Watch out for hustlers! There will be people who will try their best to port your things to a tuk tuk. Then they'll take off to the bus stop which is only about a 15 minute walk away. I know it isn't easy to just instantly know where you are going when you only have 30 minutes before the shuttle bus departs at 9:30am.
The porter will ask for money, I gave him a dollar so that wasn't so bad. Before I could even say no I was at the bus stop, he asked for 100,000rupiah. I was choked since it was less than a 5 minute ride. I argued with the driver for a good 5 minutes and after I was flustered and out of breath I gave him $5 just so I could leave. It was about 9:15am.
I waited at the so called bus stop restaurant, I was asked to buy goods like 3 times in 5 minutes. The man checking the tickets kept asking me where I was from, I just wasn't in the mood to be having this conversation. So I just said yes to whatever he guessed I was. Today I was Japanese.
The mini bus was late and there was no air con, by about 9:50am we were finally on our way. We stopped three separate times with the addition of his stop start driving up and down hill through dusty village roads and the smell of burning garbage of a jet coaster. Well this is all about the experience I had a window seat so I couldn't complain that much.
I was told that the bus ride would get me to the airport by 11:30am, at 12:35pm I arrival at Lombok airport. I had to go tothe counter to get a piece of paper printed out. From there off to check in, I was 5kgs over their 10kg allowance with wings air, lion air has 15kg just for your information. So I ended up paying 27,500 which I thought was super cheap, 3 bucks isn't that bad. Compared to western airlines this was a steal of a deal.
So I go through 'security' which is just a person at a desk that checks your boarding pass and tells you that you have to pay an airport tax of 45,000rupiah for domestic flights. Another $4.50 to get on this plane.
Okay I'm at $30 now, I didn't think it would be this costly. In retrospect it isn't a lot but you know it is all about the principle. I found out when I fly out of Denpasar I have to pay 200,000rupiah another $20 to leave Bali. So including my flight to avoid the several hour boat ride after the bus trip to make it to Denpasar airport I will have spent $80 hmmmmm....
Okay so in still breathing after the flight was delayed by about 2 hours though the flight itself was a 30 minute rise and fall. I hit the ATM knowing that I have to pay money before going through security and my master card doesn't work. I go down to the bank on the first floor of Denpasar airport, they kindly ask me to use another machine and another card,. Like I didn't think of these possible solutions already. My debit card doesn't seem to do the trick, I exchange the last of my singapore dollars for the 200,000rupiah needed. Thank god for sketchy free airport wifi where I called MasterCard and explained to them the situation. They unlocked the card and I should work now so I can grab some food before the flight...maybe Air Asia will feed me.
No comments:
Post a Comment