Singapore Airlines have upgraded their systems since we were last on board. For a start the Sky Map now has an orthagonal projection of a relief map. This, of course, is next to useless unless you're quite familiar with the local geography as the perspective distorts the distance especially if your destination is over the horizon. It's quite neat seeing the mountains stick up though.
More interesting to me, though, was the Wisemen video and audio on demand system. Back in my days at Fujitsu we looked at video on demand and it was decided that it could be done but only at an extortionate cost: the very latest Alpha processors, gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of disk -- monster machines. About seven years later we have a quite passable VOD system for all 200 passengers without the plane falling over backwards with racks of computers in the tail. It's a little bit clunky to use but all the inflight systems are. I wonder where Fujitsu went wrong or what's changed to make it right. [I've just looked it up on Google and a version was installed for First and Business class in mid-1999.]
Two (VOD) films and several glasses of wine [later] I manage an hours sleep. I'm not designed for planes. We're tossed out in Changi at 5:30am local time (7:30am body time) and find a quiet corner for a quick snooze. Alas the business day's just beginning and not only are we by the smokers' room and our corner seems to attract noise (or noisy people) but there's a display Saab 9-3. It's not a bad car but hardly a supercar (like the S600, 911 Turbo or Turbo-R in Dubai) but it seems to attract its share of onlookers. A novelty perhaps? A quick amble round the duty free reminds us there are no bargains here and we get half the intended order at the coffee bar but the queue (and the service) is too long to be bothered fixing it.
Our second flight to Denpasar in Bali is on an older Airbus (rather than the new 777) and everything's a little bit crunchier. The flight is a little bit bumpy again and I have my second breakfast mid-air. Bad timing on the meal front. At Denpasar airport there seems to be a dearth of up to date information on diving or where to stay and we end up blowing US$25 on a hotel through the first hotel booking service we see (our Bali budget is US$20 per day). Having busted the budget we might as well take a taxi to the hotel rather than fathom the bus system. You do need to buy prepaid tickets for the taxi though. By this time we're upsetting our second porter by not paying (hey, don't carry someone's bags unless you know they're going to pay!).
Kuta, not the capital but the centre of tourist activities is the first town out of the airport but we don't see any countryside only crazy mopeds on the single track streets. The hotel is a little grubby but OK. We go to the adjacent travel agent to query dive operations and Bali tours. We eventually plump for something that could be very good or very bad: the agent's main man, Putu, has offered to bus us round for five days, taking in the dive sites and giving us as much of his island as he can. He seems quite enthusiastic. He better had be, it's not cheap [US$50 per day] -- and we didn't haggle.
We wander around town and without realising it stop at the site of the October bombing -- we thought it was a political protest (which I guess it was) at first so did a runner. Only on the loop back did we realise. Everything in Kuta is tightly packed in so the bomb did a lot of damage (a thirty yard radius of mainly rubble [still]).
In between heavy showers we sneak in some dinner but having had little sleep overnight we're fading quickly.
Mustapa Garden Hotel, Kuta S8.71257
E115.17345 Elev. 24m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.