I’m on the Indonesian island of Bali and about to say goodbye to my dear, old friend Anna who I’ve been travelling with for a few months through Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. She’s about to fly to Australia to continue her adventure, while I on the other hand have taken out a stack of cash with the idea of island hopping east from Bali to see amongst other things the Komodo dragons.

Firstly, a few things to remember. This is the 90’s and for those reading this that may not have even been born then, there was in fact a time where not only smart phones didn’t exist, but also the internet, readily available cash machines nor the ability to pay by debit card. In fact the only things a backpacker needed to get around in those days was a Lonely Planet book and a money belt. Whilst that may seem like some sort of stone age existence, that was the way the world was in my early days of backpacking. And with me island hopping away from the relative bright lights of Bali it was deemed a pretty good idea to take out enough cash to see me from Bali, across Lombok, Sumbawa, Komodo, onto Flores and back again. And the huge amount I took out for this return journey …. about £50.

Now Indonesia was cheap back then, but reading this back now it does admittedly seem a bit on the light side for about 10 days of boat trips, accommodation and park entry fees. However on the basis that I had by this time made it safely through Europe, Africa and South East Asia I will assume that this was indeed a reasonable amount to take with me on this trip.

The first bus was taking me from Kuta to the boat heading for Lombok at about midnight and as I said goodbye to Anna I suddenly realised that I hadn’t paid her back some money I had lent from her a few days earlier. Fool. Then I realised I hadn’t paid my hotel bill either. So within the space of a few minutes my £50 had already gone down to about £30.

Seemingly unphased by all this I set off on my way anyway. The boat arrived on the west coast of Lombok early next morning, where I then jumped on a local bus taking me from the west coast to the east coast of Lombok and then jumped on another boat immediately taking me to the west coast of the next island along, Sumbawa. Then, like Lombok, I took another local bus which would take me from the west right to the other side of Sumbawa.

It all seemed to be going like clockwork so far, but I think it was at this point my luck started to run out.

The whole reason for this trip was to do two things; see the dragons on the island of Komodo and also the lake filled volcano crater of Kelimutu on Flores, the next and final island along on this trip. But my run of jumping on and off boats and busses to get there had stopped on the east coast of Sumbawa owing to the next day being a holy day where everything would be closed for the day. So I was forced to stay 2 nights and 1 full day in the tiny, sleepy fishing village of Sape.

In my experience, every time something didn’t quite go to plan on an adventure something else great would always seem to come out of it. Like the time we had missed the border crossing from Botswana to Zimbabwe by just a couple of minutes which ruined our plans to have a big piss-up in Vic Falls that night and were forced instead to stay a night in the smallest, dingy border town in Africa ….. only to have the best party ever and an absolute laugh with some of the locals. This time I may have been stuck in a little fishing village with literally nothing to do other than eat, sleep and read a book, but me and the two or three other packers staying in the hostel I had just checked in to were advised by the staff we could go down to the harbour to see if any of the fishermen would take us out somewhere. Sure enough we found a man willing to take us out who then took us to a little island not far away where we could relax and have a swim until he picked us up again later in the afternoon.

This little island can’t have been much bigger than a football stadium and at first it looked like it was uninhabited, but as we walked around the edge to find the best place to camp down for the day we started to see the odd small, inquisitive face appear. Before we knew it there were about 10 kids just staring at us, so not exactly the quiet privacy we were hoping for, but eventually the kids got bored and left us alone.

As we approached the time the boat was due back we walked around the rest of this little island, curious to find where the kids had come from earlier. We eventually found a few small huts next to each other in one corner of the island we couldn’t quite see when we arrived. Before we knew it we had the whole village out to meet us, shaking our hands and talking Indonesian to us with a big smile on their faces like they’d never seen a white man before. The little boat arrived so we clambered onboard and as it rocked from side to side and slowly pulled out of the rocky little harbour they all came down to wave goodbye and the kids shouted and screamed. I must admit for a moment it felt quite magical, like we were rock stars or something. The fisherman then fired up his little put-put engine and we set off back to Sape, heading into the setting sun.

