The long awaited return to Komodo. 3 years have passed, and much has changed, or so I heard. There IS ice on the boat now, but no sit down toilet. Pringles and potato chips CANNOT be found on Lambuan Bajo, but Captain Mat is a much better chef than Captain Adi. Dragons are no longer plentiful, but deer and water buffalo are. We found Poo Bay but the deer-grape-feeding-frenchman is gone. Same Same But Different.
The first difference we found was the surprise waiting in store for us when we arrived. Flights to Lambuan Bajo were SOLD OUT... Rickey's "We can show up at the airport in the morning and get tickets" was disproven early. There were no tickets on any of the flights over the weekend. The earliest flight out was on Morning morning... damn!!! We later found out that it was actually the school holidays in Indonesia. Note for future missions... Do NOT travel in June/July
As Horfun had changed her return flight to Wednesday 29 instead of Jul 5 as originally planned, we went back over to the International terminal to get her flight changed. Get this... within the span of time it took us to get our return flights changed (though it did take 3 hours...), the Monday morning tickets got sold out as well. Earliest flight... Wednesday morning. We tried our luck at other airlines with afternoon flights, and it definitely didn't help that Rickey got stuck behind the world's most annoying sarong-wearing-euro-trash-hippie. Kudos to Horfun who managed to find an airline that had flights out on Monday afternoon. Since we had all changed our return flights to Friday, we decided to buy the return tickets for Thursday instead of waiting till 'Thursday morning to buy tickets at the airport'.
I heard that the last mission, the guys were easily able to buy their domestic tickets on the day itself... Well, don't. Don't risk it. The return flight was full too. Might as well get all your tickets in advance and plan the boat trip around the flights.
Even buying the tickets was an adventure. First of all, their computer systems seem to be down, so it took 3 hours for the guy behind the counter to confirm our seats. Obviously, the credit card machine didn't work either, so we had to pay by cash. Thankfully, Rickey had 10 mil, and I had 5 mil. So we both forked out our wad of cash and paid up. The stack of bills was so thick and it wouldn't slip between the gap in the counter window. The guy was nice enough to give us a nice discount for paying in cash. Instead of paying 14 mil, he brought the price down to 12.5 mil.
That was 5 hours at the airport pretty much wasted. We got into Bali at about 5 and met up with Daan and Audrey, which will now be known as 'the inlaws'. Had our first beer of the day. and managed to catch the sunset over Kuta beach.
Rugburn, Swaine and Kristin arrived not long after, and we met up for another round of drinks while they had their dinner.
I have to say, Bali is not the shithole I envisioned it to be. I had always avoided going to Bali. My impression of the place was an Indonesian shithole equivalent of Phuket. Turns out, I was wrong...TBC
The airport is by the sea, and you can see the wonderful waves as you land. Beautiful.
The first difference we found was the surprise waiting in store for us when we arrived. Flights to Lambuan Bajo were SOLD OUT... Rickey's "We can show up at the airport in the morning and get tickets" was disproven early. There were no tickets on any of the flights over the weekend. The earliest flight out was on Morning morning... damn!!! We later found out that it was actually the school holidays in Indonesia. Note for future missions... Do NOT travel in June/July
As Horfun had changed her return flight to Wednesday 29 instead of Jul 5 as originally planned, we went back over to the International terminal to get her flight changed. Get this... within the span of time it took us to get our return flights changed (though it did take 3 hours...), the Monday morning tickets got sold out as well. Earliest flight... Wednesday morning. We tried our luck at other airlines with afternoon flights, and it definitely didn't help that Rickey got stuck behind the world's most annoying sarong-wearing-euro-trash-hippie. Kudos to Horfun who managed to find an airline that had flights out on Monday afternoon. Since we had all changed our return flights to Friday, we decided to buy the return tickets for Thursday instead of waiting till 'Thursday morning to buy tickets at the airport'.
I heard that the last mission, the guys were easily able to buy their domestic tickets on the day itself... Well, don't. Don't risk it. The return flight was full too. Might as well get all your tickets in advance and plan the boat trip around the flights.
Even buying the tickets was an adventure. First of all, their computer systems seem to be down, so it took 3 hours for the guy behind the counter to confirm our seats. Obviously, the credit card machine didn't work either, so we had to pay by cash. Thankfully, Rickey had 10 mil, and I had 5 mil. So we both forked out our wad of cash and paid up. The stack of bills was so thick and it wouldn't slip between the gap in the counter window. The guy was nice enough to give us a nice discount for paying in cash. Instead of paying 14 mil, he brought the price down to 12.5 mil.
That was 5 hours at the airport pretty much wasted. We got into Bali at about 5 and met up with Daan and Audrey, which will now be known as 'the inlaws'. Had our first beer of the day. and managed to catch the sunset over Kuta beach.
Rugburn, Swaine and Kristin arrived not long after, and we met up for another round of drinks while they had their dinner.
I have to say, Bali is not the shithole I envisioned it to be. I had always avoided going to Bali. My impression of the place was an Indonesian shithole equivalent of Phuket. Turns out, I was wrong...TBC
The airport is by the sea, and you can see the wonderful waves as you land. Beautiful.
Beer Bintang, the local brew. First of many....
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