Friday 25 November 2016

The chance for a lie in. And the crew decided to play loud music at 5am. Great.

A final breakfast on the boat and then I waved goodbye at 10am. We were running a bit late and all our bags had gone ahead of us.

As we were parked in Sorong bay, it was only a 5 minute journey back to the mainland. And into the chaos of the landing area. People passing their shopping into small boats, lots of other people just hanging around. But all so colourful. Our bags had already been loaded into taxis.

One guy came running after me saying that I had left my water bottle. My water bottle was in the side of my bag, so I guessed it had just fallen out when they were moving bags from the boats. He said it was in the camera box on the transfer boat. I told them not to worry, as we were running late and it was almost broken anyway. All in Indonesian. This guy didn’t speak English.

But they wouldn’t let me leave in the taxi. 15 minutes later, the speedboat returned. But it wasn’t my water bottle that was left. It was my whole bag -with passport, money, camera, phone!! So that was lucky.

It was now 11am. My flight was at 11.50am and my ticket said check in closed an hour before. i.e. 10 minutes ago. And I was still at the boat port.

Luckily it’s not too far to the airport, only about 15 minutes. And the traffic wasn’t too bad. Past colourful buildings, a small river and a lot of people.

When we arrived all was fine. Check in was still open. And I didn’t get charged for my overweight bag. A lot of smiling and chatting seems to help if a boy is on the counter. Nothing very exciting at this airport. A few shops selling crisps, but that’s all. And the plane was running a late anyway.

We left at 12.30pm for the 4 hour trip to Jakarta. I am so far East in Indonesia – 4 hours is pretty far to fly across a country. And across 2 time zones. I ran out of snacks several days ago. And only had enough money to buy Oreos in the airport – so expensive!

And the only food on the plane was meat. Ridiculous. And starving.