A potential wasted day had been saved by a fun little adventure to a tiny island with some new travel friends. But back to reality, this unintentional stopover had put a further unnecessary dent in my already fast haemorrhaging cash balance. But the more I thought about it the more I thought, well, I’ve come this far so I might as well carry on. As long as somewhere along the way there’s a bank or somewhere that accepts a credit card I should be alright.

So next morning we were up bright eyed and bushy tailed and on yet another boat, this time to one of the places that has always been on my Bucket List; Komodo Island.

The whole island is a national park and home to the huge monitor lizards which inhabit the place. These creatures are incredible, they can measure up to 3 metres long, weigh up to 100kg’s and often kill their pray by biting their victim and letting their venomous saliva slowly finish them off. On this island, it was they that were wild and free, we were the people stuck behind fences and penned in.

Without much thought about cost I booked myself into the only place to stay on the island which was run by the national park itself. Peanuts I’m sure. The plan was to stay there two nights and then take the boat to the next island over …… further and further away from civilisation with every step …. to the island of Flores. Reading my Lonely Planet book there was a fairly big town on the west coast of Flores called Labuhanbajo that was sure to have a bank. There I could take some cash out on my credit card, travel to see Kelimutu, then slowly make my way back to the safety of Bali. Jobs a good’n. No problem.

In the evening I met some pretty cool Dutch guys who shared my passion for 80’s metal, we had a few beers, shared a few stories and hit the sack relatively early for a full day of dragons the next day.

During the day the park officials showed us to a few different parts of the island where we could watch the dragons, always in the safety of some sort of enclosure. These things were huuuuuuge. And on top of the highly toxic saliva covered razor-sharp teeth, they had these enormous muscular tails that could swipe you off your feet. We were told to be very careful when moving between these pens as when the dragons hunt they tend to work in pairs or teams; one to distract, while the other surprises from behind. And indeed this had happened once to a Swiss tourist who was so focussed on taking a good photo of one of the lizards that he didn’t see the other one come up and take him from behind. He didn’t survive and a small headstone in his memory is there to remind us all to be on our guard constantly.

At the end of the afternoon the park rangers asked our group, who were about 15 to 20 people, mostly Aussies, if they wanted to see what it was like when Komodo Dragons eat together. We all jumped at the chance, but then he told us what that would entail, which was essentially that they would slaughter a young goat and throw it into a large pit for the dragons to eat. In hindsight I feel a bit bad about it now, but I admit I was one of the people who put my hand up, along with all the Aussies who in a chorus pretty much said ‘yeah fuck the goat’. It was unanimous apart from two people, a British couple, who were pretty mortified at the group decision. The male started saying to a rather unsympathetic crowd in his blatant Oxbridge accent ‘oh come on guys there’s no need for this surely’. As I said, I do feel a bit bad about this now, but at the time we all sort of sniggered and looked at them like they were the dicks, not us. 18 to 2 in favour of the slaughter I’m afraid and minutes later the lifeless goat was being tossed into the pit which started an every-man-for-himself frenzy among the lizards, ripping the thing to bits.

In a cloud of dust, heads and legs it was over in a matter of minutes so we all slowly made our way back to the camp, with the posh Brits feeling presumably somewhat upset and I’m sure a bit alienated from the rest of the group.

Back at the camp it was pretty apparent that the fences around the property supposedly keeping us safe maybe weren’t the best quality in the world as after getting changed for the evening I came out of my hut only to find a big dragon right outside my door staring back at me. Not one to miss a good photo opportunity in the face of danger, like climbing down the inside of an active volcano crater on Java and not being able to get back out again, I took the chance to shoot some video and have a quick photo taken with my new four legged friend. Thankfully nothing came up behind me….

Next morning I jumped on the little boat going east to Flores, counted my money left, which was literally about £2 and gave myself a pat on the back for getting myself all the way from Bali to Flores with so little money. In fact I treated myself to a packet of Ritz Crackers on the boat, pretty much the only thing I could afford, sat on the deck in the sun and sucked in how sweet life can be sometimes.

