2015
Home again in Sydney
11 November 2015
But not without intervention from Gunung Rinjani in Lombok, as some of you have already heard. I was at the airport in Denpasar on Sunday night, about to board at 10pm when Rinjani blew its stack yet again. There was an announcement that the airport was closing. Nothing more. So there began the whole business of collecting luggage, going through Immigration, having bags X-rayed (in case we had loaded any bombs inside the airport?) and finding a taxi back to Ubud. You can imagine the frame of mind everyone was in!! A woman sitting near me was quite concerned about what to do, so I took her along with me back home to Josh's where she slept in the office where we have a spare bed She was very pleased to have some company while we sorted out arrangements. Me too. We arrived home after midnight with no idea what was to happen next. I contacted my travel agent, the wonderful Topan at Netfare, by email who got back to me first thing the next morning to say the airport was open again and Garuda had rescheduled our flight for 11 am. Lucky to have this contact as lots of passengers had no way of being alerted. Got hold of the same driver as the previous night to get us back down to the airport - barely had time to see Josh and Jazz before heading off again. This time all went smoothly and we got away. Arrived home 12 hours later than originally scheduled. Passengers on other airlines are much worse off, as those airlines without Garuda's landing rights have to pay a fortune to sit on the tarmac overnight if they can’t fly, so are not even bringing flights in. Thousands of Aussie and other tourists have been stranded for over a week. It pays to fly Garuda! Stacy and Roman, on their way home from California to Bali after Stacy's work trip, are stuck somewhere in China, Josh tells me - 36 hours now. They must be very distressed.