Travelling from Santorini to Bali - Sept. 30, 2010

September 29 – September 30

Senne's Summary: long-winded ramblings about the 25-hour journey from Santorini to Bali.

Today we start our 25-hour travel adventure to get to Bali. We start at the Santorini airport, which is small and quite packed with people. I wonder what it’s like in high season if this is the end-of-season crowd. It must be insane!

We have an uneventful flight to Athens where we have to get our next boarding passes at a ticketing booth. This was not as easy as it sounded. When we finally figured out where to go, there was no one at the desk. We just kept going back and checking and eventually someone was there.

Our flight from Athens to Doha, Qatar was nice. Qatar Airways is definitely a nice airline. They feed you for free, the food was tasty and they have those seatback entertainment systems with tons of movies, TV shows and games to keep you amused.

I was excited to be in the Doha airport… how often do you get to be in a country that starts with Q??? This is definitely a different country then we’re used to-- I can tell from the airport. I was getting some strange looks from men (I had on Capri pants and a t-shirt, but that’s definitely showing more skin than average). Steve picked me up a diet coke in the airport. I don’t know what the heck they put in it, all the words were in Arabic, but it tasted like CRAP. They must be using some other kind of weird sweetener, not Aspartame. If I lived in Qatar, I’d give up diet soda. (Side note: Steve, this is not a good enough reason for us to move to Qatar!)

The airport was packed even though it was midnight but seemed to have a system going. The weird part was that all the planes parked out in the middle of the tarmac and you had to take shuttles to and from the airport building. Travel tip: if you are flying through Doha you need lots of time. It takes time to organize people and shuttle them from the plane to the building and then the building to their next plane.

Our next flight is to Singapore and it is the longest one…almost 9 hours. I end up with a jerk behind me. When I tried to recline my seat (to sleep… it was the middle of the night after all) he pushed my seat back up… twice. When I turned to look at him he said his legs are too long. So there I am with the person in front of me reclined, I can’t recline and I’m in the middle seat. It was uncomfortable. At one point I turned around to look at him and the jerk behind me had his seat reclined. Terrible thoughts went through my head but I restrained myself from choking him and sat scrunched up in my seat. When we got off the plane I checked to see how tall he was (I was willing to forgive him if he was 6’5 or something) but it turns out he was only about 6 feet. I gave him my best evil stare and then moved on.

When we arrived in Singapore we were both happy to get off the plane and stretch a bit. I do have to add a note about the bathroom in the Singapore airport. It was the nicest, cleanest bathroom I’ve seen in months. It’s funny how your perspective changes. This used to be the kind of bathroom I was used to and would see more often than not. Now it’s like an amazing bathroom!

We took our next flight from Singapore to Denpasar in Bali. Steve wanted to sit in the middle and recline the seat on Mr. Jerk, but I reminded him about our karma theory and didn’t let him.

Then… after 25 long hours we arrived in Bali!