We made it! I didn’t do the calculation, and am in no shape to attempt it now, but we were traveling for over 30 hours. Just the fact that we took off from Vancouver at 1:35AM on the 18th of March and landed some 12 hours later at 6:00AM on the 19th makes my head spin. Can I count the hours in the lost day? Here we are again in arithmetic! Anyhow, we made it.

It was a long trip, but I have to thank EVA Air for great flights. I don’t think that I have experienced care like that before. What a difference a day makes.

We arrived in Bali on schedule and ran through the gauntlet of security, immigration, customs and taxi service hawkers. I was grateful to have someone helping get through the maze, I’m not sure if I would have made it on my own. Once we were out of the airport, the sounds, the wall of heat and the faint smell of incense burning made me nostalgic for my year in Malaysia. A little like homecoming.

We hit a hiccup when we got out of the airport. There were what seemed like thousands of people lined up with names of people they were picking up and delivering to their hotels. Couldn’t see our names or a Viking rep, so I got on the phone. After a while on hold, I wanted to let our guide from the airport off the hook, so we headed back in, and I took another look at the sea of signs. Found a Viking rep who was there to pick up other passengers, not us. After a few minutes, he left his colleague to find the other folks, and took us to a waiting van. I was a bit annoyed because I had spent quite a while on the phone with Viking giving all the new details of our flights. They had no record. I will also add that the tickets for our excursion in Bali and the confirmation of a massage for David that we had missed were waiting in our room. Not to mention the charge. I really don’t like to complain, and am grateful that we are here, safe and in one piece, but I want to have a nice long conversation with someone from customer service at Viking. Something is rotten in Oslo.

I was glad to see the sun rise.