Kids on the beach

Reza picks us up at 7am and we are full of optimism and enthusiasm for our three days in the jungle. First stop, breakfast which is cold compressed rice and chicken satay skewers ... strange but nice.  We then drive towards the national park to pick up our local guide and that's when the problems begin. There are three local guides and none of them are free to come apparently - didn't Reza think to check in advance? After some stressing and many fags he dumps his clothes and packs his backpack full of food supplies. The rest is packed into a box and he says he'll carry it and we'll go anyway. We have reservations but we ask him and he says he's done it before so we continue on our journey.

On arrival at the place where we are going to leave the car, the back electric window won't close. More stressed phone calls and more chain smoking and, after discussion, we finally suggest that we call it day today and he sorts the car and the local guide and we go tomorrow. He breathes a sigh of relief, as do we, and we head back towards town, securing a local guide for tomorrow en route.

Reza kindly says we can stay at the beach eco lodge for free tonight so we pick up some bicycles and head there. Its basic but ok for one night. A journalist friend of his wants to talk to us about attracting tourists to the region so we have a chat with him and then head for some food and to the beach. We are soon accompanied by these four kids, the girls wearing their mums' shoes on the beach. They walk with us for about an hour warning us not to swim in the sea because of jellyfish and crocodiles! We practice our Indonesian with them and learn a few more useful words like angsa (goose), anjing (dog) and bunga (flower).

We finally shake them off and decide to cycle to town to buy a beer to watch the sunset. Andy gets funny looks for buying beer in the afternoon so we drink it quietly on the beach then chill for a bit at our beach hut before heading back into town for dinner later. Its really hot in the beach hut so we're not sure we're going to sleep well but we settle in and try.