I've had a longstanding dream of traveling to each of the 7 continents. So far I've knocked off North America (trips to Canada and Mexico justify this, even if my home wasn't located here), South America (looking at you, Brazil and Argentina), Europe (only the Western portion - need to rectify that), and Africa (Morocco, my one, true love). That leaves me with the As - Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. Well, my trusty sidekick decided to change that when he found flights to Jakarta, Indonesia from Newark for under $600 round trip. Almost too good to be true! Anyway, we did it. We're going. In less than a month. And we still don't have anything booked besides the flights to Jakarta!
It's been a nutty fall/winter, you see. Work keeps me under wraps from Sept through Nov (not that it's a good excuse, since we booked these flights in November), and then December is given over to the holidays and becoming a human being after all those weeks on the road. Now it's mid-January and I'm doing the heavy lifting.
For starters, choosing Indonesia as our first foray into Asia travel is tough because, I'm not sure if you're aware: Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands. That's a lot to choose from. We had decided to focus our time on Bali for this first go around, only to have a volcano erupt there. So then more dithering ensued with us finally deciding YOLO, we're going to Bali anyway. That's great, and all, but when I tried to book flights today from Jakarta to Denpasar, I discovered that Indonesian airlines don't like US credit cards. The inspiration for this blog post came about when I realized that folks need to know how to navigate this sort of thing (folks AKA me, the next time I find myself in this scenario) and perhaps, just perhaps, I should write it down so I remember what to do. A quick Google search told me I could use a website called tiket.com (an Indonesian ticketing agency, much like travelocity or expedia). Tried it, no dice. Googled again and learned something that should have been obvious: that handy little chat feature at the bottom of the page has a real, live, friendly person on the other end who can fix things! Right now, I'm waiting for my credit card to be "whitelisted" so that I may purchase flights from this site in the future. I sent along a photo of my passport and credit card (with the account number covered but for the final 4 digits), and they're going to get me sorted. I like Indonesia already!
The plan so far: fly to Jakarta on Thursday, Feb 15th, arrive in the wee hours on Saturday (Jakarta is 12 hours ahead of EST, so it's like noon at home on Friday when we arrive). Hang out in the airport til 4:30am flight to Bali. Get to Bali, and try desperately to stay awake all day! Gotta sort out the schedule for the time spent in/around Bali, but eventually we're gonna make our way back to Java (that's the island that Jakarta is on, and it's just to the west of Bali). What with the still-erupting volcano, we don't want to risk airport closures due to ash, so we're gonna make that a multi-day journey back to Jakarta with a stop in Yogyakarta and environs (we want to see Borobudur Temple!). Fly back home on Monday, Feb 26th and actually arrive in Newark "BEFORE" WE LEAVE ASIA. I think that is so freaking cool.
Here's to hoping that my credit card gets whitelisted, that we don't miss any connections, and that the sushi in Tokyo's airport is as delightful as I've heard!
