Helping Mick move in Kerobokan Bali

As a follow up to the party article I wanted to tell you all about how my Saturday went.

The vodka party left me slightly hung over. I kept well within my limits though and wasn’t hurting too bad.

After a quick bread basket and coffee at Café Moka I called over to Mick’s to see if I could help him move out of his house. Moving at anytime is a stress, but to make it harder he’s leaving the country and had a torn ACL. By the way Café Moka does a very nice selection of fresh juices and I had a beetroot / carrot / parsley juice to help myself revive for 11,000rp.

Arriving at Mick’s house the front door was open and couple of movers were milling around. All the boxed stuff was taken care of for him. He is moving to Japan after his knee surgery in Australia and get to his stuff from Bali to there is costing $2,500. The good thing is they packed the stuff and told him they would build a wooden frame around the boxes containing extra fragile items. Mick did shop around for removal prices and another company wanted $5,500!

A few friends were over at the house too viewing the photos from the night before. Having a place with a pool can be great and it didn’t take long before I was in it cooling off. Aussie underwater photographer Chris Paporakis offered me a beer, the Esky had to be emptied and after a moments deliberation I accepted. Chris was also on ’slow mode’ but the amazing thing was that after getting wet and drinking a cold beer the world seemed a brighter place. “I don’t usually do ‘hair of the dog’” said Chris, “but I must say I feel so much better now!” Same went for me and we merrily sipped away in the pool while Mick was stressing on where he was going to put things. Another friend of ours Chris Brown has a nice big house a mile or so away and it sort of became the default ‘drop off’ for items without an owner…’anyone want a cabinet?’…okay its going to Chris Brown’s’.

Two of us got a new lightweight sleeping bag and I picked up quilts and sheets galore. Mick’s 2 roadbikes, the famous Aprilia and another 150cc machine were going cheap. Mick said he’d take 40m rp for the Aprilia and 10m rp for the other one. There were no takers so they ended up and Chris Brown’s too.

One of my favourite moments was getting into the Esky. Mick asked us to please help him empty it as he was dumping everything. I got half a dozen bottles of liquor with small quantities in, plus 3 bottles of wine. Chris Paporakis has a clever method for making sure he comes out on top. It took me a while to figure it out but everytime I grabbed something that looked good he’d say “No that one’s mine, you can have any of the other stuff.” I picked up selected items from the Esky including hot salsa, satay sauce, packet of cheese and all kind of other perishables. Chris got a good amount of the quality olive oil and other spendy things while trying to encourage me to fill my backpack with the frozen peas and carrots.

Anyone who has stayed at Mick’s will be familiar with ‘mum’s sauce’. The tomato sauce is made by his mum in Victoria Australia and even the ladies present got a laugh out him and Chris posing with the last bottle.

We ordered some take away food from Globe Café in Kerobokan and took care of the final details, taking the crates of bottles back to the store for a refund etc.

I went to an internet café for a couple of hours and returned around 9.30pm to a dark empty house. A red eyed Mick was saying goodbye to a lady friend and so I said my goodbye’s and rode home. His flight to Australia was at 11pm.

Mick invested several years of his life in Indonesia and I know he shed more than a few tears in the last 24 hours. I guess like Almustafa in ‘The Prophet’, leaving a place really makes you step away and see how much it means to you.

Related Posts

• Bali Pictures from December 2003
• Mick shares a bottle of ‘mum’s sauce’ with friend Chris in Umalas Bali
• Friday's adventures
• BootBoyz in Bali and other photos
• Chris arrived in Bali

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