Like Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible we got ourselves a mission today: Send back stuff we over packed! (Dad: Watch out it’s addressed to you. Will arrive in 2-3 months. /Katja).

So how do you move forward when this is to be done? We talked to the receptionist who said:” Nooooo, to faaar to goooooo. Take Taksiiiii!” Humph! As said, mission impossible. So we set out into the street and rented bicycles. The shopkeeper laughed at my size and tried me on what looked like a child’s bike. After some trying out I got one where the seat could be adjusted so I didn’t hit my knees in the handle bars every pedal of the way. With tires as flat as a newly ironed shirt, and fairly un-working brakes we got ripped off in the deal. But we had acquired the needed transportation for the mission.

We pedaled along the beach,

and found it strangely empty at 11 o’clock on a Saturday. Few people on the boardwalk worked out great for us with little to no breaks. We got side tracked on our mission. It’s shameful to admit, but we stopped for checking out tickets to Lombok for our trip there on Monday. As it turned out there where no empty seats on the boat, so the search for tickets was still on.

Pushing through 6 lines of traffic  is no joke here i Indonesia. There are actually some green and red men who supposedly should mark when it is safe to cross. Don’t trust the little green men! As some American states practice “Right on red” do the Indonesians practices something like “If I think I can make it, I take it”. Add to the fact that they drive on the left side of the road and you have many surprises from your blind side. We manned up and dove in, and got out again on the other side. Team KogA was still in play and closing in on the post office.

For finding something in today’s world we often rely on Google. This time, Google map. There is a neat thing in Google Maps 2.0 on iPhones. When you see a map on your phone, you can type in “OK Maps” in the search field and you will get the option for saving a local copy of the shown map. That is a life saver… if it works. I don’t know for what reason, but here it said “maps not available”. Anyhow; already cashed map works as well. So we kept the app open and used it as a guiding. The post office was not where google told us it would be, but refer to my last post on friendliness. People here are happy to help. So we found it. By a detour or two.

The process on the post office it self was quite easy, but Indonesians love receipts. Forms needs to bee filled out, and the don’t come in triplets but in layers as thick as a phone book. I lost the numbers of times the clerk stamped when we passed 6. But what a service. He actually sowed our packages in to protect it. By hand. No plastic wrappers here. Total amount came to 468 thousand Rupiahs which is to say about 250,- NOK.  We think it was somewhere between 4 and 5 kilos we sent back home. And we still have something that will not last long, but is not worth the fair of sending home.

From there we dove into traffic again, but found smaller roads with better with and lower heart rate. Back to the start, and handed back to bikes in the same condition, but with two sore buttocks.