The Butler … and the Phone

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12 September

Today we start our tortuously long journey home with an eleven hour overnight flight to Singapore, which we’re looking forward to like a hole in the head. Then it’s on to Bali where we’re planning to spend a few days chilling before finally heading back to reality.

We’re flying with Singapore Airlines’ low cost carrier Scoot for the first time. The fare was about half that for the real thing, and it seems you get what you pay for - I think I can squeeze into my seat, but I’m going to be spending most of the flight with my legs dangling out into the aisle - I hope I don’t get run over by a food trolley. And perhaps unsurprisingly you have to pay for everything, including charging your phone? Really?

The lights are off in the middle of the night while I’m spending what seems to be an inordinately long time standing in the dark outside the toilet waiting for the person in front of me to finish. I hope they’re OK. I wonder whether I should call someone to check on them. What if they’re not, and we have to land somewhere to get them to a hospital? I think we’re over Pakistan or somewhere like that - I wonder what it’s like there at this time of the year? A flight attendant wanders casually past for seemingly the millionth time since I’ve been standing here. This one stops momentarily and asks me if I’d noticed the tiny “toilet defective” sticker on the door in the pitch blackness. I put my glasses on to check, but it’s still indecipherable. There’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back, although come to think of it I’m not sure what else I could have been doing. Sitting down waiting to get my legs run over I suppose.



13 September

We land in Singapore. The airport’s like a small city, no make that a big city. I’m sure someone thought it was a good idea to install carpet that looks like it’s been spray painted. We were already feeling like zombies without endless blue and orange swirls constantly hitting us between the eyes.

Signs on the air bridge in Bali tell us “do not lean”. They should try standing up straight after fifteen sleepless hours in a seat not suited to anyone over five feet tall. For a few minutes there I thought I was back in Athens. The sign in the tiny hotel lift there told us emphatically “do not violate the doors”.

They seem to be trying to go hi tech here at Bali airport. To get through customs you have to scan a QR code and then fill in a form. The cavernous warehouse-like custom’s hall feels like it’s a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than it needs to be, and what feels like half the world’s now loitering here scanning codes and filling in forms. I wonder what they do to you if your phone died on the flight and you couldn’t afford to recharge it. No one looks at our luggage, or the forms, they just scan the QR code the form generates and wave us through. That was interesting.

Our hotel’s on the beach in Seminyak, well we think it is, we’re both so zapped we could be anywhere really. Our room’s not ready, so we sit waiting by the pool. The customary welcome drink arrives. It looks like something straight out of Indiana Jones - melting green ice blocks suspended over a bowl with smoke pouring out of it. We’re thirsty and out of it, so just as well the waitress stopped us from drinking the dry ice.

Our room’s an order of magnitude bigger than most we’ve stayed at on this trip. And we’ve got a butler, Tommy, who shows us how to use the room amenities. I suppose it has been a while since either of us used a phone … with a headset … and real buttons. I think we’d get lost trying to find the lift in our current state, so we decide to order room service …. if only we could remember what Tommy told us about how to use the phone. Hopefully we’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.

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