Following a final, very relaxing, morning in Bali drinking more delicious tea, sitting on the beach, strolling the tide line to look for pretties - and finding some odd stuff that also washed up, including a whole chicken egg (I assume!) - and having lunch, Shelley swung by in a taxi to get me and off we headed to the airport. Again, we mostly used the extra middle lane, which we shared with the scooter drivers who either use that lane on a 4th one that’s only visible to them that mostly runs along the side of kerb and occasionally onto the pavement when they need to get by. They almost all wear helmets here though so they’re obviously relatively law abiding & indestructible.
Once at the airport, there was the typical chaos I’ve come to expect from inter-country domestic Asian airports. In an interesting turn of events, Shelley, who thought her luggage allowance was only 15kg had tried to repack and reduce her weight but got me to check with her weigher. Not sure she was thrilled when I read the weight out at 24kg. She doubted my ability to correctly read the scale - which is a hugely misplaced doubt; any British teacher who has taught in upper primary has spent many an hour tearing their hair out trying to teach kids to read a scale with markings at different but regular intervals!! I am a pro. And her luggage was massively overweight! I’d pre-planned for this and had already paid extra for a 25kg luggage allowance. Fortunately, Shelley was able to do the same quite inexpensively although she was still carrying through significantly more hand luggage that me too - to the point where I’m carrying one of her bags for her. Times have changed! And I obviously answered ‘no’ when asked if anyone had given me anything to carry. On reflection, I didn’t even check the bag - could have been in for my very own ‘Brigit Jones in a foreign prison’ experience . She had a fabulous time of it though so I’m sure it would have all been excellent fun.
Despite sharing all the travel details and info when we planned this part of the trip, we’d actually managed to book ourselves on different flights - both from Bali going to Komodo but with different airlines and 5 minutes apart. Shelley was going from gate 2 and me from gate 5. I was due to leave 5 minutes before her. Once through security, we had a fancy coffee and relaxed for a bit. I had a proper frothy coffee, Shelley made me order her something called a mocha frapaccino, which I discovered is cold and also has cream on top. Less of a coffee, more of a dessert really. I was horrified when the man asked if I wanted my latte hot or iced. Iced? What does he think I am? A polar bear? Of course I want it hot. It’s coffee. I won’t even get started on the abomination that is iced tea!!
After coffees, we headed to our separate gates. Within minutes, Shelley then jogged over (like in the army when you have to run with a 20kg pack on your back!) to tell me her flight was 20 mins delayed but I said I’d just hang around at Komodo airport and wait for her. The flight at my gate started boarding so I diligently queued in the lane for my seat row … only to be told as I handed over my boarding pass that I probably didn’t want to get on that flight because it was going to Jakarta, not Komodo at all. An entirely different island! It wasn’t a definite no but more of a suggestion! I declined to board that one and went to look at the board to find my flight was delayed by 45 mins. So I loaded up all my luggage and jogged round to Shelley to share my delay news & inform her I’d decided against going to Jakarta despite it being an entirely possible option! As I jogged back, a little airport man in a high vis vest was running about holding up a big sign that said ‘Jakarta’ and shouting for anyone going there to go to gate 5 urgently. The flight boards said that flight was leaving from gate 1 - and it was obviously easier to send out the panicked man with a sign rather than just change the info on the entirely digitised screens or do a tannoy announcement.
When I did finally board my plane (after a 2 hour delay - which meant we took off after the time we were originally meant to land!), another man, this time not even in high vis, rushed about shouting ‘yes, yes, plane here now’ and essentially herded us all directly through the door and into the people tube in random order. Not sure if he was a member of airline staff, ground crew or just an overly excited passenger. Random order doesn’t really take any more time than when they attempt to board in rows aggressively directing people only in rows 43 to 49, 5 and 17 to board and everyone else MOVE OUT OF WAY / REMAIN SEATED . The delay, as always, is just people who get onto the plane, find their seat then stand indefinitely in the aisle unpacking their entire hand luggage and fussing entirely unnecessarily while everyone else is forced to stand and wait for them to get out of the bloody way in the aisle. The queue down the people tube into the plane was a little uncomfortable too today as the tube was entirely made of glass. In a country that is almost on the equator & roasting hot most of the time. So let’s call it a greenhouse walkway and an absolute design failure!
Once on the plane, we spent almost as long sitting on the tarmac as the duration of the flight itself (50mins!). Despite the short flight, the cabin crew still had time to do a food service but they had to be quick as we started out decent about 20 minutes into the flight and not long after the seatbelts signed had turned off. I imagine our flight path pretty much resembled the shape of a mountain. As soon as they were allowed out of their seats, the crew were up and swiftly pulling the curtain between us and business class. Not sure what they got served but I’m sure it was delicious. It didn’t leave them much time to serve the rest of the cabin - they pretty much ran up and down the aisle lobbing individually packed weird bread rolls at us and then followed that by launching a little cup of water along with a plastic straw you had to pierce its lids with - reminded me of school dinners from the old days when you used to get a similar orange cup juice drink! Once the food had been ‘served’ (more like in a game of tennis actually than in the traditional sense of a food service!), the crew were straight back with a bin liner trying to collect up all the rubbish - made entirely of single use plastic I’ll add! They really intended to get it collected quickly and before we landed so they stood next to you in the aisle shaking the bin without any subtlety until you scoffed down the roll and slurped up the water to then return the rubbish! All of that with a take off and landing in under an hour!
Once I arrived, Shelley was waiting for me, having ended up with marginally less delay that me, my bag is still in my possession which is, frankly, a minor miracle, and we got a very stress free taxi to our hotel, went out for dinner and a cheeky cocktail and are now back in our room having sorted dive gear and got everything ready for our pick up tomorrow morning! Shelley is a fan of air con so has got it cranked all the way up to freezing. I tend to avoid having it on at all if I can cope with the heat so I am under my duvet, with my pyjamas on and considering putting a jumper and leggings on if I get any colder!
Tomorrow marks the first day of our week long Liveaboard trip round the Komodo National park to see the fishes and hopefully the dragons too! There may be times when we are close enough to inhabited land to get a signal for WiFi but there may not. I will post updates if I can (possibly without pictures initially as signal may not allow them!) but if there’s no signal, we get back to land and WiFi in a week so I’ll be back then at the latest!
Very amusing Pipit. Hope it all goes well - stay safe. XX