Location: Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia
Hello everyone, it’s Will here. Welcome to my rundown of day 18. Stick around for Virgin mojitos, super yacht socializing, and monkey mayhem.
Our morning started with a blueberry pancake breakfast served by our ever-so-timely chef, Hannah. This was paired with a slightly suspicious looking chocolate pudding (from a nondescript Indonesian packet), that Bodhi threw together as a “science experiment” last night. As usual, breakfast was devoured in the cockpit, and the morning sun heated the deck at a noticeable rate. Our party was almost all accounted for, with the exception of Allie and Kackie. To do me a massive solid, the girls had shot off earlier in the morning to get half of tomorrow’s big provisioning trip done and dusted! (Thank you, guys!) Following a standard quick brief on the day’s plans, the students went into an intense academic morning – seamanship class followed by marine biology and study hall before lunch.
Come lunch time, Hannah and her sous chefs (Meg and Tomer) had outdone themselves. An exceedingly wonderful spread of Caesar salad wraps went down a treat – paired with Virgin Mojito’s! By this point, a rather vulgar-looking 62m gin palace had put her transom up to the dock next to us. This provided much entertainment and apparently a rare opportunity to socialize Bodhi was quick to ask their greenest-looking deckhand for the vessel’s WiFi password (to no avail), and the girls were smitten to find out that said Deckie was from New Zealand. The ‘calling across the water to have a conversation’ bit did have a certain Rapunzel quality to it (except this man had no hair to let down).
Breaking up the social hour, Allie and Kackie arrived home. This led to a whole-crew fire line being made to stock half of Argo’s stores. Annoyingly, I was not involved in the said fire line, as my hand was squeezed between one of the carts and a concrete wall. Instead, I was busy icing a golf ball protruding from my thumb socket.
Provisions were put away impressively quickly, and we soon left for our tour of the Uluwatu Temple!
We arrived at the temple, and – would you believe it – there were ice cream vendors lining the car park. This obviously created a mass exodus of Seamester students from the tour bus to the gelato gods.
Inside the temple, the main objective became ‘to evade mischievous monkeys’. These primates would drop down and rip a phone from any unsuspecting tourist, and we weren’t going into the situation blind. That said, I can tell you now reader, some of us failed the objective (see photos below). RIP Ava’s sunglasses and Phillip’s seeing glasses.
Our Temple outing finished with the Kecak and Fire Dance – a ritual Balinese ‘Sanghyang’ dance supported by a choir of seventy men! This was followed by a five-act show telling the old Indian epic tale of Ramayana. The tale features royal love, ostracisation, a man transforming into a golden deer, deceit, kidnapping, and revenge sought out with the aid of an army of monkeys. Now put that all together in a cliffside amphitheater with a sunset as red as the fire-kicking Hanuman actor before you and you have a pretty good evening.
Our night rolled on with delectable delights from a small seafood restaurant down the road from the temple. Understandably, the conversation tailed off as exhaustion set in but then something hilarious happened. Unbeknownst to me, Ava and Hannah had hatched a plan to tell the restaurant that it was my birthday sidenote: Following a wake-up watch that saw Hannah roll over and mumble, “Will is the biscuit boy,” I had gained a new title earlier in the week (ironic, as I do not care for biscuits). Can you guess what my ‘birthday’ plate said? “Happy birthday, biscuit boy,” a solid joke well executed a free brownie for the table to enjoy well played, girls. After this, everyone had a dance to the Lion King soundtrack (as you do), which the restaurant staff found thoroughly entertaining. The bus ride home then went smoothly (I assume, as I was fast asleep like everyone else).
Of all the cultural opportunities that working for Seamester has afforded me, I can happily say that this afternoon was one of my top three.
Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s blog, where the team will be sliding around on the water and trying not to drop in on each other *hint hint*.
Adios.
P.s.
Wassonnnn family, I love and miss you all. See you at NYE!
Meow to you, too, Kale x