of orange juice last night, proved be really useful for this breakfast. So all stocked up with Vitamin C, we began getting ready for the dive, Sim, Stuti and me were out for a variety of reasons. That left the boys. We decided to take a few beers and books and chill on the boat when the boys dived.

This is either Air or Meno, most probably Air.

We were taking time to get ready so Akshay and Uttesh decided to go down and start preparing for the dive with Aziz. We were just about to leave and were rubbing the last blot of sunscreen on our faces, when we heard akshay and uttesh, they'd obviously come back running up the hill to tell us something important. But that killer climb, literally takes every single teeny weeny breath from your body. So after settling down for 10 minutes, they told us the diving plan was no cancelled, because Akshay had a cold and a blocked nose and it wasn't advisable to go down when you could have issues with your breath. Uttesh wasn't going to dive all alone, so the plan was cancelled.

This is a map that shows Gili T, Gili Air and Gili Meno.

The NEW PLAN (and what a plan) was to rent a boat, not a speed boat, (that did cost us a bomb the previous day) but a regular boat and explore the Gilis, stop wherever we wanted to and snorkel and swim and basically chill. So the boys had come up running to tell us to take our swimsuits. Which we had anyway! So we set out, Aziz gave us a pineapple and a knife (!) for our picnic, we bought a few beers and other drinks and climbed onto the boat. The boat was fast, not as fast as the speed boat of course, but fast enough for the wind and water to spray on our faces. We stopped on Gili Air first and then decided to go to Meno later.

At Air, or a little off the shore, I almost killed Uttesh. I have a thing with the sea, I can't jump in, which is why I don't think diving is a very good idea for me :) I need to swim into it from the shore, only then will i be ok with the depth. The idea of jumping into dark green, bottomless water freaks me out. So we stopped the boat a little far away from the shore and these guys convinced me that I can slowly lower myself into the water and it wasn't going to be that bad. Except that it was, and I almost drowned Uttesh because he was helping me. Not fun, for either of us. I felt terrible about it and I bought him a drink to make up for it later. So then we decided to go to the shore anyway, so I could behave like a normal person and not act as if I didn't know how to swim :| So embarrassing.

Here we are at Air! Me stepping into water before I freak out and almost drown Uttesh (who doesn't know what's coming is still smiling in this pic). Akshay trying to be Spanish. Sim : many many gin & tonics down. We don't have one of Stutu here (the next couple of pics are just her & me!)

And we did. Thank God. I finally swam into the sea and snorkeled around a little bit and floated a little bit. And after some more playing around, we all decided to chill at this beach side restaurant. The beach was pretty crowded, but not crowd that puts you off, regular, sun bathing & chilling manageable crowd. Too many kids though :| At the restaurant, our lovely Sim started drinking. And her choice of alcohol today was Gin. Looking at her enjoy that beautiful drink (i love gin & tonic), we were all tempted and so all of us ordered many many many rounds of Gin.    I think the Gilis ran out of Gin that day. I'm not even kidding. Haha. We ordered pizza (really really good thin crust pizzas in this place btw). We shifted from sitting at the bar to a nicer, lounge-like area on the beach. Not that the distance from the bar changed our attraction towards gin & tonic that day, the drinks kept  flowing. A few more snacks followed. And then, the unbelievable happened! I've explained how the Ramayana and Mahabharata and general the Indian TV and movie industry is so popular in Indonesia. So a waiter at this place that we were chilling at gave us bollywood moviestar names:

Uttesh : Suneil Shetty (We had and still have a lot of fun with this comparison, but so not fair! :D) 

Simran = Rani Mukherjee (he was besotted by Simran's eyes)

Stuti = Shraddha Kapoor (fitting actually, so pretty!)

                                       

Akshay = Amitabh Bachchan (yea right! ok then, moving on to more digestible topics...)

How sad is this ? Huh?

 When it came to me, he stared at my face for a long time and then he had to cover up with something, so he says "for her I will tell you when you come back to Gili Air and our restaurant". Whatever dude. Whatever. We ordered food, a lot of food, and decided to eat on the boat. So we got all that food packed and got back on our boat and went towards Meno. The gili in the middle. We stopped a little far away from the shore. There is NO way i was going to go into the water here, no way. So I picked up my lunch box, which you can find me holding in this picture below and started to eat. I loved Nasi Campur and so ordered it and it did live up to my expectations, so so so spicy, beautiful! We had a mix of things, a burger, a noodle dish, fish and chips etc.  Akshay went for a dip in the sea and then got back to eat his burger. We offered food to the two boat guys and they enjoyed this meal in the middle of the sea as much as we did. And finally we went closer to the shore in Gili Meno.

It was windy ok and I was cold. That is my only explanation for that face :| You can see the captain of our boat in this pic.

