Bali... Getting there is NOT half the fun. Not. At. All.

You may or may not be amazed to hear that traveling 9,991 miles to nearly the exact opposite side of the world, isn't as easy as it may seem. We'd been planning a big trip for our 25th wedding anniversary and ultimately decided on Bali because:

a) We'd never been there.
b) Nobody we knew had ever been there.
c) Why not?

Our plans for the trip got scrapped last year because Kerri had two knee replacements and a spinal surgery and was sort of being a big baby about not wanting to travel while she was recovering from 3 major surgeries. So we put it off a year and, as a result, were able to add an extra week to the trip. We figured that since it's not easy to get there, we might as well stay for as long as we could.

Kerri's mother is part of some sort of mysterious time-share cult or something and she very kindly offered to let us use some of her points (a confusing payment system for getting timeshares all over the world - I won't even pretend to understand how that all works) to book a week at a resort in Bali. It was very generous of her. Thanks, Barbara!

So, we booked one week at a swanky resort on the southern tip of Bali. We decided to use Airbnb to book a place in the center of Bali and another one on the north shore. The thing we discovered about Bali is that is is ridiculously inexpensive to stay there. Getting there is something else entirely, but once you're there, it's not too pricey at all. We booked two beautiful Airbnb's. The one on the northern coast was an embarrassingly huge villa that sleeps 8. It was right on the shore with a staff and a huge pool. It cost less per night than a cheap hotel in New Hampshire (I'm looking at you and your alarming stains and unpleasant smells, Days Inn).

After much planning and researching, it was time to go. We loaded suitcases into our son's truck and headed down to Boston to begin almost 40 hours of travel, which was even less fun than it sounds. It became a blur of airports, time zones, and leg cramps so I won't even try to differentiate days in this post.

Our first flight was from Boston to Dubai. It was a quick 12 hour jaunt over Greenland, Iceland, and Sorebuttland. We flew on Emirate Air and, since we were unwilling and unable to shell out for the $20,000+ first class seats, we squeezed into our seats and made the best of it. The flight included 2 full meals, a snack, and all the leg cramps we could possibly want. To give the airline it's due, the food was actually pretty good. Each meal had two options for the main course, generally a meat and a vegetarian offering. The vegetarian were most often Asian or Indian foods that I rather liked. They also came with rolls, desserts (sticky toffee pudding in one glorious instance), snacks, and they offered free wine and hard alcohol to accompany your meal, should you so choose.

I so chose.

Eating in the cramped confines of our seats gave us something to focus on besides our aching backs and the turbulence provided us with delightful surprise snacks later as we pulled escaped grains of rice, nuts, or entire dinner rolls from the folds of our clothes where they had spilled.

The airline offered a huge collection of entertainment from all over the world so I spent some time watching Apocalypse Clown and Shawn of the Dead, both of which, I enjoyed. Go ahead. Judge all you want.

Kerri, in a moment of utter madness, had selected window and middle seats for us. The person sitting in the aisle seat sat down for take-off, fell asleep, and never woke up at all, except for the 42 times I excused myself to climb over him and wander around the plane to stretch my legs. Just as I began to fear that  I couldn't take sitting for one more minute, I realized that we only had 9 hours left on the plane and I didn't have any option except to take sitting.

We did, of course, land in Dubai. Eventually.

We are in Dubai. Our butts hurt.

Welcome to Dubai!

Dubai Airport is built on a scale to shock and awe. It is fantastically huge. There is a small map of the airport on the back of our boarding pass. It says that if you are taking their shuttle service, the drive from one end of the airport to the other should take about 40 minutes. It's ridiculously huge and, at 1:00 in the morning when we landed, totally deserted. Because we had a layover of 8+ hours, Emirate Air kindly provided us with a hotel room and a free meal. It sounded lovely and, in theory, it was, but after going through customs, getting a temporary visa for our short stay, and wandering through the cavernous buildings trying to find out where to get the shuttle to our hotel, we wound up with about 2 hours in the hotel room. The shuttle ride to the hotel was quick and, since it was the middle of the night, the outside temperature was a chilly 89 degrees, down from it's high of 109 earlier that day. We showered, set an alarm and crashed for a solid hour and a half of lying on the bed, anxiously staring at the ceiling, terrified that we would sleep through the alarm, miss our plane, and burst into flames as the sun rose the next day.

Our opulent hotel room.

The view out the window.

No bibles in the drawers in United Arab Emirates.

A small disc on the ceiling so Moslem guests can orient toward Mecca before praying.

No. I didn't. It was probably $300 per ounce.

