We’re in no rush today; our new flights aren’t until 7pm this evening, and after a late night we lie in until 9am.
BA had given us a voucher for breakfast at the hotel, so we head down there just before 10am. They have a waffle maker which the kids enjoy using, but they’re less keen on eating the result.
We decide to leave our bags at the airport and head into Chinatown for dim sum. It beats sitting at the airport all day and we thought if we went home, we might not make it back to the airport!
Before we do that, we take the airport shuttle back to the terminal and hunt down someone from BA. When they checked us in last night, only 3 of us were seated together, with Alex’s seat 30 rows away. We break into the Club World check-in and the guy very helpfully finds Alex a seat just 3 rows away and we’ll have to see if someone will swap with him on the plane.
With seating sorted, we take the Piccadilly line along with everyone else to Piccadilly Circus and arrive to heavy rain. Diana stops at a tourist shop and buys a nice Union Jack umbrella while the rest of us make a dash for it.
We go to our usual restaurant and order way too much as usual. It’s just not possible to order dim sum sensibly!
The service is the usual hyper-efficient, no-nonsense style you’d expect from a Chinese restaurant and the food arrives quickly. The place is heaving and slightly overwhelming. The food is great though and we leave satisfied.
After a quick stop at Mountain Warehouse to buy Bella a raincoat, we head back to the tube and the airport.
Check-in and security are a breeze and we stop for a drink at the bar while we wait for our flight. Everyone’s in good spirits and we don’t notice that boarding has started, so we rush to the train to make it to the gate in time.
Our group hasn’t started boarding yet so we set about spending the BA refreshment vouchers on snacks and drinks for the flight.
On board, the Aussie chap sitting next to us kindly agrees to swap with Alex so we’re all seated together.
Just as we’re thinking we’re on our way, the pilot announces there’s a slight problem!!! The bridge is broken and can’t disconnect from the plane, so we’re stuck until an engineer can sort it out.
Finally we push back and get into the air 1 hour late. We’re going to be cutting the connection fine in Singapore, fingers crossed!
We make it to Singapore with less than an hour to make our connection, and we’re in literally the last row on the whole plane. We patiently wait for everyone else to disembark and hurry out to the concourse where we discover our flight to Bali is the gate next door, so we don’t need to rush.
The flight to Bali is only 2 hours 20 mins but it feels like another whole day, and we end up snoozing on the plane.
On arrival into Bali we are pleasantly surprised at how smooth getting into the country is. Since we’d pre-filed the visas and landing cards, it’s just a case of scanning our passports and one QR code and we’re in.
Through at baggage collection, we wait a very long time for all the bags to come out, only to realise ours are missing!
After queuing at the baggage service counter the helpful lady explains they’re still in Singapore and won’t arrive until the same time tomorrow because KLM only has one flight a day. 🤦♂️
And on that bombshell, we register the lost luggage and head out to the waiting transfer to the hotel. The driver, Cecan, is really friendly and looks after us.
We finally arrive at the hotel 1.5 hours later and are greeted by Wayan, our Intrepid guide. He explains that it’s breakfast at 7am and then we’ll be white water rafting in the morning. Which makes having no luggage quite annoying, especially for Alex who’s wearing jeans!
After checking in we wander around the corner to the local M Mart and buy beer, snacks and some flip flops for tomorrow. The swimwear will have to be a problem we solve tomorrow.
Back at the hotel, Diana and I sit on the lovely terrace enjoying a beer before showering and bed after a very long journey!
