Thursday, October 1, 2015

Family trip to Bali didn't start so well!

Taipei, Taiwan
TRAVEL UPDATE

"Not all traveling can go perfectly to plan nor can be the funnest, but its the times that aren't fun or when nothing is going right that you look back on and have a laugh or tell a story about..." -Brian Daigneault

     Usually the travel time between California and Bali is around 30-36 hours between getting to airport, checking in, flight, layover, another flight, visa line, and transport to the accommodation. And for this trip being with the family it would have been nice to have it all only take about 30 hours, but it didn't quite go that way....

     Everything went south when we got to my grandparents house for dinner before they were going to give us a lift to the airport where our flight was scheduled to depart at midnight Monday. As we were about to leave the airport, my dad said maybe we should just check to see if the flight was delayed, and sure enough it was, 9 hour delay for a typhoon warning in Taipei where our layover was. Back home it was to get some sleep, we arrived at LAX and asked the counter now that our flight was delayed we would miss our connector flight. They told us that they didn't know and the counter in Taiwan would let us know, great that never is a good answer.

     Landing in Taiwan after a 14 hr flight we then found out we had to spend the night and the next available flight wasn't until 9:15am now Thursday because of the time change. The airlines took the 20 or so of us that were trying to get to Bali to a pretty nice hotel outside Taipei where my family got there first culture shock of asian life. Duck and pork was on the dinner menu as well as other interesting vegetables that our taste buds have never tasted before. We all crashed pretty hard since none of us got much sleep on the flight and we have been up for over 20 hours.

     Finally arriving in Bali at 2:30pm local time we went through the visa line and waited for our luggage for long enough to start wondering and looking around. Ourselves and another few passengers that were now our friends since we had been together the last few days went to the counter and they told us our luggage was stuck in Taipei and would hopefully arrive tomorrow. Once we took the hour taxi ride up to our first spot were staying we walked down the cliff to grab dinner watching the beautiful sunset! Waking up to our first morning on Bali I can't wait to rent a couple scooters and show the family my favorite places...stay tuned.