Please welcome another writer in the Hunter family. Zachary is the oldest of the Hunter children (almost 13). He finished typing in part one of his Bali report today and would like to share it with others on this forum.
Zachary Hunter's Bali Report, part one
As part of my summer project, I am writing about my exciting trip to Bali. From when I was very small to now (I'm 12, almost thirteen) I have never had such a great experience in all my life.
Day 1
May 10, 2005
Plane Ride
The plane ride to Guam was quite boring, because there were no movies to watch. Since I didn't feel like reading, all that was left to do was to stare out the window and watch the clouds go by. I think that anyone who has to stare at clouds for about five hours will agree with me that it is uncomfortable and boring. The second flight from Guam to Bali was longer but much more entertaining, because they showed two movies on that flight. As most kids probably find, I forgot my discomforts, while being glued to both movies. After the movies were over, I tried to kill the extra hour that remained by studying the flight routes in the Continental Magazine. O, the joy that I had when I finally saw lights below the plane! At first I didn't care if it was Bali or not. Just to see some land again made me happy. My happiness was doubled when I heard the pilot say, 'We are now beginning our decent to Bali.'
When we finally were walking on solid ground again, I was wide-awake, even though it was 10 PM. When we got to the baggage claim, I was a little nervous. Before we had even begun our trip, my dad had told us that there would be people that would try to carry our luggage for us and then demand money for their work. You can bet that I was gripping the bag as hard as I could. The funny thing was, it was so late that nobody ever tried to pull that stunt on us. Our hotel driver was there to meet us but wasn't the talking sort. In about one hour he had scarcely said a word. The one-hour drive seemed only about thirty minuets. It was nice to be able to see a city again after two years of living on a small island with tiny stores. I was fascinated by the amount of motorcycles on the road. There were about thirty motorcycles to every one car. They would zoom in and out of the cars and would even drive into oncoming traffic. I don't think that my mom enjoyed that part of the journey. She almost had a heart attack, so to speak, while watching the crazy driving.
When we reached our hotel in Ubud, we went straight to our room. My eleven-year-old sister and I fought over who got the nice, large room upstairs. I wanted it like crazy, because back home she has her own room and I have to sleep in the same room with my almost ten-year-old brother. In the end, my sister got the room because of her whining. I'm sure that any boy with a younger sister understands how I felt. It's not fair!! We were told ahead of time that we would have to write in our journals, but I think that my dad understood how tired we were, so he just let us go to sleep.
In my next report I will talk about our first real day on Bali, which included our neat trip to the elephant park.