Getting to Indonesia (Bali)

Travel Day

Moving on again today but we did not have to get our flight until the afternoon so had a bit of a lie in.  Once up I went outside to have a ciggie and nearly sat on a large gecko which scared the life out of me when it ran from the impending impact with my bottom.

We had a late breakfast and then had to wait for our lift to the airport.   At midday we were picked up by a tuck tuk which seriously struggled to get up the hills with both of us and our luggage, we thought we may have to get off and push at some points.

An hour or so later we were at the smallest airport we have travelled from so far, it only has three flights a week and involved a bag search rather that a x-ray machine.  When checking in we were informed that as it was a smaller plane therefore we could only have a baggage allowance of 10kg, but once Shell diplomatically told them we were checked into another connecting flight with their airline they agreed not to charge us for our 18kg excess.

Unfortunately we had a two hour delay with very little to do, which wasn’t so bad as we had about a 4 hour transfer window.  Once on board it was an hour flight back to Manilla for our connecting flight to Bali.

We were hoping that Manilla airport would have a decent departure lounge that we could spend the remaining Philippine Pesos at but it had very little and we had to settle on buying a couple of hot dogs to eat and buy some duty free cigarettes..

Our flight to Bali was on time and a direct flight (I thought we were transferring through Kuala Lumpar, so that was a result). Which took about 4 hours and the plane was pretty empty, which meant Shell and I had a row to ourselves each to stretch out in.

On entering the terminal at Desapar (Bali) we had to purchase a voucher for $35 each that gave us the right to obtain an extension to our tourist visa (30 days on British Passport as standard), before we passed through customs.

Picking up a bit of currency at an ATM on the way through we were then met by a car that had been arranged with our hotel and we were now into the 8^th country of our travels.  Our first impressions were slightly negative as all the roads and buildings were all a bit too western to what we had recently been used to (although it was nice not to be shaken about in the back of a car for a change).

Arriving at our accommodation around 2.30am the receptionist had to be roused from her sleep so she could give us the keys to our room.  Our room was quite pokey with very few windows and Shell soon discovered we had some guests it the form of a spider and a cockroach, but you can’t expect that much for £ 10 I suppose.