13 Sept 2025
Good morning!
I seem to have settled into waking up at 0530, but good news- no rats last night! I mean, there was a giant iguana on my wall at one point, but I will take a pack of iguanas any day over rats.
The peak of Mount Agung is finally visible!
Ok, one more picture because seriously, how pretty is this!?
At breakfast, I found a snakefruit!
This guys shell was a bit sharp (I managed to slice my thumb), but once you crack off the shell you’re left with 2-3… cloves? Not sure how to call them, but they reminded me of garlic with a seed inside (which rattles around if you shake it). Crisp and crunchy, like a firm pear, but more tangy… yum!
Tom at yoga class:
I debated going, but it started shortly after breakfast and I was hungry- food always wins 🙂
Our group is split onto 3 different flights, but they’re all close enough that we left for the airport en masse. It was a fairly smooth ride to the airport- no rain, lots of fun things to see along the way, like this chicken truck!
Check in was a bit hectic (I picked the slow lane)- so many people in my lane had overweight bags and rather than just make them pay or step aside and help the next person, the lady at the counter sat and played on her phone while they shuffled things around to make the weight cutoff (20kg). It was after 1p when I finally got my bag checked; my flight is at 2p. Fortunately, security was quick.
Flights out of here were actually quite messy- we were all on one flight originally, but it was cancelled, though no notification was sent out- one of our group just happened to notice it. I tried to reschedule that flight but couldn’t, so I just rebooked a new one (it was like $70, not a big loss).
Then the new flight changed times. Twice.
And the original flight rebooked me on a different plane.
I kept both flights- with all the changes, at least one of those is bound to go, right?
…shortly before we were supposed to start boarding, our flight changed to “incoming at 1530″… so our plane won’t get here til 330p? …strange….
so my group hunkered down and got some work done:
There was a family behind us coughing quite a bit, so we all masked up except Phil, who was asleep and woke to find himself surrounded by masks! A bit of a startling way to wake up!
Eventually, I got curious so I pulled up the flight radar and noticed several planes in a holding pattern just outside the airport:
A secondary holding pattern began forming as well…
Eventually, planes started landing again and we were finally able to board our plane, but then we sat, again, and waited. This time, the pilot came on and said we were holding for a “VIP”…
Thanks Mr. President…
One flight lands, one plane gets to take off- the line behind us is like a dozen planes deep!
At this rate, even though our flight was the first of the group scheduled to leave, we’re gonna be the last ones to arrive in Jakarta!
But as long as we get in by midnight, when our next flight leaves, it’s all good- we’ll have several hours to wait in Jakarta anyway.
Pretty sure that’s Mount Agung
A lot of fuss and waiting for such a short, less than 2-hour flight.
In Jakarta, we had plans to all meet up at Terminal 3 for dinner, but when we finally landed (in Terminal 1), Pati and Michael had a scheduled massage they were hoping to still make, and Phil, Tom and I just wanted food. My go-to restaurant in Terminal 2 (where we’ll be flying out of) claimed to be closed (even though their sign said they were actually open for another half hour), so we tried a new-to-me place. Their mie goreng is pretty decent:
Usually bag drop opens 3-4 hours before a flight, and we were a bit outside that, but since we were here, we decided to try anyway…
…except that our flight wasn’t on any of the boards. Later flights were showing up, but not ours…
Fortunately, when we asked at the counter, they told us right where to go and even let us drop our bags early. We decided to just hang at the terminal and wait for the rest of the group:
and even though our flight didn’t show up on the board until like an hour and half before the flight and our gate changed, but wasn’t announced, and even though Aaron missed his connecting flight in Surabaya and had to catch another plane to Makaasar instead first, we all made our midnight, red-eye over to Ambon:
I almost ended up with a row to myself, but Phil was in a full row surrounded by coughers (I mean, they were kind of everywhere, I had some kitty-corner from me too), so he joined my row for a little extra breathing room and I used part of the middle seat to sprawl and sleep.
Fingers crossed we all stay healthy- tomorrow, we meet our boat!