After a fitful hour and a half of anxiety, we got back on the shuttle and headed back to the airport, ready for the final 9 hour flight to Bali. They suggest getting to the airport at least 3 hours before your flight. We had no idea what to expect for crowds, but oddly, even in Dubai, some people like to sleep, so we were at our gate and ready to go 3 hours before boarding time.
The airport is more like a mall than an airport. there are high end stores selling luxury items as far as you can see.  One of my favorites was selling chocolate made from the finest camel's milk. We wandered around and gawped like slack-jawed yokels at the opulence and finery on display. I loved seeing the traditional outfits from around the world and hearing the swirl of so many different languages as we passed through the crowds.

---

We decided to exchange some money so we would have some cash on hand when we arrived in Bali. They first changed it into dhirams and then into rupia. I realized afterward that that was a sleazy method for getting us a much worse exchange rate. We exchanged $100 and got over a million rupia and a balance of about $3 in dirhams. With no other chance to use the dirham, we bought a candy bar from a vending machine.

Yes. It's chocolate cups with crushed up corn flakes in it.

Yes. They look very neat and fun.

Yes. They were as bad as they sound.

As there was no camel milk chocolate in our price range, we opted for something equally exotic. Chocomail Cornflake-filled chocolates.  All I will say about this candy that sounds like the bastard dessert cousin of some midwestern casserole monstrosity is that the resultant corn flake mess in our teeth gave us something to do while we waited for out plane to board.
We sat, sucking the last of the cornflake detritus from our long unbrushed teeth until our flight finally started boarding.  This plane, like everything else in Dubai except the cornflake cups, was huge.

A freaking stairway on a plane!

And the entire ceiling had little light up stars that appeared when the cabin lights dimmed. isn't that sweet?

Our first meal on this short 9 hour flight was breakfast. I had a delicious Prawn Yaki Soba. And wine. Yeah. I know! Fancy, right? The cabin crew was from 20 different countries and spoke 21 different langues. It was really amazing.
Our second meal was a choice of chicken curry or an omelette. Naturally, I got the curry. And wine. Kerri got the omelette. I particularly enjoyed hearing the stewardess pronounce "omelette". She said it like she was afraid of breaking the O's . It was a rolling, juicy word in her mouth and it made me laugh.
Sleep deprivation is real, kids.

After just 9 hours full of strong sensation in our nether regions, we landed in Bali.

Welcome to Bali. Please pay us. Now.

We were herded through customs, passport control, and several other booths, gates, and tollbooths. We had to buy a visa for our stay that cost a million IRD. So much for feeling rich with that fat wad of Balinese cash I was flashing.

Please notice the name of the area we were entering, emblazoned on the banner in hyperbolic government speak.

We had a bit of trouble with a customs declaration that Kerri had filled out online in advance. We waited at kiosks to fill it out, had no luck, got into the long line of people, were turned away and told to go back to the kiosks to print out a QR code. After trying unsuccessfully for several minutes, Kerri realized that we had them printed out in our backpacks.
Oops.
Did I mention that we were very, very tired?

Our luggage took about an hour to arrive. While we waited, I sent a message to our driver, who was supposed to be waiting for us.
He replied:
"I here. I wait when you ready. No problem."

Our driver was Kadek, a 25 year old kid who was really nice. Bali has a traditional naming system for babies. The firstborn is named Wayan, Putu, or Gede. The second is named Made or Kadek. The third is Nyoman or Koman. The fourth is named Ketut. If a family has more than four children, the cycle repeats itself, and the next 'Wayan' may be called Wayan Balik, which loosely translates to 'another Wayan'.
It's absolutely not confusing at all.

We had heard rumors about the traffic in Bali, but nothing can prepare you for the absolute mayhem of the streets there. I'm not going to belabor it here, because there will be a lot about the traffic in these blog posts. A lot.

Our first view of Bali would become a pervasive theme. The traffic there is unimaginable.

Kadek chatted away in his broken English, pointing out statues with insights like, "Statue." Actually he was very kind and helpful and offered suggestion of things we might like to see in Bali. I'm sure Kerri would have paid better attention if she hadn't fallen asleep sitting upright in the back seat. As she dozed, we passed 30,000 stores and cafes, 27 million scooters and motorbikes whizzed past us each second, men dug giant holes in the road in the dark at 8:30 on Saturday night, working by the headlights of their small trucks. It was all overwhelming and would very soon become our everyday.

The  27 mile ride to the villa took about an hour and a half. This, too, would become a feature of this trip. you can't get anywhere quickly in Bali.

As we got nearer the Villa, the road, already tiny, got narrower and narrower until we were on a path that was really just a few inches wider than the small car. A motorbike parked at the side of the road was enough to stop us. Kadek had to get out and move it into the grass so we could pass.

We arrived at the villa and were greeted by Komang, who was waiting with freshly opened coconuts with straws in them. He gave them to us to drink and showed us around the villa, which was gorgeous.

We thanked him and bid him goodnight before dropping into the bed and sleeping really hard for a really long time.

We were in Bali.