To Bali and beyond.... Our adventure begins !!!

We were both awake at dawn this morning, outside the field was silver with frost and the sunrise was beautiful, we watched it from the warmth of the kitchen, sipping hot tea , both of us thinking, “this time tomorrow”...........

The cases were waiting by the door, stuffed to bursting with enough clothes, drugs and other essentials to last us until April next Year.

Neither of us can quite believe that we are really going to do this..... what started as the germ of an idea , is now a reality and we are both so excited.

Today, a large part of this excitement is due to the fact that we are flying business class, this in itself is amazing, but also includes entry to the Emirates lounge at Heathrow, which online looks flipping fabulous. We are like two children looking forward to unlimited Christmas presents.... in fact we have scrimped on our usually generous breakfast so that we are hungry when we get there!!!! I know......it sounds really sad...... but honestly at the moment this is the hi-light of our trip!!!!!

The house had been checked....I had hopefully sorted the heating and all that remained was for our lift to arrive. That’s another perk by the way, we get free chauffeur driven transport to the airport!!! Doesn’t time pass slowly when you are waiting for something....... Dear Richard was doing his caged lion thing again..... I was going through the contents of my case, trying to picture everything I‘d packed...... don’t laugh..... I got fed up with the stuff I’d packed for a month in Italy..... this time I’ve got to stay enthusiastic about my outfits for 6 months.....also, and this makes it so much harder, its not all sun and sand, New Zealand is likely to be much cooler, New Year in Sydney requires something dressy, most of the other places we are going are boiling hot......and I’ve got 20 kilos worth of space to put clothes to cover all those eventualities in!!!!!

Eventually the car arrived and there was no time to shove anything else anywhere.....

we locked the door, loaded up the car and waved goodbye to everything that was familiar ...... we are truly going into the unknown now.

Our driver, Dave , was extremely chatty, and being excited, we were too. It’s not far from Hilmarton to Heathrow, but by the time we got there we knew everything about him and his family. Bless him he was very sweet, but as I was still

going through my holiday wardrobe , I wasn’t really listening and so Dear Richard was having to hold the fort, which he did very well, whilst I started to quietly panic that I hadn’t got enough knickers!!!!!

Luckily we arrived at Heathrow before I had time to lose it completely, as by then I had started going through the limited number of shoes I had to last me until April 2020, bags unloaded, we waved the driver goodbye and set off to check in, a process vastly improved when one is travelling on an upper class ticket...... am I going on about this too much??? ....... it’s such a treat that I still haven’t quite got over it, so bear with....... I’m going to be banging on about it for a while longer...... there’s the whole lounge bit to do yet!!!!!

Ok so we got to check in..... there was a monumental queue..... but we were directed to a much smaller one and I didn’t need to hold my breath when they weighed my case as I normally do because I could have put a crate on the belt and they wouldn’t have turned a hair. .....and drifted through to security where we also had our own special section.....

Security was cleared with no issues so like two children on Christmas Eve we set off in search of the Emirates lounge...... well Dear Richard thought we were going there...... and we were but there was a bit of shopping to do on the way!!!!! Aware as I was of the limited luggage capacity available to us I showed extreme restraint and only ventured as far as Boots to get some last minute bits....... oh ok ......we also bought perfume and after shave..........but not handbags as is my normal wont, or makeup, despite my looking longingly at the lovely things on offer in duty free. I could see that Dear Richard was growing impatient, the call of free food and drink being overpowering due to our limited intake before we left, and so we made haste to the quiet haven of the “lounge”.

Oh my..... we had been expecting a bit of luxury and luxury we got it.... in spades!!!!

Trying not to look too eager we wandered over to the champagne..... yes I know it was only about 10am but WTF...... once again we were on holiday.........and of course I poured myself a generous measure which I sipped as though it was perfectly normal to be quaffing it at such an early hour, while we scoped out the food.....there were two large buffet areas with cold stuff, fruit, dips, crudités, salad...... all

sorts of lovely stuff. We had missed breakfast , so the hot food would shortly be lunch..... while we waited we had smoked salmon and orange juice ever aware that our stomachs had only limited capacity and there would also be food on the plane!!!!! There are times when I wish that I was a weightlifter or a rugby player , either of which could eat so much more that I am able to put away, but of course I am not, so restraint was the order of the day. I treated myself to another champagne and then we swooped on the main courses which were making their appearance fresh from the kitchen. I am not going to bore you with the selection, suffice it to say there were about 11 different dishes and each one looked delicious!!! For afters,Dear Richard had some cheese and biscuits and I had more champagne, then we found a quiet spot and waited for our flight to be called. To be able to sit in comfortable chairs, in peaceful surroundings was wonderful, Dear Richard would have happily set up camp and spent the next six months in that lounge but they called our flight and so we were off again, this time excited about our seats and the flight tonDubai.

