Roundabout way to Auckland

November 26th, 2002 at 12:00am

Well, Jakarta wasn’t exactly at the top of the list for the world tour, but here I am. Actually I’m on a plane OUT of Jakarta very soon. See, I was scheduled to fly from Bangkok to Auckland today with a stop in Bali, but I’m flying on Garuda Indonesia Airlines, and as you can imagine, there are not exactly lines of people heading to Bali or anywhere in Indonesia at the moment. So they’re been forced to cancel a lot of their flights. In Bangkok there was a swarm of confusion at the check-in line while the airline employees kept going into their little huddles and meetings until finally after one hour of everyone standing in line doing nothing, they cancelled the flight to Bali and put us all on a flight to Jakarta. Well ok, at least it’s in the right direction (towards Auckland), but I knew better than to ask for any further information because they were all clueless anyway and stressed out about having to deal with irate passengers. Worked out good for me though because I was able to sneak my bicycle AND my monster duffel filled to the GILLS (with a backpack, tent, 2 sleeping bags, stove, pots, rear panniers, handlebar bag, water bottles, sneakers, and clothes inside just to name a few of the items) on the check-in scale without so much as a second glance. And when I got on the plane I understood. It was a massive 747 and with less than 50 passengers, we all could have sat in first and business class and still had seats in between us. In fact the extra kilograms in my bag probably helped to stabilize the take-off and landing.

Anyway it was a very rushed goodbye to Thailand and the Land of Smiles after the hold-ups in the check-in line and I barely had time to get through customs and change money before the flight was boarding. Luckily though I had time to buy a mini-bottle of wine since I knew there would be no alcohol service on a Muslim airline.

Finally left Bangkok on the 3-hour flight to Jakarta. In Bangkok they told us we’d get a flight to Bali from Jakarta and I was hopeful but sceptical. Well, we got here and the airport was DESERTED. I can tell you first hand that there are no tourists in Jakarta, Indonesia. Reminded me of when I left JFK last October – just plain deserted. So the scheduled boarding on our flight to Bali was 5:20pm. Well 5:20 came and went and 5:50 (departure time) came and went and nothing happened. Finally at 6pm the airline announced that the plane would leave at 7pm and we were all offered a free transit dinner at the sky lounge restaurant. That was pretty cool.

Everyone (the whole 40 people) went from the gate to the restaurant with our little transit passes to get some grub. As for me, I wasn’t really hungry and the food was rather unappealing, and I kept thinking that I really just fancied a beer anyway. So that’s what I did – I used my dinner coupon on beer at the bar. I got one for free and paid for another, but I thought it was well worth the money. There is not a better stress-reliever for the weary traveller in the world. And I had to laugh over the luxury of it all, thinking back to Lao when waiting 3, 4, or 5 hours for a pick-up to fill with passengers was absolutely normal. I don’t think they would understand the concept of complimentary transit meals in Lao. Mind you it would only cost about 15 cents to buy your own meal anyway and the food would actually be good.

Two Bintang drafts later and I was suddenly feeling much better about the flight/ no flight situation. I mean who really cares anyway; it’s not like I don’t have time, and I got to see an amazing sunset from the airport terminal in Jakarta, so life is good.

So I am now actually getting ready to take off on the 1.5-hour flight from Jakarta to Bali, but the word on the street is that the Bali to Auckland flight has indeed been cancelled, so it looks like I’ll have to spend a night in Bali and hope that they run the flight tomorrow. I did say I was up for some adventure again and it seems as if it’s panning out already.

Bali should be interesting.

Sunset in Jakarta

…waiting for the next flight

Entry Filed under: Auckland,New Zealand