The World is My Oyster

Looking at the pattern I’ve been going for the past few weeks, it’s SO FREAKIN HARD to find time to write anything apart from weekend. Even so, I could only spare so much during the weekend. Well on the good side, I’ve been busier having life than writing about it. On the bad side, writing is something that I currently do not want to neglect. So in conclusion, I’ll try to write shorter posts, but more often. We’ll see how that fits in.

Taking a break from my long Southeast Asia series (if I can call them a series anyway, with one post), I’m going to put my more recent trip to Bali (Indonesia) in April this year. You know, before I forget about the details.

I call this series “Finally Bali” because it was a long long due holiday for me and Rendy (it also rhymes!). FINALLY we’re grown up enough and have money enough to have a getaway together! It’s only 10 years of waiting, really, no biggie ;). I was thinking of other lame series title like “Pre-Moon Bali”, because everybody I know teased “Honeymoon eh?” to which I replied “No, it’s pre-honeymoon”. But since pre-honeymoon is too heavy a name, I modified it to Pre-Moon. Now it sounds cute. Also sounds a bit like Sailor Moon. Err.. I should stop now, am not even using the title.

So off we went, using the (in)famous Air Asia (what else?), which is famous for its punctuality.. NOT! Especially Air Asia Indonesia, it’s like they’re trying to be late all the time. But lucky day for us, it was all good on our way to Bali from Jakarta. Totally different story for the other way though. But I’ll just tell you about that later.. maybe..

I have a weird habit of taking picture of the back of the airplane seat. The bottom left box says “whoever takes the life vest would either be fined 1 million rupiah or taken to the police”. If you don’t already know, 1 million rupiah is less than 200 SGD. Yea I know, for a moment there, you were like “WOAH!” right? (By the way since I’m currently in Singapore I will use SGD as benchmark for prices, when I go back to Australia I will use AUD, if I stay in Vietnam I will.. well in that case I wouldn’t use Dong because there would be too many zeros to be sensible..)

Like most budget airlines, you gotta walk to the plane across burning open air field instead of air-conditioned tunnel.

Read:
Welcome to Bali!
Whatever package you choose, Matrix gives what you want

A glimpse of Ngurah Rai airport. You can tell from the picture that Bali is not a big city. In fact, it’s a tiny island on the east of Java. Talking about tiny island, Singapore is bigger than Bali, I’ve checked. So see, Singapore is not that pathetic after all. You guys should be proud *grin*.

Just a tip, if nobody picks you up, do NOT walk outside the airport area to find taxi. I repeat, DO NOT walk outside of the airport area to find taxi. First thing when you arrive, you would not see a taxi caller or stand, because it’s at YOUR BACK. Go out of the door and it’s at your back, dark, hidden, and doesn’t look like taxi locket, especially when there are a lot of people standing in front of it (just because of the shade, not because they wanna call a taxi). Just pay for the ticket and the taxi driver will walk you to the parking lot where he stores his taxi.

This post is getting long and I was just talking about the airport forgodssake. Sorry, I’m fascinated by airports and airplanes. After countless flights I’ve been to, I still have all tingling feeling when the plane takes off the ground. It’s the feeling of knowing that you leave things behind while anticipating new place.

I will stop now. Next post will be about Bali, for real, I promise.