We changed our last few Pesos back to dollars but we had issues using the Air Asia app to check in so had arrived early to get formalities sorted. The app seemed to issue boarding passes for 3 flights but not 4. There were no queues at the desk and the boarding passes were printed. The lady told us at our connection in Manila we needed to pay £10 airport tax each. We looked on in horror as we had to pay in Pesos and had just cashed our last ones in.
We sat down and contemplated what do do. Christine had read that the tax was likely to be included in our ticket price, so we double checked at another check-in counter. Sure enough it was, the first lady had given us duff information! Relieved, we headed to our departure gate.
The flight went well but now we had to deal with the world's most hated airport - Manila! We had to transfer terminals. It sounds straight forward but the terminals are spread out. We knew that you had to travel on the roads outside the airport on either the free shuttle bus or pay for a taxi. The issue here being we had a 4 hour connection and traffic can be horrendous taking literally 'forever' to reach the terminal. We checked the free shuttle, which travels between the terminals frequently. It appears not that frequently because there was over an hour wait! The lady at the shuttle desk however told us of a loop bus outside that we could catch. We thought we would give it a try.
Every 20 minutes the loop bus travels between terminals and costs 20 pesos. We waited a short time but were starting to get a little apprehensive as it hadn't arrived. We were about to run and negotiate a taxi when ... around the corner it appeared. Phew! Traffic was grid locked, however it did move occasionally and we arrived in good time.
The next issue was to enter the terminal. Normally you just walk through the big automatic doors. Not here, you join the queue and have to have your bags scanned. The queue was long and contained people flying and also well wishers queueing to collect or wave off their loved ones, not exactly what we needed right now! We waited patiently in line and luckily it did move fairly fast. At last, we were inside the Terminal 3 building.
We had heard this is where chaos really begins. In fact we had received an email stating that we needed to arrive in the terminal 4 hours before our flight. We had 4 hours to get off the first plane, catch the bus and enter the building, so we were worried. Inside we made our way to departures on the third floor and joined the queue for immigration. It was a lot smaller than expected and we were through in no time. Next we moved on to the bag scanner. Just a short queue again and we passed through quickly. We stood discussing our relief before finding our gate. We now had a long wait but we had made it!
The flight from Manila went through the night with no hiccups. It arrived in Bali at just after 11pm. As we have only hand luggage we made it out of the airport quicky and started our short'ish' walk to our hotel. The first thing that stunned us was the number of people holding name boards waiting to collect people for the hotels. There was a lot, hundreds! Next, it was the taxi touts. There were hundreds of these too and everyone insisted we needed their services. We carried on walking with our repeated 'no thank you message' blaring out. Another issue followed. The road on the map had a huge fence in front of it that ran for miles. We had to find our way around it but eventually we did. We decided to follow a route that we knew, we passed through a few short, dark back alleys but then hit the main road. We found a small Circle K convenience store that had hot water for noodles. We bought a few packets and devoured them, as we were pretty hungry as we had only had a few snacks since breakfast. We sat outside eating and chatted to a friendly face from the beautiful Raja Ampat islands before continuing our mission - find the hotel before they go to sleep!
We turned off the main road at Bubba Gumps, a restuarant we remembered from our last trip here, and headed down a smaller lane. It became darker and darker, the buildings disappeared too. This wasn't right! We checked the map, we got out our torch and looked around. Demolition! We were in a building site. Everything from our last time here was either in ruin or it had been razed to the ground. In fact, the environment now looked rather apocalyptic and not somewhere you want to be standing at midnight! We stopped to think and spotted a possible cut through. If we continued across the rubble there was a break in the fence to the road we were looking for. We went for it, made it through the gap, were greeted by local growling dogs but carried on up the street in the right direction.
Eventually we made it and were greeted by the hotel staff. We were issued our room key and went to bed in the same room we had last time! Of course sleep evaded us for a while as we had slept on both plane journeys. Luckily this place had a TV a load of movie channels and that's what we watched before falling asleep!
