Hi all..... well Suzy, Sandy and myself obviously made it back in one piece. Here come a series of JBR's organised by topics.... hope they are of some help....
On this trip we flew Air Paradise. After experiencing Qantas and Garuda on previous flights I can quite confidently recommend this airline. We had no problems at all to report with the flights and Air Paradise happily gave us extra baggage allowance to take items to an orphanage. We also seemed to have heaps of baggage on the return flight but no problems there either. We were ready to opt for the $80 upgrade if necessary – but no problems at all.
On arrival in Bali – we were ferried by a bus to the immigration building. I walked straight to the payment counter (no waiting) to pay our visa fee. Then joined an immigration line with about 5 sets of travellers in front of us. The lines on the left sectioned off by planter boxes were shorter – but by the time I realised they were about the same length. This section took about 20 minutes – but our suitcases were all waiting for us as we came through and then straight out ready for our transfers. No trouble with white crosses on our cases this time and no problems going through customs despite all our extra baggage.
On the way home I was surprised just how quickly we made it through immigration. Only one person in front of us and really quickly through, but we were all through so quickly that we had to wait for the suitcases to reach us. About 10 minutes later we were making our way through to a short customs line. We had so much to declare I wasn't really conscious of time – but as we finally took our remaining baggage through the x-ray machine and out into the airport foyer – we realised that there was no one else around!! Customs were really fussy over wooden items and the fabric items that have wooden fibre threads. No worries with any of my other items, including shell necklaces, shoes etc – my mum tried to declare her DVD's and she said 'no don't need to see them'. I thought I would mention that one – as it had been topical on the forum before we left.
We separated all our declarable items ready for the customs officer. All our wood was fine – no borers. But one handbag and fabric placemat was seized as it not only had sandalwood but traces of water hyacinth bark. I could hardly tell the difference between the handbag that had been seized and the 4 that were OK. They have samples of fabrics etc in customs as you arrive back in Australia – but I didn't get chance to have a close up look at the display and would have liked to have seen it before leaving Australia.