The Road to Bali

Sunday, November 24

I might not be saying much when I say that the road to Bali is a long one. Bali is a medium sized island in the archipelago of Indonesia. It`s actually half a world away from New York. But we weren't`t in New York. We were in Borneo, less than a thousand miles away from Bali. Modern airlines travel in excess of 500 miles per hour, so you`d think it would take less than 12 hours to get from point A to point B. But the fates were against us. Our travel occurred in five legs (3 planes, 2 cabs), we were in four airports, and like I said spent the good, better, and best part of the day in transit.

07:00 wake up/shower/complementary breakfast (dry watermelon and cold toast)
08:30 take taxi to Kota Kinabalu airport
11:15 flight departs for Kuala Lumpur (KL)
11:45 have decent vegetarian lunch
13:45 arrive at KL
14:15 find out our flight to Bali has been cancelled
14:16 find out that we were supposed to be on early morning KK to KL flight
09:45 asked check-in person for our boarding passes from KL to Bali
09:46 told that that flight isn't ready for check-in yet
14:17 realize why the KL to Bali flight wasn't ready for check-in
14:18 express moderate displeasure in check-in service personal
15:00 get re-booked on another airline splitting our travel into two more legs
16:15 board flight from KL to Jakarta
16:16 inform stewards about our "vegetarian" problems
16:25 take off from KL to Jakarta
16:45 have an "impromptu" vegetarian meal thrown together by the stewards (best meal of day)
18:30 land in Jakarta
18:50 get off plane, next flight at 19:45
19:00 forget journal on plane
19:02 get in immigration line
19:20 get out of line
19:21 find out we have to change money to get "entry" stamps, 19:45, 19:45, 19:45
19:25 go to second lost and found counter, wait three minutes till journal brought by security
19:35 finally find money exchange place, gotta hurry our flight leaves at 19:45 !!!
19:36 run around like headless chickens
18:37 reset our watch
18:55 arrive at gate 50 minutes early *whew*
19:35 board plane
19:36 [see 16:16]
19:45 take off from Jakarta to Bali
20:10 more impromptu vegetables consumed, meal #4 (bloat)
22:25 land in Bali
22:40 leave hotel counter in confusion, not knowing where to stay
22:42 wander around awhile, babbling incoherently
22:50 hire taxi for trip to a hotel, yet to be determined
22:51 tell taxi driver made up name for hotel
23:00 decide where we want to stay while in transit
23:25 taxi driver not so happy, wants another $.55 after he drops us off
23:26 we try and discuss the issue like civilized people
23:27 we pay him $.55 like tired tourists*
24:00 move from consciousness to unconsciousness at some point

* special note, it wasn't $.55, it was 5000 rupiah. I don't know about you, but I'm very careful when I give away 5000 anythings. Just don't want to make a mistake with foreign currency when in a new country.

Monday-Wednesday, November 25-27

As we begin our chronicle of our week on the island paradise that is Bali, lest we make you too jealous, let me inform you - we are not writing this email from Bali. Andrew and I are writing it from KL in a transit lounge a bit past 5 am after staying up all night at the airport, getting jazzed up on caffeine, trying to get a jump on the impending jetlag when we fly back home in a few hours to LA then SFO (we leave Malaysia at 9:30 am Monday Dec. 2 and arrive in LA at 11:05 am, Monday Dec. 2 - it is a 17.5 hour flight - you do the math). As you read this email we will most likely be on the plane back to America, our home sweet home.

But it was very hard to leave Bali, we are quite sad about it...

Nusa Dua is where all the luxury hotels are. In our travel daze that was the previous evening, we thought that we wanted to stay on this part of the island, bargaining for rock-bottom rates. On the taxi ride we realized the exclusivity of the hotels on this part of the island and decided that this just wasn't our style. So we decided to go bargain-hunting in the "moderate" area of Legian, a more family-oriented area where many expats take up residence. By doubling his original rate quoted to go to just one hotel, we convinced a taxi driver to drive us around to an undetermined number of different hotels to see where we could get the best room at the best rate.

On the 4th try we found what we later discovered was recently rated to be a four star hotel/resort, situated on the beach with a partial ocean view for about $50/night including taxes (21%!) and daily breakfast buffet. We were very pleased with ourselves.

Of course, our 4 star room was the type in which the air-conditioning didn't work. Temperature in Bali: about 91 F. After a bit, no make that a lot, of running around (looking at 6 different rooms that had the same problem), Andrew was able to get us a four star room with a working air-conditioner and lukewarm but no hot water. We could deal with that.

One of the amenities of the hotel was the in-house movies, chosen by hotel staff and broadcast on the room TVs. We indulged in nightly movies, although were a bit perplexed by the late night movie choices of the hotel staff as we realized all were serial killer movies (hmm, what's the 11 pm movie tonight? CopyCat? Never heard of it. 1st scene - murder. next night 11 pm movie - Bone Collector? - don't know anything about that movie? a couple scenes in - murder. night after that, 11 pm movie - Mercy? - same story as previous 2 nights).


Amazingly enough, I didn't have any nightmares on these movie nights. More importantly, Andrew and I felt very safe in Bali, although we did have many people express concerns about our safety prior to our departure from the US. As you may have read or guessed, Bali's tourism industry has been hit incredibly hard by the bombing in Kuta. The island was indeed deserted and many locals told us stories of their hardships of lost income and jobs as they thanked us for coming and believing in Bali. I think there were at MOST maybe 20 guests total in our hotel, which probably held over 200. The beach was similarly deserted and we were often the only customers at restaurants.

But Bali is beautiful, the people are wonderful, the culture amazingly rich. Being the rainy season, there was some rain on most days but never all day on any day. We especially welcomed the rain in the morning when it made it so much easier to sleep late and not feel guilty about missing out on the beach or sun. These first 3 days we were pretty lazy and we didn't do much more than sunning, swimming, reading, and eating -- with a bit of shopping thrown in for good measure.

We wearily sign off as we prepare ourselves to be reintegrated into American society; second half of Bali to come after we return.

- Andrew and Kelly