It was an 8am flight so check in had to be early. Luckily the Singapore Airlines counter in T1 was only a short walk from the hotel. June mornings can be cold and we were already dressed for the tropics.
Take off was on time for the 8 hour plus flight.
No Boeing A380 for us this time. SQ have reduced their capacity on the Sydney-Singapore route due to competition. Still the same number of flights, four a day, but three of them with the smaller Boeing 777s.
As usual the plane was almost full and we wiled the time away snoozing and reading. While the airline has excellent IFE, I really wasn't in the mood for watching movies or listening to music.
Six hours in, we flew past our final destination, Bali. Due to the always unfathomable airline fare system it was cheaper to fly to Singapore, spend the night and fly back to the island the next day instead of doing the trip in one go.
We like Singapore so that fitted well into our plans.
We arrived on time, were quickly through immigration and customs and caught a taxi downtown to our hotel.
We had stayed there previously so were familiar with that area of the city.
More on both our Singapore stopovers in a later post.
Our flight to Denpasar, Bali, left Singapore late afternoon the next day and the 'back track' flight was a relatively short 2.5 hours.
Arrival was a little chaotic as expected with visas to be purchased and immigration and customs negotiated.
The swarm of touts who descend once you leave the secure area was thwarted with the recently learned 'Tidak, terima kasih'. Everyone is trying to make a living here. Tourism is their lifeblood. But the continual harassment to buy something or use a service can be a bit annoying. A firm but polite 'no thanks' in their language works.....most of the time.
The driver from our villa was at the airport to meet us and whisk us away in air conditioned comfort to Seseh Beach. 'Whisk' is probably a bad word to use here. The traffic is so bad and the roads so narrow it is always a slow crawl getting most places.
The rest of the wedding party had arrived at various times during the day and we were last.
The chef had a prepared a lovely meal for us.
Lumpia – fried spring rolls with shrimp or chicken and vegetables served with a light chili sauce on the side
Beef Rendang – a Sumatran dish of beef stewed with baby potatoes and vegetables slowly cooked in spices
Sate - tender beef and chicken skewers served with peanut sauce, rice, crackers and pickles
Jukut Urap (Mixed Balinese vegetables) – boiled fresh long beans, spinach, bean sprouts mixed with Balinese dressing served with shallots.
Fresh fruit platter – a selection of seasonal fruits found in Bali
We LOVE Indonesian food so this was an excellent start to our five day eatathon.
This with a cold Bintang (a beer made locally under a Heineken licence) and we were in heaven.
It was to be a wine free stay apart from the one duty free bottle allowance of Champagne each of us brought in for the wedding breakfast.
The tax on wine in Indonesia makes it prohibitively expensive.
We fell into bed pretty much exhausted.
So began our mini Indonesian adventure.
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