We kinda decided that out of all the airports we went to, Jakarta was the most "hole-ish". There were a few reasons we came to that conclusion. They charged an extra fee because we hadn't printed our boarding passes at home. The terminals are across the airfield from each other and you have to take a shuttle to get to each one, shuttles aren't so bad, but when you have to go completely out of the airport and pretty much into town to get to the next one, it is pretty lame. They have you walk on the tarmac to get to your plane, almost completely unguided. Then the chicken they served us on the plane (even though it turned out to be tasty) was battered in some sort of hairy, slightly greenish, stuff.
But the ironic thing about the Jakarta airport is, they found my drill bit in my makeup bag. After the Salt Lake, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong airports had not. Go figure. So I lost my drill bit in Jakarta. (Chris thinks it is because the people in Jakarta didn't know what it was).
On our way back to Hong Kong from Bali we flew through Jakarta again. But we missed our plane. Our plane took off at 3:00pm without us, and the next flight wasn't until midnight. The best part was that the midnight flight was completely booked. So were all the flights for the next 3 days. We were put on stand-by and made camp at the airport. They wouldn't check any of our stuff so we had about a bigillion bags/bins.
Chris found us a wheel chair that we ended up including in our camps. The wheelchair came especially in handy when we were moving base camps to a much more comfortable/less smelly spot. Chris's mom was being pushed in the wheel chair, and all the bags/bins were being pushed on trollies. We reached a "no trollies past this point" sign, but since mom looked so disabled we were able to sucker the guard into letting us past.
Here's a small glance at what our camp looked like, what is missing in the picture is the giant pile of bags and bins that are behind me (taking the picture). We eventually got kicked out of this basecamp at 9:00pm when the cafe closed.
The good news is we all got on the midnight flight. We did take about an hour to deliberate on what the hierarchy would be should only so many people get on the midnight flight. It was very important at the time, and honestly probably a good time killer.
1. Mom
2. Holm parent + kid
3. Holm parent + 2 kids
4. Holm parent +2 kids + Abby or Mom
5. The Holms
6. The Holms + Jenise
7. The Holms + The Jr. Kings
8. The Holms + The Jr. Kings + Jenise
9. The Holms + The Jr. Kings + Jenise + Abby
10. Everyone but Dad
11. Everyone
Oh, this is GREAT! Dad and I were loving every word of this post! It's so good to have a positive attitude, and while Dad and I were sweating it out, you had a good spin on it. It makes the Jakarta memory even better seeing it through your eyes! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteFYI: Jakarta is on the "no fly" list for the King family now (unless Dad has to go for business!)
ReplyDelete