I managed to get some light sleep during the Brisbane to Singapore flight, after watching Red Dragon on my personal on demand video screen. The Singapore Airlines flight was far better than our last experience with them and was much more like the service we received from Emirates, with personal screens and footrests. The food still wasn't much good 'though and I picked through most of it. The best things was the strawberry yoghurt that came with the breakfast at 03:00!
We found a relatively quiet spot in terminal two of Singapores Changi Airport and I cuddled up under my sarong and dozed for a few hours. As more people arrived at the airport and our area became full of a gentle murmur of travellers, Ian woke me and we settled for wandering around duty free shops and having a light snack.
At 09:53 we departed Singapore bound for Bali and the aircraft was really quite full. The flight was 2 hours 19 minutes long and we arrived in Bali at 12:10 local time, 04:10 GMT. I passed the time by reading and passed on another offer of airline breakfast having been put off by the last. At the airport in Bali I had to begin to empty the contents of my backpack which had been selected by being marked with chalk crosses, I guessed randomly, for inspection by customs officials. Luckily I only had to remove a couple of items before I was stopped, the customs guy seemingly satisfied with what little I had removed.
Ian and I then found a room in a hotel in Kuta for the night and got a taxi to our accommodation. We then collated information about diving in Bali and tours of the island. We had some advice from Putu in the travel agents and had 30 minutes to make a plan and a decision so we made our way to the bar and had a beer during a tropical rainstorm and accepted that we would be overspending in Bali too. Having given our decision to Putu we explored the main street of Kuta, noting the bizarre assortment of traditional curio shops and stalls and mock designer labels. McDonalds are present in three different locations in Kuta alone, all within a short distance from each other. We walked down to the beach which isn't very nice and paddled in the water. The water was nice and warm. Then Ian made a terrific discovery. He realised that the tiny shells in the sand where the tide reaches were somehow burrying themselves as the water went back out to sea. After watching them and some crabs for a while we noticed that they had legs and a foot which aided their burrying habits. They must have been a kind of mussel. So they held our attention for the best part of an hour! There were hundreds of them that surfaced each time you lifted your feet and disturbed the covering wet sand. Our return walk, via Hard Rock Hotel and Cafe, took us past the site of the bomb that exploded in October last year.
Following another hours snooze in the hotel room, and Ian aborting a dip in the pool as the skied opened again, we popped out for some dinner which turned out to be of very small portion sizes and was accompanied by two small kittens sitting on the floor by the table. Ian then walked me back to the hotel and then went off to buy some water for our travels tomorrow. I sorted out my bags while a big bug ran round the tiles by the cupboard. Ian returned a short while later, wet from the next downpour which lasted for several minutes.
We watched Deep Blue Sea as we fell asleep, tired from the travelling from Brisbane.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.