This was the first time I had left Australia and therefore my (sunrise) and my best friend's (sunblock) first trip to Bali and it was Awesome!
Our Jetstar flight out of Sydney was delayed by about 40mins, but once boarded they quickly got going and we arrived only 5 mins overtime, landing at 10pm bali time. We both had a Hot Lamb dinner on the way for $12.50, it was hot and nice and came with a kitkat. Bonus lol. You could get personal movie players for $15 or purchase $3 earphones to watch the inflight TV/Movie. We had taken munchies in our carry on unquestioned and were given a bottle of water each. The flight attendants were great, and I wouldn't think twice about flying with Jetstar again.
At Denpasar airport . . . I didn't really know what to expect, and had been worrying about being stuck in lines for ever. But there were no lines, all the VOA booths were open, all very helpful and smiling. Everything seemed a big rush, almost at a run, and for a first timer it was a shock to the system (the first of many lol) . It took no more than 5 or 6 mins and we were out!!
We changed $50 betweeen us at the airport at a rate of 7800. Sunblock and sunrise looked at the money, looked at each other, and said 'yep'. We had no chance of counting this or working anything out in our current state of shock.
Shock #2 . . . We exited the airport doors and OMG!! It was so hot, so humid and there seemed like hundreds of dark faces with gleaming white teeth holding up signs at us. Clutching our luggage we went over to the left a bit to gather our wits and just hoping very muchly that our transport person would be there and that we would actually be able to find him.
We had taken advantage of the free airport transfers that our hotel offered and it was Made that finally found us! He had a friend with him who nicely helped Made with our luggage back to the car. We of course ended up having to tip this 'friend'. I have no idea how much we tipped him. Anyway Made was great, he could speak okay English and offered to stop somewhere for us to get something to eat, we only needed water and since we were looking confused at our monopoly money at the airport he offered to duck into a mini mart for us, and came back with 2 x 1ltr bottles of Aqua for 14,000. OMG! And. . . OMG there are like hundreds of bikes everywhere, and OMG did you see that . . . hehehe . . . Just a couple of small town girls with eyes wide open.
We were soon checked in to Matahari Bungalows in Kuta. Clean, comfortable, cheap, probably should of asked for another room as the shower was pretty bad, but we were happy enough, especially since we didn't have to carry our luggage to our second floor room. So, now what . . Do we go to sleep . . . so sunblock and sunrise ventured out to find a coke up Jl. Legion. OMG! OMG! OMG! What a sight for shocked eyes hehehe 'Hellooooh, Transport?' another metre . . . 'Hellooooh , Taxi? Transport?' . . . . 'Helloooh Massage?' . . . 'helloooh you come in, look, special price' . . . 'helloooh, Where you from' . .. Australia . . . 'ohhh Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, you want transport' . . ..
Well that was our introduction to Bali, More OMG's to come. . .
I will also try to post a link to my facebook photo's of Bali, in another JBR.