Traveling to Bali!

by Ed · March 10, 2024

Greetings, all!

March 4th, 2024, is a flurry of activity. We finish packing AND prepping the condo for our realtor to show, finishing just in time for our chauffeur to pick us up! Whew!

Mohamed Eladawy is our driver to the airport. If you didn’t know this, Emirates Airlines sends a car to pick you up to start the trip, and also to take you home at the end of the trip! You may recall we did this last year when we flew to the Seychelles for our Africa cruise.

Our flight from Orland to Dubai is just under 15 hours, with only some minor turbulence. We’re on a lovely 787! It’s spacious with the seats in a 2-2-2 configuration, so I get a window! I succeed in watching four movies and getting about three hours of sleep between meals. Joy works through a backlog of Florida Today newspapers and probably gets less sleep than me even though she started well before me.

For most of the flight the ground is masked by clouds. But when I can finally see the ground, I see beautiful, tall mountain ridges covered in snow! Maybe the Alps? Dubai itself is already shrouded in darkness as we approach. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Palm islands or Burj Khalifa, but, alas, this did not happen. (Huh? Who says “alas” anymore?)

I am surprised at how familiar Dubai International Airport feels, even though we’ve only been here once before! We head straight for the Dubai International Hotel to chill before our next flight that leaves at 3:20 AM! But they don’t see our reservation, and I can’t find a printed confirmation with the cruise documents. Grrrr.

As we try to log into our web mail to look for a reservation confirmation (from about six months ago), the hotel staff finds our reservation from our last stay in April 2023, and the manager, Habib, says they will honor that reservation! As we step up to the counter they also find our reservation for this stay – we mistakenly booked it for tomorrow night! (These long flights over multiple days and wildly different time zones can get really tricky!) But we finally get into a room, take showers and chill. The desk will give us a 1:20 wake-up call.

By 2:00 AM (Dubai time) we are having breakfast in the Business Class lounge. We board directly from the lounge in Dubai! Pretty cool, huh?

For the leg to Denpasar, Bali, we get to sit in the upper deck of an Airbus A-380! It’s a little tighter up here. The business class configuration is 1-2-1, so we’re in the middle – no window, bummer…

The Captain announces we are being asked to perform a 15-minute ground hold, delaying our on-time departure a little bit. Once airborne, the flight is uneventful – as we like it! – with a little mild turbulence as we approach Bali. Then the Captain makes another announcement that there is high volume coming into the airport and we are being asked to go into a hold pattern. Hmmm, delays on both ends, huh?

We are finally on the ground – a very hard landing (must be a former Navy pilot accustomed to carrier landings!) – and at the gate. I realize we boarded through an upper door, but here we have to walk down the forward stairs to exit out the main deck door. The flight attendants are holding everybody on the main deck up so the upper deck (all business and first class) can get out first. Nice for us!

The walk through the airport is long! We keep stopping to take photos of the interesting collections adorning the walls we are passing! These aren’t amazing or elegant, but the collections are intriguing! Here are some of them:

The main hall itself is adorned with hundreds of intricately woven baskets hanging from the ceiling!

I see interesting Balinese signage for the toilets!

Then we receive our first introduction to the Bagong! This is a mythical creature I will show you more of later.

There are other interesting, lavish displays! These all have foundations in Balinese lore.

As we pass this last sculpture, we enter Immigrations. Immigrations is simple – we follow a sign that says “First class, Business class” and it leads to a line marked “Crew and Diplomats”! There is no more signage referring to Business and First Class! But we stay since it is a very short line, and the worst that can happen is we can be told to move to a different line! A few minutes later we are on our way to baggage claim and Customs!

Bags in tow with the assistance of a baggage handler, we go searching for our ride. Some of you know Raka, a junior head waiter on the Insignia 2022 Around the World tour we sailed. During COVID-19, with the cruise lines shut down, Raka started his own tour company called Charlie Bali Tours. He stepped away from it when he was called back to Oceania for the 2022 World cruise we took. He recently decided to take a leave of absence from Oceania for a year to spend more time with his daughters! Bonus for us – he is going to be our tour guide for our stay on Bali! He said to look for this sign:

Bali has mastered the Walt Disney School of Exits, routing us past dozens of shops just trying to get out of the airport! We spot Raka in the throng of drivers waiting outside of Baggage Claim! But by the time we find the exit to Baggage Claim, Raka finds us before we see him! Soon we are on our way to the hotel!