I have had several attempts to add to the blog and have been unsuccessful. I'm hoping today will be different.
What a fuss it was with the renewal of our Visas. We had to hand our passports in at Medana Bay Marina to a Rally Official, make a suitable time to go up to Mataram for fingerprinting and photo, all for a cost of 575,000RP per person. That also included transport. If you renewed your Visa in Bali, it was only 300,000RP and no fingerprinting or photo required. (For every $100AUS, we were getting approx. 100,000RP). Ruth, Kelvin and ourselves arranged our own transport with a guy by the name of Albi (who incidentally ripped the guys of several times...) Up to Mataram we went via Monkey Mountain which is aptly named. We were to be at the Immigration Offices for 2.00pm. We were able to check out the shops (2 quite good supermarkets in Mataram with a good variety of western foods). There were 16 other Rally Bods waiting to do their Visa extensions. One by one until there was just the 4 of us left. It was now 4.30 and the officer doing the fingerprinting etc, came out of his office and it was obvious he had finished for the day. We were quick to let someone know, we were told we should have been there in the morning. We showed our appointment slip and we were then dealt with fairly quickly. We were told we could pick up our Passports and Visa on Saturday from Medana Bay, but it was not until Tuesday before we got them back. We did go back up to Mataram, this time via Sangiggi, a lovely holiday resort area to do some re-supplying.