And so we boarded the plane....... our seats were amazing and had more legroom than I’ve ever had on a plane before. Not only that but they turned into a bed..... and came complete with a little area for drinks and stuff. More champagne arrived, served by Sylvia, who took a bit of a shine to Richard, smiling broadly as she poured his drink and taking extra care as she gave him his nuts!!! ....and we didn’t have to neck it before we took off for a change, everything was very relaxed and nothing was too much trouble.

The food was amazing and kept on coming......Dear Richard took full advantage of all the facilities..... whilst I, having taken a Valium, and full to the brim with alcohol, went to sleep.....

I was awoken every now and then by someone bringing more food, or the offer of another drink, but managed to stay in the land of nod for most of the flight......

Suddenly it was time to land in Dubai...... the 8ish hours we had been flying since leaving Heathrow had gone by really quickly, our next challenge was to negotiate Dubai airport and get to the gate for our flight to Denpasar...... we had about an hour and twenty minutes, but the airport is huge and so we were both a bit concerned about missing the onward flight....... and the amount of food/drink we had consumed didn’t help..... add that to Valium haze and you have a person who is confused at best..... and at worse downright hopeless!!!! Luckily I rallied , and we made it through a very crowded airport to the gate in question, with plenty of time to spare..... although unfortunately not enough to avail ourselves of the lounge facilities.

On our next flight (another 8 hours) our suroundings were significantly less luxurious. We still had plenty of leg room and seats which laid flat for sleeping, but the plane was clearly an older model and badly needed updating. Not that it bothered me, once we had eaten yet another meal and made the most of more champagne and vodka and tonic, this time served by a hostess who didn’t spend the whole flight giving Richard the eye!!! I popped another Valium , put my seat into the prone position , snuggled into my duvet and went to sleep again.

When I woke up from the weird sleep that you have on a noisy plane..... you know where you feel that you are not properly asleep at all ( although according to Dear Richard I was comatose the whole time!!) I had missed breakfast and we were onto lunch. I had previously ordered meat of some sort, big mistake.... being presented with that on waking, almost sent me over the edge so I had a bit of bread and called it a day.

Note to self here.....Valium and booze taken together in a pressurised environment , will make you feel like shit... choose one or the other in future!!!!

And so we landed in Denpassar, Bali.....

cleared immigration, collected our bags and contacted the driver who had come to collect us. All without incident.... yes we were surprised too!!! Messages passed to and fro..... he even sent a picture of where he was waiting.....we walked through the doors of the airport....

nothing..... absolutely nothing..... could have prepared us for;

a) the heat

b) the utter mayhem

that was waiting for us .

we emerged to a sea of noise and placards..... I think every taxi driver in Denpassar had pitched up to collect someone. We walked along the lines about five times before we found our man....no wonder we couldn’t see him, he was hiding about three rows from the front!!!! He greeted us with a broad smile and led us to the car, which reeked of cigarettes, loaded up our bags and drove confidently into the scariest traffic I have ever seen. I thought that the Italians were bad drivers but let me tell you.... they have nothing on the Balinese, who all drive as though they have a death wish.

I have also never seen so many mopeds in one place at the same time. They passed on the outside, the inside, they pulled in front of us and narrowly missed rear ending us. They were driven by men, women, children, whole families, and were transporting anything from a single chicken to a fridge, and the universal system for warning other road users of your presence was to sound your horn, over and over again. If ever there was a time for Valium now was it.... my heart was in my mouth and my eyes were tightly closed as we negotiated the dual carriageway through the city. We had so many near misses I gave up gasping in the end as I probably would have suffocated. Despite all the driving drama I was able to take a few pictures of the huge sculptures we passed.... and once our driver realised what I was doing he started to slow down for each one, which resulted in frantic hooting from the cars behind us and from

any mopeds who might have been trying to pass at the time.

Finally we left the madness of Denpasar, the driving didn’t improve but there was less traffic so we had a bit of time to calm down before we reached the hotel.

Im not sure what I was expecting Bali to be like, I certainly wasn’t expecting the heat and humidity which were almost suffocating. I’m not sure I was prepared for the cultural

difference or the appearance of the countryside and small

towns we passed through. I was however very excited to be in a country so far away from home, on a trip to places I never dreamt I’d see. Padangbai was our overnight stop before catching the ferry to Gili Air. The hotel was not at what I had imagined but it was a pretty colonial style building with rooms surrounding a pool. We checked in, dumped our bags and made straight for the pool. Both of us were hot and tired and needed to cool off immediately. It was total bliss, we had been travelling for almost a day, and now just needed to relax..... the hotel was noisy but it was all so new and exciting that it didn’t matter. We showered and changed and went in search of something to eat. The hotel had a restaurant and the food was really good..... I think we were both a bit shell shocked at the huge cultural difference between home and Bali and had no idea what to expect, but after a drink and with full stomachs we felt ready for what was to come.... whatever that might be. And so, with the mosquito net tightly secured around the bed, we went to sleep.

Our adventure had begun .....