arrived home last night on the Air Asia red eye.
All in all, a good no frills service, and at the right price of course.
There is no point in me doing restaurant/shopping reports because things change so quickly in Bali that what was good today may not be tommorrow, and visa versa.
Such things are very subjective anyway.
Also my shopping is not "normal" as I am usually looking for tradesmen, hardware and obscure things that are way off for the normal holiday maker.
Firstly...that old chestnut, DPS airport, and the amount of people passing through.
This trip, aside from arriving for the 50th or 60th time, I also had pick ups to do on about half a dozen occasions, and also drop offs.
I therefore think that I have formed a reasonably accurate impression on the airport and how busy it is or is not.
The early AA flight from Perth, providing it is on time, and providing that no other airlines change schedule etc. enjoys a relatively quiet arrival.
I would say that average clearance times would be 15 - 20 minutes.
Thats the good news, and it's all down hill from there, because as the day goes on the crowds increase markedly.
The late arrivals around 8 - 10PM are manic, with numbers outside rows deep to match the crowds inside.
The other flights are a mix of anywhere between these two scenarios, so anyone who is trying to say that reports of crowding are greatly exagerated are not providing a realistic picture and are not recognising the timeline diversities that exist.
Another interesting observation was the regular local people in the crowd who seem to be information gathering IE taking note of names on hotel cards that are being held by welcoming staff, no doubt for timeshare selling calls later.
It is not just the immigration guys who get this information.
We chose to use Murti and her Express service, as did several of our friends and relatives arriving at different times, and the service provided us with what we were expecting.
I declared several additional litres of wine, and Murtis guys negotiated the due payment for me, so all stress free and money well spent.
Cars....do not bother with rental cars between Xmas and New year.
The roads are so packed with domestic tourists that you will just sit for hours going nowhere.
Some of the work I had to arrange included fixing up some large cupboards that had been damaged in the earthquake, some changes to windows and fitting of a security door to our apartment.
All done with the very best of Jam Karet principals, never on time and painfully slow, but getting there eventually.
My only real purchases were a couple of books by Jean Couteau.
Bali 2day and Bali 2day2.
I need to rely on these for the fix till March !!
Bali Navigation System.....again a great help in finding ones way around, especially in the rabbit warren of Denpasar.
I needed to find an obscure address in Renon for a business meeting, and again the system linked to the Garmin took me straight there and home again to Kuta Townhouses afterwards.
Health....not a good look, with all 10 in the party aged from 9 months up to 86 years old got Gastro with varying degrees of severity, some extreme.
There was a good and proven reason for this which I will enlarge on later.
All in all I still find Bali (especially southern Bali) to be something of a Garden of Eden.
There are always those serpents out there when you least expect it.
It is just as well that the good bits so heavily outweigh the bad.
My mail is open if anyone wants additional info.