September 28, 2012: Started my day in Melbourne with an early wake-up call and work in the AM. Had a delicious vietnamese lunch with Sue-Ellen, so good I didn’t even get a picture of it before it was gone :)
Straight to the airport from work and on to a 6:30pm flight from Melbourne to Denpasar (Bali). Well… it was supposed to be 6:30pm. We ended up not leaving until 7:45pm because of a fuel level sensor needing replaced. Which meant an 11:30pm arrival into Denpasar (and a 2 hour time change for the nearly 7 hour flight).
When I arrived in Denpasar… chaos. 11 flights had landed at the same time (nearly all widebody planes… A330’s, 757’s, 767’s, etc.). And…. 3 immigration officials. I was in Row 3 so I was one of the first off of our plane, and I read online to be prepared to rush to the left to pay a $25 airport tax before getting in the main line, so I did all of that… and still ended up with a 90 minute wait to get through. When I cleared customs at 1am, there were easily over 1,000 people in line behind me still. WOW!
Leaving the airport was a nice feeling, reminiscent of Kuala Lumpur and Manila with drivers everywhere and very eager porters to help with luggage.
I stopped by the ATM, where the Indonesian Rupiah currently trades 9,500 = 1 USD. So I pulled out $150 and became an instant millionaire :) with about $1,400,000 in my pocket! My first purchase.. PEPSI BLUE! Discontinued in the US in 2004, it’s still available in Malaysia and Indonesia. Good stuff.
Finally arrived to my hotel around 2am (4am Aussie time) and went straight to bed. I have a 12 hour tour that leaves at 7:30am tomorrow.. yikes!
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