INDONESIA: BACKGROUND AND FLIGHT TO SINGAPORE

 June-July 2023

When he was a young boy going to the zoo on a regular basis, my husband Bob was intrigued by the place names "Sumatra," "Borneo," and "Indonesia" on the cages of many of the monkeys, the orangutans, and the Komodo dragons.  He dreamed of going to those exotic places some day and seeing some of his favorite zoo animals in the wild.

About five years ago, he started to think it might be time to make his dreams come true and started to plan a trip to Indonesia. That trip was in place and we were ready to go in June 2020. However, when the world shut down in March 2020 at the start of the Covid epidemic, all of Bob's planning and almost all the advance payments we made for the trip went down the tubes.

The map of Indonesia below shows that the country was widely affected by the disease. Of a population of 277 million (compared to the US population of 332 million), about 6.8 million got Covid (compared to 103.8 million in the US) and 160,941 died (compared to 1.1 million in the US). About 75% got at least one dose of the vaccine (compared to about 82% in the US). The Indonesian numbers of infections and death seem very low, but apparently there were significant issues with reporting. Some research claims that the "official" numbers may reflect only 2% of the real COVID-19 infections in Indonesia.

Anyway, Indonesia, like most countries, closed its borders to non-essential travel on April 2, 2020. The country remained essentially closed to tourism until late-2022.

Bob started looking into rebooking our trip in November 2022 when he reached out to Adventure Indonesia, the tour company he had worked with to plan the aborted trip. He was pleasantly surprised to find they would honor some of the money we had already poured into the trip. We were lucky to get a refund from Singapore Airlines for the round-trip flight from LAX, but we lost the money we had spent on all the inter-island flights we had booked. Adventure Indonesia honored pretty much everything else--ground and water transportation, guides, food and hotels that were part of the package, etc. We were so relieved that the money we had spent was not a total loss.

And so we planned a new trip for June 28 - July 14 the summer of 2023. 

Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands, and we planned to visit eight of them after spending a day in Singapore: 
1. Sumatra
2. Java
3. Borneo (Divided between Malaysia and Indonesia; we planned to visit the 

    Indonesian part, called Kalamantan)
4. Sulawesi
5. Bali
6. Flores
7. Rinca
8. Komodo

Because of the length of the trip--17 days--we opted for a private shuttle to the airport rather than paying for parking. It would cost about the same to park a car as the shuttle, and the money we tipped the driver was about covered by the gas we didn't have to pay for. In the end, it was a relief not to have to drive home after our exhausting trip followed by a 17-hour flight. We used Prime Time Shuttle, and our driver Priya was early to pick us up from our home and then just happened to be assigned to be our driver at the other end of the trip and was waiting for us when we got to the pick-up spot close to midnight.

We flew from LAX to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, which I had taken before on a solo trip to Japan but Bob had never flown with. Currently, it is ranked the best airline in the world. Unfortunately, Bob had an aisle seat next to the bathroom, and every time the door was opened during the night, he was blinded by the light and someone knocked into him. On the other hand, the seats recline more than the usual seat, and I slept better than I usually do on a flight.  Overall, Bob rates Singapore Airlines as #2 behind Emirates of the airlines we have used.

We took off just before midnight on a Thursday and 17 hours later we arrived in Singapore on Saturday at about 7:00 AM, having undergone a 15-hour time difference. We chased the night west, so it was dark when we left and just lightening up about an hour or two before we arrived. Mind boggling. 

Breakfast was at about 1:00 AM California time, or an hour after we took off. My pancakes with raspberry filling, slivered almond topping, and maple syrup was delicious. Bob had a so-so sausage omelet. We both also had Chobani Greek yogurt and fresh fruit.

Besides sleeping, I watched two movies: King Richard (about the role of their father in the rise of Serena and Venus Williams in the tennis world) and Banshees of Inisherin (a sad story about two best friends on an isolated Irish island who become disaffected).

Singapore Changi airport is currently ranked as the best airport in the world, but we were itching to get going. We picked up my checked bag and stopped at an ATM for cash ($375 US = $500 Singapore). We used the local currency for everything we could both in Singapore and later in Indonesia.

After researching public transportation in Singapore, we decided to save time by taking the equivalent of Uber. I had downloaded the "Grab" app, which bills itself as "The Everything App." Their drivers deliver grocers and restaurant orders, help with postal needs, and provide Uber/Lyft-style transportation. It was cheap and efficient and cashless. We loved it.

We called our first Grab ride and had the driver take us to our hotel. The skies were blue, the surroundings were beautiful, and it looked like it was going to be a great day.

Our hotel, the Village Katong, let us store our bags as our room wasn't ready at 9:00 AM when we got there.

The hotel is connected to a shopping mall that we walked through trying to find the check-in desk. (We had been dropped off at the wrong entrance by our Grab driver.) I got a kick out of this bakery:

I changed into clean clothes in the pool locker room, and by the time we called our next Grab ride, it had started to sprinkle outside. We had planned to go to the Botanical Gardens first, but the rain became a deluge and we realized we needed to change our plans. 

Our driver was willing to change direction, and we started our Singapore experience with food, which is always a good way to begin.