To & Fro Bali <-->

There’s no direct flight to Bali from Mumbai. Too Bad! The Enthu Cutlets like me wish to reach destinations ASAP. You atleast have one layover depending on airlines you choose. The most common route is Mumbai – Kuala Lumpur- Bali with cheap air tickets and multile airline choices. I already had a Singapore visa on me so I opted for Mumbai-Singapore-Bali and the reverse route back, while enjoying the perks of having father working for Air India. But with free things cometh the layovers. In my case the impatience was directly proportional to layover time. Although Changi Airport (Singapore) is known for best in-transit passenger facilities with around six gardens across three terminals, skytrain connecting the three terminals, also to my disbelief a movie theatre and a city tour facility if your layover is more than 4 hours, the four hours felt like longest four hours. One particular store reminded me of Comic-Con. It was name it and you get it store for all action figure buffs. I could see entire suicide squad action figures, Pokémon’s, transformers, marvel action heroes, star wars action figures, and so much other series stuff. Unable to sleep as I had slept through entire flight to Singapore and also speculating about Bali made me more eager. After almost 12 hours inclusive of layover I was in Bali still thinking of days to come, while waiting for my baggage to arrive, all I could think was a chilled bottle of Bintang to kick-start the trip.

I was just close to driving driver nuts with “wanting-to-know-if-my-research-is-right” skills. The guy was also the caretaker of the guesthouse where I was supposed to be staying in Bali. It was a good half an hour journey from Ngurah Rai Airport (Denpasar) to Puri Sindhu Mertha Guest House (Sanur), I think the driver was pretty impressed with my research on Bali. I also asked a few questions which were not be asked out in public the word was “Arak” (local hooch), he was all hush hush about it.

I was the first one to arrive Bali and was waiting for others to arrive. I chose a room for myself, and darted off as soon as I put away my stuff in room to ask for some Bintang. They said they didn’t keep any in their refrigerator but they could get me one from a mart if I wanted. I was unaware of local prices so I bailed out and decided to get one for myself if others didn’t arrive on time. Sanur is beachside town to southeast of Bali, majorly inhabited by Expats, you can’t spot a single Indian here.  Puri Sindhu Mertha Guest House was two tiered with eight or so spacious rooms, a small pool at its entrance and umbrella top benches to chill around the pool – our resort for evening breeze and sutta-coke studio sessions. The beautiful plumeria flowers covering the courtyard with a huge garlanded Ganapati idol at end of the courtyard. However, the Ganapati idol was not like the one we are used to seeing in India, the Ganapati here has a nice flat tummy Ganapati also all the other idols here were more ultramasculine.

The waiting time for everyone to arrive was killing me, so was the craving for beer, I decided to wait for another 15 minutes or else I would leave to take a good look around Sanur and ofcourse grab myself some beer. In 5 minutes after this vow the instructor arrives and I think the first thing I said to him was I want some beer. The only question, how was I going to buy one? I had dollars, no rupiah and an air around me that local marts do accept dollars and they give you dollars as change! Either I was thinking USD is kind-of global currency or I was just stupid and already high on journey. The beers were on instructor then, but I was just trying to picture myself how dumbfound I would seem if would have gone there all by myself and held out a $100 bill to shopkeeper, while he gives me back a shocked expression. One thing about Indonesian rupiah is that it makes you feel like a millionaire, the denominations start with 1000 IDR and a $100 gave me almost 1303000 IDR and double that because exchanged IDR for $200, that bundle of lakhs was literally bundle of joy, the exchange stores are surely one of the places to give you a feeling of going rags to riches.

My route back home was the same; the only sad part other than end of vacation was to wake up at 3:00 am, leave at 4:00 am to board a flight at 7:00 am in morning, who does that to their daughter? Never am I ever letting my dad book flights for me. I was still drooling at the memories from vacation and bam! Wake up and Board a flight! The layover this time was 7 hours and I was in no mood to go for a city tour, I just wanted to find myself some place to sleep. I had a real tedious schedule in Bali and Gili’s, if only I could explain this to people staring at me while I was sleeping and using a row of chairs as bed somewhere at terminal 3. I woke up only to find out that it was late enough for lunch, but I was hungry and I had to rush to terminal 1 to get a boarding pass. I was running late and I still had to buy some chocolates, my favourite kind of return gifts (liquor) and grab something to eat. The rest of my flight journey was mostly sleeping and dreaming of Bali and Gili’s.