The Return to Asia - Bali

Yes, there is a Four-year gap I still haven’t filled, but I figured you may appreciate some current adventures in the meantime. I know it’s four years, as my niece Sienna has just had her Fourth Birthday.

After a weekend of packing and preparations, I spent the night at Mum and Dad’s so we could get an early start with Dad dropping me off at the airport. Admittedly somewhat self-serving, I promised him a McDonald’s breakfast. The stop there also gave me a quick paranoia inspired check that I had my passport and ticket before it was too late, of course it was just paranoia.

As we got into Auckland the traffic locked up at Takanini, and it was around this point I fell asleep, waking at the airport. This of course was a little bit of a shock to the system, saying my good-byes to Dad, and facing the reality of the situation after just waking up (again).

Relax: That's my intention!

I was nice and early so I wasn’t pressured for time. I had a quick look around in the general airport after checking in my bags, having a small chuckle to myself that there is a KFC based at the airport- presumably for the people who take home buckets of KFC to the Islands. As much as I’m a fan of KFC, I was still full from McDonalds, so I proceeded through security and into duty-free.

Once on the plane I proceeded to watch some movies and TV. I started with “The Breaker-uppers” a recent Kiwi film - it had some good one-liners that had me laughing out loud. I followed that up with “Good-bye Christopher Robin” - about A. A. Milne and his son Christopher- who was the inspiration of his namesake in the Winnie the Pooh stories. That had me crying at the end - my neighbours in the seats next to me may’ve thought I was a bit nuts. I watched about half of Deadpool - but as I was next to the toilets I decided it was a bit too graphic considering I had kids walking past. So I switched to watching most of a documentary on “Back to the Future” and a few 5-10minute travel documentaries. As I was travelling through the day, I only dozed off briefly at one point.

On arrival to Bali, I was hit by the heat as soon as I hopped out of the plane and into the airlock into the airport. Customs took a while to get through, solely because of the number of people that were coming in - our  plane had been put into a holding formation for about half an hour before we landed as the run way was busy - I think out of all my travel, that’s the first time that’s ever happened, or at least the first time the pilot has mentioned that is the case - despite reading about it when I was a kid.

I’ll leave it there and continue in a new post...