Catching Fire (HK-MCA-SZ part 1)

The trip was actually not planned before. It suddenly happened about a week before on-the-go. There was inaugural flight from Bali to hongkong from low cost carrier, Tiger Air Mandala for 0 Rupiah return (we just needeed to pay for fuel surcharge and terminal tax in HKIA, total for return ticket i paid for 300,000 IDR). So I thanked to my friend, Fachry for telling me about this. 

So this would not be going to be solo traveling as I did initially. We would go with 7 people. I just knew 2 of them, that would be a problem to me. The preparation to go there for the D-Day for me was really complicated, i was still busy with my stuffs and others were too. No exact plan and budgeting to do made this traveling just on-the-go. Hongkong was cold, reported about 9 C, which was very cold for tropical person like me.

Since the flight was from Bali to Hong Kong, I had to book flight ticket from Jakarta to Bali, after we, Fachry and I, sought for the cheapest flight, the choice was Lion Air, flight from Bandung (not Jakarta). We purchased online costing us 335,000 IDR (which was more expensive than my flight to HK return). The flight was scheduled to fly at 12.00 and it would take 1h45mins.

We, the 7 people, agreed to meet up in Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, so we basically had different flights to go to bali.  I went to bali with Fachry from Bandung. We took Van from depok to go bandung. It was early morning to take van to bandung. It would take us about 3 hours. Thanks to Aya Travel for takis us to bandung early morning at 5.30 am for 70,000 IDR.

I personally slept along the way to bandung since I was sleeping at 1 am and had to wake up at 5am. When I woke up, we already arrived in Bandung with a little baby traffic at 8 am, 30 mins faster. We were all empty, so we had to be all set before flying since the foods in-flight would cost us more. We had our heavy breakfast in Bandung for 9000 IDR each. We were done everything there, toook public transportation to the airport. It cost us 4000 IDR and took for 30 mins. We arrived in airport at 9.45 am.

WELCOME! Selamat Datang

I was so surprised with the airport, it is airforce airport equipped with all the dorms for the military. We had to walk a bit to get to the terminal. And finally I was there. The airport was suprisingly SMALL, the SMALLES International Airport I had ever seen, even smaller than Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Angeles City, The philippines.

The airport has only 1 terminal for both international and domestic flights. The check-in counters were all stuffed and looked very compact and congested with many passengers trying to check in. We were done all for this. FYI, it was my very first DOMESTIC FLIGHT, I was so happy and proud of myself to make this happen. Actually name on ticket was wrong and it as miss-typed, i was worried to not be able to check in or i needed to pay extra. However, Indonesia will always Indonesia, they didn’t pay attention about the name on ticket as long as i could provide them the correct ID card and the booking code written on ticket.

We were waiting in the airport lounge till the gate to board opened. There was one water gallon for hot and warm water for free, so I filled up my bottle with water there to prevent the in-flight dehydration. The announcement for passenger LION AIR JT960 to board was released through the loudspeaker. Frankly, the speaker worked terribly, we all passengers couldn’t hear properly  whether our flight or another  to board.

There was no tunnel from terminal to the aircraft, we had to walk across the land to the aircraft. For me, it was a bit far from the gate to the aircraft, and that was not ergonomics for elderly to walk to. I took several pictures along the way. We were seated based on the seat number we obtained when we checked in. The aircraft was full that time, and everybody was seated to their seat already.

Husein Sastranegara International Airport Main Building

Wuhuuuu, we were ready to fly!! Or we were supposed to fly at 1200 noon. However, the silly mistake was occurring. So actually there were two passengers who were not supposed to in-flight (that was i got from the announcement from the cabin crew). There was an argue in the aircraft from the official of LION AIR and those passengers. And surprisingly it took almost 1 Hour to solve this problem before it was actually flying. So it reminded me of MH370 MAS Airlines about two fake passengers, and it could be possible. Everything was done, everybody was murmuring complaining a lot about this. Yah, as long as i could catch up the flight to Hongkong i wouldn’t mind.

People had to walk more than 75 meters to reach the aircraft