my friend had been saving up money for about two years to be able to afford a holiday overseas. he'd never been overseas before, or even on a jumbo-jet, so he thought that he'd take it easy and go to bali. my mate's name's wade and he's in my best circle of friends group.
he was travelling alone, and set off for bali about 12 days ago. he was having the time of his life, surfing, drinking with a bunch of australian footy players every night, buying fake shirts + watches - just the usual holiday. living it large.
anyway the holiday flipped from being his best experience ever to hell on earth. thank fuck he was in his hotel room when the blast occured. his hotel room was 200 metres from the major bomb... the explosion blew the outside door out, smashed every window in his room. he got cut by glass and shrapnel but nothing serious (thankfully).
he was temporarily deafend by the blast and his ears still haven't recovered. they're still ringing. anyway after having a short period of shock he sprung into action.
people that were outside the hotel in the hotel pool, hanging at the hotel bar etc received on average burns to 80% of their bodys, and practically all burns were third degree.
my mate was tearing around with buckets of water pouring them over the poor burnt people. some of their limbs were totally burnt to a crisp. kind of like the aftermath of a napalm strike.
people were dying everywhere. blood-curdling screams were the order of the day. wade went back to his room so he could ring and say he was ok, but just as he was about to a random girl burst into his room.
"let me see your head" wade shouted
he looked in horror as the poor girl had a huge piece of metal fully embedded into her head, and was bleeding profusely. he tried to help to no avail :( :(
his hotel was the only structure in the vicinity that was not totally levelled, so was used as a sort of makeshift hotel.
a few seconds after this wade heard a huge pounding at the door, and shortly after an indonesian policeman kicked the door downk, pointed a rifle at wade, and said "give me your blankets!!!!!" wade handed them over leaving a bare room.
he then went outside to the scene and helped where-ever he could. chunks of human flesh were everywhere, limbs, un-indentifiable parts, charcoal esk corpses and barely alive survivors littered the streets. he helped all night without a break ferrying people, trying to care for people, just doing what anyone would in the same situation.
in all the confusion some FUCKING CUNT robbed my mate of everysingle thing he had except that which he was wearing. because he just left it all in the room and ran to help. this person is no doubt going to hell.
the next day his plane was leaving back home to aus. he'd helped all day + all night without a break. the next day as he went to leave the hotel with nothing but his clothes on his skin and a watch, the hotel said he couldn't leave until he paid his hotel bill. the billl came to less than US$10. they would not let him leave, even though he explained what happened.
eventually he gave them his expired credit card and luckily they didn't check to see if it was still valid.
now he had to get to the airport.
on his way to the airport, the only road leading there was blocked by a huge police roadblock. he rushed to the front as his plane would leave in less than 2 hours, showed them his passport + ticket (which thankfully he'd left in the safe hands of the hotel safe) and they just flatly said "no australians" and told him to go away.
wade then being wade argued for ages, then preteneded to leave. he would've been totally fucked if he'd missed his flight - stranded in a foreign country where a different language is spoken, no money, no food, no clean water etc. so he jumped a fence and then outran 3 or so indonesian policemen. this was an incredibly stupid / brave thing to do because if anyone knows anything about indonesians they'd know that usually wade would've been shot for this.
he had a slight lead on the police and hopped into the first cab he saw, still quite a way from the airport. he said to the cab driver that if he took him to the airport he'd give him his watch, which he did.
finally he arrived at the airport only to be told that if he couldn't pay the departure tax, he couldn't fly. simple as that. the departure tax again was around the US$10 mark. he had to beg people to give him money which seemed in vain until some really nice american lady 'lent' him the money.
wade just made the plane and is now home safely, again, thank fuck.
i was so worried about him :( he usually has the worst luck humanely possibly.
as he said, every single other day he'd of been in the club that got blown up drinking with his new found mates in the footy club. just because he was running late (as usual) his life was saved. by his own admission he should have been there.
there's a lot more horrific gory details etc but i'll spare everyone those, because fucked if i wanted to know them :(
i've probably missed out bits and pieces, but i just thought you guys would appreciate how fucked up the situation is here. the attack was targeting australians specifically. the area that was blown was the 'aussie' area of bali.
sometimes i just about loose faith in humanity.
please respect this
-rich
btw sorry for such a poorly written post but i'm feeling a bit fucked up and weird :(