Traveling Ups and Downs, gotta roll with the punches

Here are pics of Bali, fast internet is amazing












so sometimes traveling has ups and sometimes it has its downs, today started off as a pretty shitty down day but as you will see, things usually work out for the best in the end...

Today I was supposed to go dive the Great Barrier Reef but that didn't happen. i woke up really early in the morning or you could just classify it as the middle of the night with horrible stomach pains and got sick all night long. When I went to meet up for the scuba truck they saw that I was kind of sick and as I was explaining, i had to run to go throw up again. Well, apparently they thought that i was a risk to have on the boat or something and told me to take a hike. I thought that sucked but kind of understand how they dont want some guy puking on the boat. This, however was what got me. they didnt refund my money! I argued and argued with the "boss" and got nowhere and decided I should just sleep off my bad feelings and anger for this crappy company.

I knocked out and woke up at 11am, just an hour late for checkout, boom another deposit gone, sweet. So up to this point I have no food in my stomach, lost 260 dollars, havent seen the Great Barrier Reef, and am getting kicked out of my hostel without my deposit fee.

I decided to just try to make the best out of it. So i got a huge water, and packed up and went for a stroll to try to figure out my best plan of attack. I found a travel agency with free internet and read some brochures and decided that I could go White Water Rafting in the rainforest which I have never done before. I signed up, grabbed a steak and a beer for 10 bucks, sweet deal, and got my stuff together.

I knew this would be an awesome excursion as soon as I got on the bus! My friends from the plane were on my bus and they asked me to be on their raft and the guides were all hilarious people. we got out to Barron River and got our stuff on and I was paired up with an Indian man, Bregsi, his wife Lolita, and daughter, the spanish girl from the plane, german girl from plane, and our guide was Tom. We kicked ass! I had such a blast with our group, we raced the other two rafts, did the best on the rapids when one of the other boat full of Japanese tourists literally all fell out of the boat and I even got to save two of them, haha, safety first right! Really cool rapids and great people. And we are all going to dinner tonight before my bus leaves for magnetic Island around midnight.

Lesson in everything and this one is just to try to make the best out of your situation. Now my stomach feels great, i have a ton of cool new friends going down the same path as me and I have an amazing experience under my belt. the money and sleep lost are worth pennies compared to the memories I got today.

today is a great day!








ps, yes mom, that is a fake tattoo