Happy to Be Back in Bali Again

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It was a little bit unusual for us to be returning to the same place we had been just a few months ago: same hotel, same taxi driver picking us up, and many of the same staff greeting us. It felt a bit like a home away from home, which is kind of cool, having hotel staff remembering us clearly from our last visit and welcoming us to the other side of the world again. Perhaps this is the start of establishing new roots in this part if the world, as we do love it here and our plans seem to indicate returning regularly.

This was intended to be a very brief stopover, just enough time for us to take the usual needed rest after a travel day. This time, however, we had had two travel days back-to-back. The first day involved taking an Otter eighteen passenger plane from a very small air terminal near the tip of Borneo, to the city of Kota Kintabulu, where we would then catch our international flight the next day to Denpasar.

We were indeed bagged and needing that rest day, as well as some time to put together the next leg of our journey to The Komodos. Good thing we had this relaxing pool and the very helpful staff at Ellie's to help us with our travel plans, and to sort out the very irritating new issue of having our major bank cards rejected ( for the first time on this trip) at every ATM we visited. Thirty some hours and two twenty minute phone calls later to our bank in Canada, and the issue was rectified. We discovered that, in spite of having provided a complete travel advisory itinerary before we left, for whatever reason the bank did not register Indonesia as a valid region. How goofy is that? I laughed when I told our hotel manager and friend that she - and her country - apparently do not exist. The issue was eventually resolved and all cards functioning again. Ah, the unexpected joys of travel in faraway places! How did we ever survive when we first experienced overseas travel decades ago, back when ATM's did not exist and the only source of funding - if you were so unfortunate as to run out of cash - was Western Union? It is a different world, and we are very spoiled comparatively speaking, but I am not complaining 😊

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Photos

Elli's Beautiful Poolside
We needed a place to stop, recharge the batteries, and plan the next leg of our trip, and this was the perfect place to do it. It was a special treat to be welcomed back as friends and given lots of assistance with whatever we needed to do before moving on a couple of days later.

Flying by Otter
The most hilarious experience we had just prior to boarding this flight - with two other passengers - was with the person who gave us our boarding passes. On one side of the glass partition he handed us our complete boarding passes. Thirty seconds later he crossed to the other side of the petition, had us line up, and very officially asked to see our boarding passes. He then tore off one portion and return the other to us prior to boarding. Delightful.