14-March - Saturday - Pre-Bali

We all woke up with a hangover from too much Prosecco, a sign of a good party! With COVID-19 updates coming by the hour, we decided to change my brother and my niece’s travel plans and bring their departure to Bali forward, i.e. same as us, Sunday March 15th, 2020. To change, re-arrange, book travel with less then 24 hours to go is a logistical nightmare and something that cannot be done without human intervention. Air Asia was contacted to bring forward the existing booking by a week, only to have the automated chat function unable to cope, the human chat function was unresponsive and the only phone lines seeming to cope directing us to be on hold to the UK. We aborted that topic. an economical flight was found via Batik Air. With passports at hand and credit cards at the ready the nifty fingers of this Swiss lad hacked away at the keyboard, wanting to be sure to lock it all in. Regrettably the credit card facility didn’t seem to be as responsive as my fingers and only a phone call to an Indonesia call centre did the trick, re-directing us to a travel booking site in Indonesia. Flight booked! The Swiss visitors were to leave Perth 3hrs ahead of these 2 travelling lads. Final piece of the puzzle was the booking of accommodation, but in Seminyak, as the 2 travelling lads were adamant of a honeymoon in Nusa Lembongan was not to be had with 2 additional guests, family or not. Once all travel arrangements had been finalised, we went shopping for dinner, needing a pack of spaghetti and some paper towels. We shall admit that since the wedding none of us had been reading the news or watching TV. It came as an absolute shock to find aisle after aisle empty of ANY pasta, rice or noodles of any sort, canned food practically nonexistent and absolutely NO paper towel, toilet paper or wipes to be found. Completely SHOCKING! COVID-19 finally hit us! Time to get the hell away from shoppers having gone mad! We were all confident of our own health, with none of us having pre-existing conditions or being of any additional risk factors for COVID-19, hence Bali was a much saner place to be than Perth, off we went to find spaghetti at a local IGA for our final supper.

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