Boozy Bali

Posted December 27, 2015

I landed in Bali and who do I hear yelling my name from afar? Of course Dylan! We had decided to do Christmas in Bali together with his friend Claire’s little sister Angie and her boyfriend Braedan. We booked a lavish villa with a
pool on Airbnb. There was a driver with them who took us back to the villa but not without stopping off at McDonald’s first. Well at least it was a first time experience for McDonald’s in Indonesia. Some things were a bit different but still had the core McDonald’s taste. Now this blog post isn’t going to be too long. Do you know why? We didn’t really do much exploring in Bala except for a lot of drinking, playing drinking games, and swimming a ton in the pool. Well not so much swimming for me, more like hanging out in the shallow end. Oh and we all took turns getting sick from the food so none of us were always ready to tackle a new adventure. We decided that for Christmas we needed a theme to dress up in. We checked out the local costume store and the
prices were far too much so we decided to all get different coloured Hawaiian shirts and where that on Christmas painting. An item that proved later to be a pain to carry around which I almost left behind one day at the mall! One day we all get pedicures and massages in between all of the drinking. The scariest/coolest thing we did was white
water rafting. Now, I was half asleep when these beauties booked the trip so I wasn’t aware that it would be class 4/5 rapids. Umm, I can’t really swim and they decided to pick the route that would have a 10 foot drop. Ummmm…I’m going to die? We all survived that day, I almost fell out of the raft but Dylan grabbed me and pulled me back in. Thanks D for that, lol. Dylan wanted to go watch the new Star Wars movie so we went to the local fancy mall to go see it. Near the end of the movie I got a little emotional seeing the green islands. It reminded me of New Zealand and my uncle who I hadn’t seen in 17 years. I needed to see him, and that was going to be my next destination.

So I called up my mom and asked her if she could call him to see if I could come. He said yes, and the day after Boxing Day I proceeded to board a plane to New Zealand. Next time I’ll have to go to Komodo Island to see the dragons and explore more of Indonesia.

Wait, not so soon though. I said good bye to Dylan, Angie, and Braedan at the airport and check in. The counter staff asked me where my visa to Australia was. I looked at them puzzled and said, I’m going to New Zealand, not Australia. They said yes, but you’re transiting through Australia. I said so what? They tell me that regardless I need a visa. I start to panic. My flight is in an hour and I have no visa. Apparently since I booked the ticket from Indonesia, the airline didn’t recognize that I was Canadian and didn’t include a transit visit and also since it was over 8 hours layover I would need a regular tourist visa. I thought this was all a scam but I had to go to some random non government of Australia website to apply for an instant visa which cost me $50 USD..AHH!! I ended up getting it 30 minutes later and was allowed to board my flight. Why did I book the flight with a connection in Brisbane that had a 13 hour lay over? Oh right, I’m crazy!