Journey to Bali

  07/02 2012
  3 45am came around a bit quick, with Frank on time to run us to the airport. The whole journey was nowhere near as  stressful as we had anticipated, just a bit of bother getting from Brisbane domestic terminal to the International terminal. I had to push a baggage trolley with Stumpy sat on top of our bags to the bus stop, and the same means of transport at the other end to get to check in. We had good seats on both flights, a block of three for us two so we could spread out a bit.
 At Denpassar airport (Bali) we had the undivided attention of 3 flunkies. One of them went off with our passports and money for our visas, another shoved Stumpy about in the chair and the third carried our bags. All very civilised
 Outside the airport we were met by Indy Fantastic, our driver for the week, who took us to our hotel. We had booked the room before stumpy went into a leg iron and it turned out to be totally unsuitable. Too far from the main part of Sanur where the eating houses are, it would have been a 15 min walk under normal circumstances, also we found a slug in the room, Indy said it was a leech, anyway, so Indy took us to another hotel much closer to the action, though even here Stumpy was struggling. At least this place has it’s own restaurant and bar, but it seems to take an age to get her about the place. The room is adequate and essentially no steps, the bad news is it doesn’t have a fridge. Not sure yet about Wi fi, but right now we can’t plug in because we left the universal adaptor in Clifton Beach. Got to buy another.
 First impressions of Bali, and we have only seen a tiny bit of it, is that it is very third world. Lots of poor people living in shanty town conditions, beggars, small children at each set of traffic lights cadging loose change from drivers. All very shabby, but we have Indy to show us around so all will be revealed. We ate our evening meal in the restaurant, 150m hop from our room and had a couple of Bintangs sending us to sleep early after a very long day.