Bali Trip Part 1 - The Plane Journey

As I boarded the Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330, a sense of fear overcame me. Purely because of rumours. I assured myself I would be just fine. I have never feared flying before. I sat down and became engrossed in my book, titled ‘Infidel’ by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book that caused a whole lot of controversy. Perhaps absorbing Hirsi Ali’s experiences had made me the ultimate rebel, but it was not just a book to me, it was something I could form a 3 dimensional image of. It was real.

A middle aged Indian man was seated next to me, he didn’t look very polite. I continued reading until later in the flight when I had to fill out the Custom’s Declaration and Visa on Arrival immigration card. I asked him if I could borrow his pen, politely of course. He silently reached for his pen and handed it to me, and I thanked him sweetly. As I filled in the immigration card in big, black ballpoint letters, I could feel his eyes reading my details. This made me slightly uncomfortable but nonetheless I said nothing. I completed the form and returned his pen, then continued reading my book.

After a short while, the Indian man spoke to me, going on for a while. He went on to tell me where he was born: Chennai, India. He was Muslim, often travelled on business trips and had a family in Singapore. Two children, a son of 19 and a daughter of 17. The son was studying Engineering and his daughter wanted to do so too, but he did not approve. He followed on to say that it is okay for a son to work in the Engineering field as it was hard work and she would be working in the heat, and he wanted her to have a relaxing office job. So it was decided, she was doing Business Management instead. I thought to myself ‘what a waste’ . Of course I did not say that to him. His cultural values had obviously been instilled so deep into him that it would be pointless to argue with a middle-aged stranger. All I said was that I am a girl, and I am going to be a pilot, so what’s the big deal? He said being a pilot is different, you take off, switch on the auto-pilot, and that’s it. Well, I’d like to see him do even that much. I did not like what I saw of this man, he was too ignorant for my liking. He would not stop talking to me and it made me so irritable. I just wanted to carry on reading my book!

After two minute pauses he would start talking again, about countries in South East Asia. He would take out the in-flight magazine and open it to the page with the world map. He would draw on it with his ballpoint pen showing me which part of South East Asia belonged to which country in that area: Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia. He would not stop.

Then he went on to discuss the London bombings that occurred in the devastating month of July. He would not stop saying the word ‘Bomb’ really loudly which made me panic a bit, there’s no knowing how people would react to an Indian man saying that word extremely loudly in an aircraft. I was silent, to keep myself out of trouble, if he got himself into it that’s his fault. Then he came onto the topic of drugs. He said people in Indonesia do a lot of drugs, specifically marijuana. I was shocked that he was talking to me about this, I wasn’t particularly interested in discussing these kind of topics with a complete stranger on an aircraft! With an astonished expression, I responded ‘but they are illegal with death penalty!’ - to which he responded that it is all readily available nonetheless. I really wondered to myself if this middle aged Indian man had actually experienced this first hand.

Finally, he stopped talking to me and the aircraft reached Jakarta airport where I was connecting to then catch a flight to Denpasar. I strolled out of the aircraft and made my way to the transit counter to collect my boarding pass for the next flight. It was 17:30 and the flight was to board at 19:55. More than two hours to kill. There was a young lady in front of me waiting for her boarding pass. The gentleman at the counter was slow, and he disregarded my presence. The young lady was still waiting, and the man went on to serve the customers that were after me! The young lady informed him that I was next, but he ignored her. I had to be aggressive, I told him I wanted my boarding pass. He finally printed one for me and I made my way up the escalators to the gate. I looked around as I had a lot of time to kill, many souvenir shops, duty free liquor stores and a restaurant. I roamed around, it was quite empty. Finally I got tired of looking around, and went to sit in the restaurant for a cup of tea. It was a decent cup and it was 18,000 rupiahs, which is almost 2 dollars I think. After my cup of tea, I decided to make my way to the gate. It was deserted, I was ridiculously early. I opened my laptop in an attempt to pick up a wireless network, but it was one of those that required a Visa card to pay for the password. I was bored.

Eventually, the gate waiting room started to fill, and an officer approached each of us for boarding passes. He requested my immigration card and saw that I was connecting in Jakarta, then continued to ask where I embarked. I told him Singapore, he looked suspicious for some reason! Finally it was boarding time, and the passengers had to make their way downstairs, I noticed that the young lady from the transit counter was also making her way to this gate. We had to take a bus to the aircraft, a Boeing 777. The flight was dull, and tedious, nobody spoke to me, but they were mainly Asian families. The food on Garuda on both flights was pretty reasonable, and I don’t normally like airline food! I suppose I should get used to it. One reason to want to work for Garuda.