Well, we made it through the 24 hour international leg of the journey! Most signs in the airport are in English and Indonesian, but we quickly learned to ask for directions because not everything is laid out clearly. Guards sent us to the shuttle bus to go to a different terminal for our domestic flight to Bali, but when we got here, realized that we can't get into the terminal til some as yet unknown time in the future. So where at Philly you'd be dropped off, go inside and get ticket, then go through security, here we have to wait outside at what would be the outside drop point in Philly, go through security first (whenever it opens), then get our plane tickets after security. It's currently 12 hours ahead of home, so 1:30am here on Saturday morning. Flight leaves at 4:30, so we'll see when they let us inside. Thank goodness we already peed.
We've already met some lovely folks, including a couple that we first encounteed in Newark at our parking lot! We didn't notice them on the flight to Tokyo, but re-encountered them at the gate to Jakarta. Turns out they live in northern liberties and are just headed home to visit family in Jakarta before heading back. Faustine and Ronny. We exchanged email addresses so that Faustine can let us know about any good drivers in Bali and answer questions we might have! Super sweet. I also chatted with folks next to me on the two flights... Julia, a Philipino ex-pat who lives in NJ and congratulated me on the eagles win, and a Dutch guy living in Chicago who travels out this way to teach chemical engineering classes at Universities in the region. His mom grew up in Java, and so he was pleased to start coming out this way and seeing where she grew up.
In Tokyo we had grand plans to get sushi but instead I passed out on a bench at our gate. We took sleeping pills for the 8 hr trip to Jakarta from Tokyo, figuring that was our only chance to get steady sleep. Downside is that we're still on an East coast sleep schedule and will have to force ourselves to stay awake for about 24 hours. Upside is that we're gonna sleep like the dead tonight when we make it to town and get showered and in bed!
Steve was a little hangry, so he went off to investigate the ATM sitch at the airport and the open food sitch. Fortunately, there were options for both right next to each other. So we got $ and then had our first Indonesian meal. The menu was all in Indonesian, so fortunately our waiter spoke a few words of English and pointed some things out to us on the menu... We both had chicken and noodles and MAN was it good. Hunger may make good kitchen, but Jakartans make good noodles. The bowls came with a side of meatballs in a light broth and they left a little to be desired. They were a little too chewy for our taste, but we both got through the two we were given. The whole meal cost 80,000 rupiahs, or about 6 bucks. For both of us. Welcome to Indonesia.
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