Just a small note, because not too much happened in these few days, I’ve condensed them into one page.
13th February - Swimming lessons
Another late get up followed by breakfast in the room, courtesy of Elva bringing in the goods. Both of us ate and chilled at the hotel for some time. The food is nice, but it fills me up a lot because it’s fried. Whilst deciding what to do, Elva mentioned there’s a swimming pool nearby, and boy do I love swimming! She couldn’t swim so well, so I’d have to teach her a thing or two about flailing your arms and legs under water.
We got our swimming gear together and headed off to the pool, about 10 minutes away by scooter. It’s been so hot recently, and today was no exception. As the pool was actually outdoors, the tiles were scalding causing me to run across them like hot coals. We both got changed, one after another, and I took no time to jump into the warm swimming pool. However, the warm water offered no respite from the heat. The pool was pretty empty as it was midday, this made it easy to teach and practice swimming with Elva. I took my snorkel and goggles, just in case helped keep water getting in her eyes. They’re pretty cheap and poor quality ones from Thailand.
We had quite a bit of fun, doing handstands, flips, and floating on the surface; I was in my element. Soon enough, school was out and the kids were in, in droves. I’m guessing I, as a foreigner, was a rare sight. I say this because I had a big audience of kids looking and staring at me. I didn’t mind though, it’s all fun to me. Some even practiced their English with me, but complained when I tried Bahasa with them. Ah well, I tried. Eventually, some kids wanted to play with me. They took to climbing on my back, me lifting them in the air, and lifting them up on my arms. It was so much fun, and they were laughing like mad men, it was great.
When the pool closed we dried off, then returned home where I had a short nap. Quite late on I was hungry, fortunately for me there was a McDonald’s a few minutes away, so I dragged Elva along and enjoyed a good burger. No matter how far away from home I go, I’ll always enjoy the consistency of a good cheeseburger. We hung around here for a bit until late then returned to our own homes.
14th February - Indulging
Guess how my morning began. You probably guessed right, a lie-in followed by breakfast from Elva in the morning. I can’t fault her for consistency, that’s for sure! For the most part, we chilled at the hotel for a lot of the day. We did venture out for water at noon though, but it’s just unbelievably hot. It makes me want to avoid doing anything in the day time and just come out at night, which is precisely what I do most days. We decided to watch a movie at the Mataram shopping centre cinema, it’d be a waste if we didn’t. There wasn’t too much choice with regards to movies, so we went with Birds of Prey. This was a spinoff sequel to the Joker character from Suicide Squad.
Check this out for our experience in Phnom Penh at the cinema.
It was a pretty decent movie, especially considering what else was available in Mataram right now. There were either movies I’ve already seen or in the Bahasa language. To be fair, there aren’t many movies I’d say I didn’t enjoy, I can sit through most things. There was only one movie that I fell asleep through when I had a membership card in the UK and went every weekend. Mat on the other hand managed to stay awake from just about one movie, and even that’s questionable. It’s always entertaining to watch a movie with someone who gets jump-scared fairly easily, as was the case here. never fails to make me laugh.
After the movie, we headed to a park in centre of Mataram where we chilled on a bench for a while. We spent about an hour here, in which time we bough doughnuts and cilok (similar to meatballs on a stick), for later. These food vendors are everywhere, and they’re a blessing and a curse. I can’t say the food they sell is the most nutritious, but if you are hungry then you’re sorted.
For dinner, I decided to go to Pizza Hut, which was opposite McDonald’s, it’s been a while since I’ve had good pizza. Not only that, but Elva told me she’d never been to Pizza Hut before. What was even more of a shock, she’d never had pizza before! We had a filthy barbecue hotdog pizza, proper nice. However, she seemed more interested in the pasta and egg mix from the salad bar. The salad bar, unlike the UK, actually costs, it’s not free like back home. After we’d filled up on food, we decided to call it a night.
15th February - Movie night
Of course, another nice lie-in to begin my day with, what else? I’m worried that I’m getting too used to this, when my travelling starts again, it’s going to be difficult to get out of this lazy sleep pattern. As if the constant lie-ins weren’t bad enough, I didn’t even leave my hotel today, and in fact I only left my room once. But there was an excuse for this, Elva was sick and must have eaten something bad yesterday, not sure what though. I was passing wind a lot, not sure what from, perhaps it was all the cheese I’m not used to from Pizza Hut. Lunch came in the form of a Grab driver coming to the rescue as going out wasn’t an option at this point in the game.
A lot of the day was just spent recuperating and making sure she got better. Some YouTube videos helped with this as we were in hysterics at some of the TV bloopers we were watching, neither of us could breathe at some points. I decided to download Jumanji 1 and 2 as she hadn’t seen either and I’d seen the second movie not long ago in Cambodia, highly recommend it. So we watched Jumanji 1 and had more food delivered, they’re such funny movies, I’m glad she enjoyed it as much as I did. After the movie, it was fairly late, but still hot as hell in Mataram, and Elva was well enough to get home safely.
