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Published: November 17th 2010
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Day 8
Barbara Wallace & Jim Collins Day 8 Nov. 6 - Day of the forever flight to Yogyakarta – The stories of “Endless Days & Endless Nights” and “The Great Negotiator”
We got up at 2 AM to leave for the airport at 3 AM. When we got to the airport (at 4 AM) we found that our flight was delayed because the airport in Yogyakarta was closed because of the volcano on Mt. Merapi which is only 40 km away from Yogyakarta. We waited for a few hours, the flight was finally canceled, and we were stranded. The three airports in central Java were all closed. Our Bali guide, Made, was our savior. He sent three cars to pick us up at about 2 PM and made arrangements for us to go back to the hotel while Paul Martin, Ken Tran and I stayed at the airport to try and book a flight to Semarang and make arrangements for a bus to take us from Semarang to Yogya (pronounced approximately Georgia). At about 5 PM we had 21 seats but still needed an additional two. Then we went about hitting ATMs with Made for the 18 million rupiahs we needed to buy the tickets. (The airline
Day
Fruit Stand couldn’t refund our money for the canceled flight until we gave them cash for the new flight.) We were able to round up 12 million and then another 3 ½ million. Made loaned us the final 3 million. The 3 million rupiahs were money which we had paid him the night before. How many guides would loan you 3 million so you could make plane reservations? When we finally got back to the airport at 6 PM, they had another 2 seats so the whole group could go. Ken had been working with these folks all day. We then paid them the 18M rupiahs and they gave us a refund of 4 million on our canceled tickets to Yogya. Go figure, they could not even discount our new tickets with the refund from our canceled tickets. Customer service on a private personal basis is big in Indonesia but does not exist on Lion Air. Do not ever fly Lion Air. We got back to our hotel about 7:30 and had a quick supper and crashed. Meanwhile the folks in Solo made hotel reservations in Semarang (loaning us a 5M deposit) and the folks in Yogya cranked up the bus to
Day 8
Don & Betty come and get us in Semarang in case we made it the next day. Ken Tran got to know the staff at Lion Air so well it took him half an hour to say goodbye to all the new friends he had spent 12 hours with. Made had made reservations for us at our old hotel while ferrying us around to banks on Kuta Beach while Paul and I hit every ATM we could find.
Somewhat rested, we caught the afternoon flight to Semarang. We checked in only to find new weight restrictions on our luggage. It had been 25 kilos to Yogya but was 15 Kilos to Semarang because we bought the tickets at the airport rather than online. (I am not making this stuff up) Ken Tran began negotiating with the ticket manager since we were about 225 kilos over weight. After about an hour, Ken moved the negotiations over to the main office right outside the General Manager’s office. The General Manager would not come out. I had already established myself as the bad guy so Ken told me to come in about every 10 minutes and yell and scream which was good therapy for me
Day 8
The Hall Sisters,ready to rock and a role I excel at. This little act of good guy, bad guy went on for 60-90 minutes and some of our members were worried about catching the plane which now had our luggage loaded on it. Then Ken had a truly brilliant idea. He asked them to take all the luggage off the plane so we could carry on the heavier, smaller pieces. This put us back in the driver’s seat as far as leverage. We finally settled for $32.00 on an overweight charge of just under $250.00. Man, I sure loved watching Ken work.
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Willis
non-member comment
I shoulda skipped this catasrophy
But from here it was all comedy.