We were up very early once again, first getting breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then getting on the 7 am shuttle back to the airport. I snapped some photos at the hotel entrance prior to boarding the shuttle because 1) I love pretty flowers, and 2) I thought that the yellow uniforms worn by all the bellmen were quite charming. I also took flowers of how bougeanvilla were used and trained in the medians of the roads going into the airport. Rectangular supports allowed the vines to climb up around lightposts, creating regular explosions of color.
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| Water lily |
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| Bougainvilla along road median |
Arriving at the airport at 7:15 am for a flight scheduled for 9:35 am is a dramatic departure from my regular travel style, but one that I am getting used to while travelling with mom. I generally wait as long as possible to go to the airport, because I don't want to waste time sitting around and doing nothing. On the other hand, my mother prefers to get to the airport with plenty of time to get boarding passes and the check-in counter, go through security, and identify where we are supposed to be. I know this makes a lot of sense given the fact that there are not back-up flight options for many of the flights we are taking, but think about how many hours of sleep I could have enjoyed doing it my way.
Check-in was quick and then the flight was delayed thirty minutes, leaving us with about two hours before boarding. Mom purchased $10 access to the Blue Sky airport lounge again so that we could relax with internet, food, drink, coffee, and comfy chairs.
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| Sign us up, Alla! |
The thirty minute delay turned into a 45-minute delay, pushing our scheduled arrival time in our connecting city, Denpasar, Bali, from 12:25 pm to just after 1:00 pm. With our next flight to Perth leaving at 2:00 pm, so began our frantic scramble from the domestic terminal where we arrived to the international terminal. There was no bus, shuttle, or tram available at the time between terminals and it turned out to be a much farther walk that we expected. By the grace of the lucky unicorns that have been making this trip go so smoothly, we connected with two other women from our flight, one of whom was familiar with the airport and also spoke Indonesian.
The four of us (our leader wearing a head-covering turban and the other in a traditional dark hijab and abaya) quickly decided that we were "family." Together, we followed our leader to the front of security lines and customes checkpoints to save time. By the time that we got into the international departures concourse, the board was flashing "last call" for our flight and we started running. I ran ahead, figuring that if one person made it to the gate, she could hold it for the others. The plan backfired a bit when Mom and the other lady lost view of the two of us in the front. They initially went to the wrong gate and lost time getting back on track.
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| Our leader in the the green - others are randoms |
When we got on what was obviously the very last bus that was going to take passengers to the aircraft, we learned that we were not the only ones scrambling for the flight. We stood on the hot bus for another 15 minutes as other harried-looking travelers came on to the bus in 1s and 2s. I was so drenched with sweat from the run and the heat that sweat was showing through my pants legs. I had to change shirts on the plane so that the original one could dry. We ended up passing part of our 3-hour flight chatting with our seat-mate, Paul. He was an Australian returning home for summer after spending winter with a friend in Indonesia.
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| Can you see the sweat? |
Everything about the rest of the day went smoothly, including getting through immigration and customs, finding our driver, and checking into the Doubletree Hotel downtown. We were both gushing about how amazing the room was, especially needed after the last few days. It had plenty of lighting, outlets all over the place, bathrobes, storage, a table with two chairs, shampoo AND conditionre, and washcloths. We both took long showers, after which we felt the cleanest in two weeks.
The one, fun oddity about the room was an automatic window shade that could be opened up between the bedroom and the shower. I guess some people want to watch their roommates shower? Or make sure that the kids wash behind the ears?
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| Doubletree Twin Room - Heaven |
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| Mom napping with shower closed |
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| "Now you see me!" |
Mom went to sleep first, but I stayed up to research activities and transportation at Friday's destination, Christmas Island. A panic soon started to build. Christmas Island is fairly remote and it's population is under 2,000 people. There is no public transportation and goods and services sometimes are in limited supply, depending on the number of visitors on the island. We had been strongly advised to make tour, airport transfer, or car rental arrangements PRIOR to arriving and we had done nothing yet. I couldn't do much at 11:30 pm and we weren't getting picked up for our Thursday tour until 12:40 pm. This would give us plenty of time in the morning for mom to activate her international plan and together we would start making calls and sending emails to at least get a ride from the airport to the hotel. Until then, slumber with no alarm set.
We had a hotel room with a " magic wall " between the bedroom and the shower when we went to Paris 7 years ago. quite a hoot for the girls who were seven and nine at the time 🙂
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