Today was meant to be a relatively easy day of travel from Kupang to Denpasar, connecting to Lombok, all on Merpati Nusantara Airlines. The first flight left about 30 minutes late and the second was on time. I had a throbbing headache by the time I landed in Lombok’s new airport and taken the long taxi ride into my hotel in Mataram.
It might have been the:
- The crowded environment with flies in Bali’s temporary domestic terminal (which appears to be the new ground floor of the new terminal). After over three weeks of peace and quiet, perhaps I coudn’t handle crowds.
- The sight of this very handicapped child that kept hitting his maid/caregiver and mum on the first flight from Kupang to Bali. He was also wailing most of the way. I really felt for the parents (and the paid caregiver) of having to put up with an uncontrollable abusive child who doesn’t know better.
- To make it worse my hotel had lost my prebooked and prepaid reservation. Actually they had forgotten to assign my room and it was already fully booked. Often, one pays more to book online in countries like this as there is a commission collected by the website; I’m happy to pay this surcharge for the convenience of not hunting for a place … but it didn’t quite work today.
Anyway, the staff were very nice about it and called a few other hotels for me. With no success, they TXTed a customer who hadn’t checked in and hadn’t paid a deposit, to cancel their reservation. I didn’t get loud and angry as some people would have; they were on to solving the problem and such behaviour would only hamper their efforts.
It was about 7pm, so it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable thing for them to do. I was so pleased to see my king sized bed, comfy duvet and air-con (it is tropical in Lombok, unlike the cool dry weather I had in Kupang).
I felt a better after dinner at the nearby Warung Serena. Perhaps it was the lack of real food through the day that caused my headache. After three weeks without much internet, I uploaded some photos and my blogs.