Bali - Part 1 -before departure, during flight and upon arrival

I have been wanting to got to Bali since a long, long time. Somehow...some issues would just surface and then I had to put the trip on hold. I remembered the Bali bombing which created fear in all of us. Then came SARS. This time round, Dad actually tried to talk me out because of A(H1N1). Sighhh.....it just had to happen. Dad kept saying, today's news said this....today's newspaper said that...bla bla bla. For days he tried to talk me out of it. No, I don't care. I was adamant about my trip. I must go. I have put it on hold for so many times!

As a precaution, I enquired about Tamiflu tablets। Then I bought my multi vits including vitamin C. I increased my dosage intake। Just to convince myself that I have better back-up with stronger immune system. Not only that I had to buy masks - 1 box (50pcs). You might wonder why on earth would I need 1 box. Well, I am travelling in a group of 8. I estimated each person to use 3 masks for each route. And that's not all. I went looking for hand sanitisers. Making sure each of them has a bottle. Ok॥I have to admit I have been very kiasi and kiasu...but hey....better safe than sorry.

I don't want any of us to be infected or to be quarantined under suspicion due to my stubborness. It ain't fun to have a police standing outside your door for a week though you have not committed a crime. Because we were all so kiasus, before arriving at the airport, we donned on the masks।

We were the only people in that flight with masks। I thought I was being overly paranoid until I hear a passenger in the same flight sneezing away। Phew! Good thing I had the mask on.

The mask is pretty uncomfortable. It feels warm. I almost wanted to remove my mask while inside the airplane. And then suddenly I heard "Achooooo......". Oops.....and again "Achooooooo......". Aiyoyo...I changed my mind. Stick to the mask. My cousin and her mom who initially refused to put on the mask immediately took it out from their bags and donned it. Kakakakkaka..... As we were travelling in the evening, we managed to catch the sunset from inside the plane।

During flight, I kept trying hard to figure out about the time zone। Here's what happened। I called AirAsia to check if theire is any time differences and the girl said , yes...Bali is 1 hour behind us। Ok॥that's fine। I checked from one of the webs in the internet and yes, there is 1 hour difference। But when I looked back at my ticket, and calculating backward and forward, using my own logical explanation, I was not able to figure out how the time zone work। AirAsia girl said flight time is 2 hours but ticket showed 3 hours। So there has to be some kind of time difference। Still thinking hard, I heard the announcement...."we'll be landing shortly। FYI there is no time difference between Malaysia & Bali"। Huh?? No time differences?

Not trusting my ears I checked with the airport authorities when I got to the ground. Yeah.....no time difference. Ok, I told myself....1 last try...I'm going to ask differently this time. I approached a taxi driver. I said, "Excuse me, can I know what is the time now?". Taxi driver looked at his watch and said, "It's 10:30pm now." Hmm...that confirms it. No time difference. So much for my hard thinking during my 3 hours flight. Duh!

There are 8 of us....16 biji of eyes scanned the arrival hall, all on the lookout for our hotel driver. Saw so many people with signs but none that showed Puri Bambu Hotel. Oh dear....I went walking around, checking with strangers who has signage with them but was turned the other way round. No one could see what the signs said. All that I approached, none showed Puri Bambu. I decided to call the hotel. Darn, I was not able to get through. Not because the line was engage, more so like I have no connection. That's Celcom. I had to borrow one of our member's phone..DiGi user and it got through. My cousin who is a Maxis user couldn't get through either. The guy at the hotel said driver is already at the airport. He told us to walk to information counter and he will get the driver to meet us there. And yes, we found him. Aiyoh...I told the driver. Hold your signage high high. Don't hold low low. You place it around your waist area noone can see. Poor guy....he was apologetic and very patient with us.

We told him we were hungry. And he took us to have Nasi Padang at a small warung.The food tasted good...either that or we were all very hungry. Cost us 395,000 Rupiah. Quite frightening to have a meal which costs hundreds of thousands.

We checked in with welcoming drinks. 2 big interconnecting bedrooms greeted us. It was really spacious. We got excited for a while and not long after we fell into deep sleep.