Farewell Eldo, our Balinese Princess

We met Eldo when we were in Bali back in 2007 or maybe it was 2006. We were relaxing at a beautiful villa in Pemuteran, on the blissfully quiet and scenically stunning north-west coast of the island. Eldo was also a guest there and we soon struck up a great friendship with him. Before we met him we had cheekily given him the nickname, 'Balinese Princess', because of his model looks and what we thought was a certain aloofness, which, not surprisingly was just shyness. But the name stuck, even if he was Javan and not Balinese. And in no way aloof.

This photo was taken on a snorkelling trip we coaxed him into going on with us. He wasn't a confident swimmer so we gave him some lessons in the pool the day before we went out. We had a great time and he was delighted to see a turtle. We invited Eldo to came along with us on the next leg of our trip, when we stayed in Villa Isabella, the most amazing Spanish inspired (huge) villa, near Ubud. I think we were there for about a week and had the most wonderful time together with our friends Ross and Andri.

You can keep in touch with friends so easily with Facebook and so our friendship remained over the eight years or so since we first met. We would catch up a few times a year online, an occasional Skype, or a message, or I'd see a sneaky 'like' from him to one of my posts, and I'd do the same to a post of his. He was always hoping to come and visit us. He'd moved back and forth between Bali and Java over the years.

This morning Facebook told me it was Eldo's birthday today so I sent him a couple of lines wishing him a wonderful day, before I organised myself for the day ahead. I thought nothing more of Eldo until this afternoon when a friend of his, who had seen my birthday message on his Facebook wall, kindly left a message to let me know that Eldo had died in July last year. Steve and I are very sad at this news. I am also sad for not even noticing that we hadn't had any contact for so long.

Farewell, Eldo, our Balinese Princess. You didn't make it to Larnook but the memory of your friendship stays with us always.  Selamat jalan, my friend.