I enjoyed a nicely air condition room for sleeping in, and then spent the rest of the day finishing my packing and sorting out the recovery of my laundry. I managed to find a bus to the airport, and used up almost the last of the balance on my EzLink card to get there, though I was pleased with the card - it had served me well so far - very convenient to just tap a card on and off - why don't we have this in Scotland?!
At the airport I went through all the usual checks, and then had some rice for late lunch.
The flight was fairly uneventful, and since a lot of it was in the dark, I didn't really get to see where I was flying to, though having said that it was mostly over sea anyway.
On the final approach I saw some interesting tall buildings I felt I wanted to go and explore, and determined to do more research.
Another Airport terminal, another travelator, another immigration desk. Or so I thought. The research I had done had stated that I could get 90 days visa free with no requirements to Indonesia, however when I got there, it was determined that since I had no real plans while there, and no exit flight, I had to go and pay for a Visa On Arrival for the extendable Visa.
When I heard the price of the Visa, which was set at 500,000 IDR, I almost had a heart attack. I wasn't really used to the exchange rate at all, and half a million in anybody's book sounds like a lot!
I reminded myself that I was travelling and that panicking was a bad idea, and thought sensibly about the situation. I had already asked someone on the plane about how much the conversion from SGD to IDR was, so I knew it was around 10000 IDR to 1 SGD, which meant that 500,000 IDR was only 50 SGD. This calmed me down somewhat, and so I went to the cash machine and withdrew 700,000 to start with.
Once I made it through with my VOA andpicked up my bags, I looked around the airport for a place that sold a local sim card, though I could only find one place. They offered various networks but since I didn't have any way to connect to the airport wifi or use roaming data I had no way to do my research.
I asked at the counter, and they kindly let me tether my phone to one of their's so that I could determine which network was the best for my travel concept. I established that Telkomsel was at the time the best coverage and offered a reasonable price for the data, which was the main aspect of cell coverage that I needed. As such I asked them about their Telkomsel prices, and was quoted something so outrageous that I didn't bother to write it down - I knew it was a rip off straight away!
I asked them again and also said "That seems very expensive, can I get it cheaper in a shop?" and they confirmed that it was expensive because they were at the airport and that it was indeed cheaper in the shops - not very good sales technique, but at least they were honest :)
All the advice that I had received from m friends in Australia paid off, o I knew not to take any of the taxis that were right at the entrance of the airport - to be honest, I couldn't tell which ones were Bluebird and which ones were Express, and which ones were fake!
I made my way further along and managed to ask where the shuttle bus that Teduh hostel had given me advice on, so got on the shuttle bus for much less than a taxi would have been.
I made it to Mangga Dua and then spent the next 10 minutes looking for the hostel and being unable to find it, so tried round the block the other way and finally found the entrance tucked in a courtyard area.
The Girl's English was very bad but we managed to muddle through and I got checked in and the wifi password so I could research networks and shops.