The beach was so rocky and full or corals in Meno, I must have gotten terribly bruised all over! My tea burn looked worse than what it was! But if you managed to go a little deeper and away from the shore the fish over there was beautiful. Sigh what would i not give to go back to that day, with all these guys, and the boat ! Akshay and Stuti spotted some interesting fish and called me to look as well. Uttesh was taking a break from all the snorkeling and chilling on the beach. Simran, was well, making friends. With the natives of Gili Meno. She met an uncle who became her best friend and to whom she ended up giving her really funky sunglasses, you can see her wearing them in this next picture. 

After Akshay, Stuti and I had our fill of the fish, floating and sand we decided to chill for the day and got out of the sea. Stuti and I then did a whole variety of nonsense, Akshay decided to photograph it : 

There all our madness in one frame

And then he decided to join in on the madness and this is our selfie from Gili Meno :)

And then for some reason we wanted Chai, and fortunately for Stu and me, there was a nice restaurant serving chai (among other drinks). Well not chai-chai, but teh. Tea they made with condensed milk! It's what I have ALL the time in Singapore and I could've cried with joy when I saw it there. So Stuti and I sat and had chai, spoke about all kinds of 'life' things, missed latu loads and watched the boys and simran play handball with Simran's new friends. haha. Akshay then came by to call us. AZIZ had called him to say we should be heading back to Mentigi to catch the sunset from the dome villas, because it's beautiful and it's our last evening there, so makes sense to head back. Simran bid a teary farewell (not!) to her friends, donated the sexy blue sunglasses and we were on our way to Mentigi. The sea was rough on our ride back, very very rough, I must have repeated by towel on head stance to guard myself against that chill. We were racing, rushing almost to catch the sunset. Reaching Mentigi beach was just step # 1, then we had that hill to climb!! 

We were praying for Aziz to be there. Uttesh and I were not going to attempt being daring and courageous after the near-death experience from last night's racing. But ALAS! God had other plans for us, Aziz was nowhere to be found. And we had to accept that challenge and climb the climb. I was eager to catch the sunset and the sun was playing hide and seek already. So I walked fast, didn't run, just walked really fast. Stuti, Akshay, Uttesh followed and Sim foooollllllooooooowwwweeeed. I didn't speak about how she had a few more gins at Meno no? Well, she did. I don't have that pic, but there's a beautiful pic of her on the boat that would describe anything I were to say about how happy (high) sim was that day. 

So anyway, all of us finally reached, just in time to catch the sunset.  Like literally it set the minute we stood and  stared at it from our villa.

Our last evening in Mentigi Dome Villas and the end of our vacation :(

Have to go back. FOR SURE!

This is the area to hang out downstairs, between the two rooms. We would often talk to each other through the holes (or windows) that opened up to the two villas

Then the boys decided to climb up using the sofa and the top of the window as support to then go up to the entrance of the two bedrooms like this : 

Make some Noise for the Desi boyz.... the boyz...the boyz... ! 

And I decided to climb with them! And our lovely ladies were downstairs. So the boys danced to the Desi Boyz song from ..well Desi Boyz...while Simran sang for them and so the performance continued :

So much funs!

And then finally they settled down for this lovely lovely pic

Our Choir! Too much Gin for eyes to be open for Sim! 

 And then Sim had been wanting to sing the national anthem because it was August 15th, the Indian independence day and we decided to do it then. The boys and me on the ledge on top and the girls downstairs. All of us facing the sea, looking out to this beautiful view and saluting out country, India, with Jan Gan Man (this is an instrumental version of the anthem, but I love it and since we are all Defence kids, this is fitting)

 After this epic Jan Gan Man, we decided to freshen up and continue the evening festivities. We decided to eat dinner at home, regular egg burji and bread-butter-jam! So we asked Honey, the guard, to get us a few things from the market (alcohol included) and he and Britta's son (Ryan/Rehaan?) got us bread and some drinks ! And then began our ghazal session for the night. We sang old hindi classics, under the stars and moved onto a different world. A quieter, more peaceful one. And I felt and Im sure the others will agree, that I could have sat there, with this group and not said anything and just been happy. :) It was that kind of an evening. Our flight was at 11:00Am the next day and we had to leave early (8:30 max) to get to the airport in time for our flight (and buy more Roti-Os) And so decided to call it a night. Sim was feeling really really cold and you can see her in the pictures below wearing a jacket + sweater + the blanket from our rooms. Actually you can only see those, and a head popping out, that head is simran. :) To document our last supper in Mentigi, we have these two scrappy but yet lovely pictures, thanks to Akshay

What a meal! aah that bread, butter and jam! And with that Goodnight Mentigi, we'll see you soon hopefully, sometime in our lives!