The first unusual event in today's adventure was breakfast. A toasted chocolate sandwich! We left the hotel and a 5 minute walk took us to Fort Rotterdam, an old Dutch fort guarding the city. It was very busy with the young people of Makassar. However we (tourists) seemed to grab more of their attention than the fort!
We wanted to fly back to Bali today, so the easiest way was to find the airline office and book tickets. The airline doesn't accept international credit cards online and the travel agents here are often corrupt plus charge commission!
We asked several people where the Lion Air office might be and were pointed in various directions. We knew we must be near and eventually stumbled upon it. We booked our flight easily, so we thought we would book another flight for later in our trip too.
We didn't have enough cash so went to the ATM, before returning to book a 2nd flight. This time we booked it with a different person who asked us to pay at the cashier. They did this for us first time. We paid up, collected our tickets and left.
KFC called out to us as we reached the corner of the road and we just had to try one of their mushroom burgers. About an hour passed and as we looked out of the window, the lady from the ticket office walked by. She spotted us and entered the restaurant....
She told us we had not given the correct money for our tickets and we must come back to the office! Shocked and confused, we followed her to the office. We waited whilst the cashier tried to count the money in his till but he insisted he was 500,000 short (25 pounds). We were a little amazed that after 3 people (him and us) had counted the money and he had issued the receipt and even stamped it paid, they were accusing us of not giving the correct money! We stayed to calmly discuss the matter but there was no way of us checking .... Did we pay too little, even though 3 of us checked? Did the cashier make a mistake counting and only now realised? Were they scamming us? To make a mistake, we would all have had to miscount 5x100,000 notes or 10x50,000 notes. Possible but unlikely!
We eventually decided to leave without handing over any more money. There was no way of telling what we had originally paid...but we have a ticket and now we hope it stays valid!
We collected our bags and walked to Makassar Mall to catch a bemo to the airport. We asked a lot of drivers but they did not understand. We tried many mimes of aircraft taking off (with sound affects) and a number of different names for the airport. It appeared the airport possibly had 4 names or was there 4 airports!? We checked our guide book and some other information on the town. Now, totally confused too, we showed our tickets with the airport name but still no one knew where we wanted to go! We gave up and got a taxi at 10x the price but we did get the driver to understand.... eventually!
We arrived at the correct airport. We think there is only one but it has 4 different names. We had to wait a while to check in. The boards above the check in desks never displayed our flight to Denpasar, just an old flight to Jakarta. Would we ever see our bags again?
Our flight was delayed by about two hours and the airline served us a meal whilst we waited. Very unusual that they did that but great and totally unexpected!
We boarded the flight and landed in Bali, 1.5 hours later. We found our bags, walked out of the airport and caught a taxi to our quaint little homestay.
We wanted to fly back to Bali today, so the easiest way was to find the airline office and book tickets. The airline doesn't accept international credit cards online and the travel agents here are often corrupt plus charge commission!
We asked several people where the Lion Air office might be and were pointed in various directions. We knew we must be near and eventually stumbled upon it. We booked our flight easily, so we thought we would book another flight for later in our trip too.
We didn't have enough cash so went to the ATM, before returning to book a 2nd flight. This time we booked it with a different person who asked us to pay at the cashier. They did this for us first time. We paid up, collected our tickets and left.
KFC called out to us as we reached the corner of the road and we just had to try one of their mushroom burgers. About an hour passed and as we looked out of the window, the lady from the ticket office walked by. She spotted us and entered the restaurant....
She told us we had not given the correct money for our tickets and we must come back to the office! Shocked and confused, we followed her to the office. We waited whilst the cashier tried to count the money in his till but he insisted he was 500,000 short (25 pounds). We were a little amazed that after 3 people (him and us) had counted the money and he had issued the receipt and even stamped it paid, they were accusing us of not giving the correct money! We stayed to calmly discuss the matter but there was no way of us checking .... Did we pay too little, even though 3 of us checked? Did the cashier make a mistake counting and only now realised? Were they scamming us? To make a mistake, we would all have had to miscount 5x100,000 notes or 10x50,000 notes. Possible but unlikely!
We eventually decided to leave without handing over any more money. There was no way of telling what we had originally paid...but we have a ticket and now we hope it stays valid!
We collected our bags and walked to Makassar Mall to catch a bemo to the airport. We asked a lot of drivers but they did not understand. We tried many mimes of aircraft taking off (with sound affects) and a number of different names for the airport. It appeared the airport possibly had 4 names or was there 4 airports!? We checked our guide book and some other information on the town. Now, totally confused too, we showed our tickets with the airport name but still no one knew where we wanted to go! We gave up and got a taxi at 10x the price but we did get the driver to understand.... eventually!
We arrived at the correct airport. We think there is only one but it has 4 different names. We had to wait a while to check in. The boards above the check in desks never displayed our flight to Denpasar, just an old flight to Jakarta. Would we ever see our bags again?
Our flight was delayed by about two hours and the airline served us a meal whilst we waited. Very unusual that they did that but great and totally unexpected!
We boarded the flight and landed in Bali, 1.5 hours later. We found our bags, walked out of the airport and caught a taxi to our quaint little homestay.
