Summer 2014-Bound for Bali

Our amazing vacation started here, in Sokcho on a humble express bus.  We spent the night in Seoul, rose early and took two more buses to Incheon airport, arriving at 8:23 am...and none too soon for an 11:05 flight.

First we checked our bags...Every time I put my little ladybug bag on the conveyor at the airport I thank the parent who made the decision to buy a bright patterned bag.  It is always the only bag like that!  Here she goes on her way to Bali :)

Then there was money to exchange - American dollars for the Indonesian visa (upon arrival we were told that we could pay in local currency...but the websites we consulted said USD...so that's what we did...but I digress) and Indonesian rupia for the rest.  Indonesian money has one more zero than Korean money...we are used to our 10000 won bills which correspond roughly to $10...the 100000 rupia bill is worth about $10!  This is what about $600 looks like in rupia.

 Talk about a wad of cash!

After money was security, duty free and a quick bite which counted as breakfast.  We then had about 30 minutes before boarding.  Our longest wait in all that time was probably in the duty free...Incheon airport security is thorough (our boarding passes and/or passports were scanned three times between check in and boarding), but very efficient!

 And here is our plane...an Airbus 330-200 series...big!

Our flight was about 6 hours long.  The service was great, and the food and beverages plentiful.

Lunch looked like this:

  Indonesian beef

 Barbecue chicken...pretty tasty too...for airplane food :)

We landed on time and then waited in a variety of lineups to 1) pay the visa fee 2) go through immigration, 3) go through customs.  We arrived just as it was getting "duskish". We walked around a bit to look at the sights and then finally hailed a cab...

I will talk about cabs another time...well I will say that our cab driver was a seemingly nice man who spoke passable English, but who "forgot" where our hotel was, and took us on quite a sight seeing tour to get there.  I finally found the hotel location using google maps and we headed back to where we had already been...

Our place for the night is small, but clean and comfy.  

 The rooms here have names, not numbers...this is ours :)

We had a delicious dinner and a sit on the beach to watch the waves crash on the beach...very nice.

It was a long day, but fun...and we are ready to enjoy this part of our tropical summer of '14!

Stay tuned....