Arriving on Flores it was just a short walk from the harbour to the town of Labuhanbajo, which suddenly didn’t look as big as I had hoped. Regardless, I found a little hostel in town, checked in, threw my backpack in the room and set off to find a bank.

Thankfully the town did actually have a bank, but it was closed. Strange I thought as it was the middle of the day on a normal working day. Starting to panic a bit I frantically asked some passers by in the street what was going on and was told it should be opening anytime soon. I hung around for about an hour or so, pondering what the FUCK I was going to do if this place didn’t actually take credit cards. Disappointingly I came to no reasonable, satisfactory answer for myself which didn’t help. At some point a man approached the building, not exactly dressed the way I would expect a bank clerk to dress, but as he started to open the door to the bank I hurried him to answer whether they had some sort of cash machine, ATM, or indeed anything that could swipe a credit card and get me some money.

They didn’t.

I was fucked.

And this place was the biggest town on the whole island apparently. There was nowhere else I could go to, nowhere I could get any money and I certainly didn’t know anyone there. I’d survived 10 months through Europe, Africa and South East Asia, but lady luck had finally left town. With no travellers cheques, no dollars, nada, I could see no way out of my dilemma.

The only thing I could do, rather than starve to death on the street, was start racking up a bill at my guest house until I would hopefully come up with some genius plan to save my hide. So that’s what I did for a few days. With no way to pay for anything at all I just put everything on my hotel tab. Food, the room, beers, fags. And for those few days, no matter how hard I tried, I really didn’t have a clue what I was going to do.

One morning at breakfast, I was starring off into the distance with my head in my hands, I must have looked like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, when I suddenly felt a hand on my back and a concerned voice say ‘Are you ok?’ I looked up to see the Oxbridge couple from Komodo standing in front of me. I probably had about 5 days of stubble and looked like shit, but I’m pretty sure the first words out of my mouth were ‘Yeah I’m fine thanks’, but I clearly wasn’t. I asked them if they’d like to sit down and join me for breakfast, but wondered why they would even care about a ne’er-do-well like me who had not only willingly partaken in the unnecessary killing of a goat just to watch lizards eating, but also hadn’t exactly come running to their rescue or defence when they were ridiculed by the Aussies on Komodo. But genuinely concerned they seemed to be and as I ate my breakfast with them I told them the story of how I had come to be ‘Penniless and stuck in Flores’.

Having heard my debacle and without any hesitation at all, the guy, Ali, says in his clearly well educated accent, ‘Oh gosh, do you want to borrow some cash?’

I’m not sure if I laughed out loud or kissed him on the cheek, but this little guy who certainly didn’t know me from Adam, nor had any reason to be kind to me, went straight to the bank and cashed in £50. Legend!

Next morning I gave them my passport details, swapped post addresses and assured him I would post him the cash as soon as I could. I said my goodbyes and gave him my deepest, deepest gratitude for saving my ass, I checked out of the hotel, skipped down the road to the harbour where I jumped on the next boat heading back towards Bali. Kelimutu would have to be another time.

One thing worth mentioning by the way as you imagine me relaxing on a boat, with a smile on my face, money in my pocket, slowly meandering my way back to Bali, with the sun on my face and a beer in my hand ….. those little boats trips between the islands were fucking terrifying! Floating death-traps waiting to happen. Aaabsolutely zero health and safety onboard those things, being totally overfilled with too many vehicles, too many people and rolling around on the mountainous South Javan Sea waves like they were going to go under at any moment. The waves were coming up over the side of the boat onto the deck with every roll. I shit myself constantly and always kept myself on deck, convinced it was a just a matter of time until we all went down.

Anyway, back on Bali I checked into a little hostel and was unknowingly about to undergo yet another near death experience the next day, this time on the beaches of Kuta. Read the full story called ‘Bali Drowning’.

Having pretty much starved myself for the previous week I went straight to McDonalds and ate about 15 cheeseburgers in a row until I physically couldn’t move.

Just to completely finish off this tale, Bali was the last stop on my very first backpacker trip and a few weeks later I returned back to my island and as promised posted a cheque for £50 back to Ali with a sincere and thorough letter of thanks for digging me out of a very, very deep ditch.

The twat never wrote back …………….