To Lombok

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I ask Issy how she slept. She says that she slept well, and didn’t hear any planes. I then remember that our hotel is in the airport. I didn’t hear any planes either. I open the blinds to make sure that we really are in the airport.

Today we have a long day of travelling from Osaka to Lombok, where we hope to spend time chilling out on the beach. Japan has been a lot of fun, but it’s been a bit full on and we are ready for some relaxation.

I'm a bit worried. Today we are flying with Garuda Indonesia. I think they might have improved in recent years, but the first time I heard about Garuda Indonesia was when they nearly landed one of their 747s on a freeway back in Melbourne, after mistaking it for a runway. I hope there aren’t too many freeways where we’re going today. It also seems that they’ve managed to crash a lot of their planes. I don’t think that safety is their strong suit. I’m not sure that they’re all that good at security either. As we go to board the flight, the flight attendant looks at our faces, and then carefully checks to make sure that they match our passport photos. After she lets us past we realise that Issy‘s got my passport and I’ve got hers.

Issy’s a bit of a nervous flier even when we’re flying with airlines that don’t nearly land on freeways or crash their planes. She’s decided that the best way of dealing with this is to put on headphones and turn the music up full blast. I think that the passengers up the other end of the plane are now enjoying the concert. She says that she needs the music to be loud so that she can block out all the other noise, "zone-out", forget that we might crash, and go to sleep. She hears a song she knows I like and hands over the headphones so that I can listen to it. I am now deaf. If she can sleep through this she wouldn’t have any trouble dozing off next to a jackhammer.

We get great views out over the Philippines before landing in Bali, where we transfer to our flight to Lombok.

We go to walk out the front door of Lombok Airport to get a taxi, but are stopped by a large group of men carrying machine guns. One of them tells us that we need to go back inside because we’ve come out the wrong door. We don’t need a lot of encouragement to comply. We’re not quite sure why there are a lot of men with machine guns hanging around outside the main door of the airport in the dark, but we decide that it might be better if we didn't ask too many questions.

It's a long drive from the airport to our hotel, and our taxi driver is keen to make it seem as long as possible. He likes beeping his horn a lot, passing cars on blind corners, and passing cars when other cars are coming the other way and about to collide with us head on. We decide that it might be best if we just closed our eyes.

We sit outside our room listening to the waves on the beach right in front of us, and decide that we might be able to relax quite effectively here.

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