BALI DAY 10 – waffles, heading home, Bali blues + 24 hour flights?!

The final day of my visit to Bali.

Thank you for reading these blogs if you’ve been following my journey. If you haven’t please feel free to go back and check them out – I’ve included everything I can including tips for haggling, costs where possible and recommendations for tour guides, including Baim!

This blog covers the going home aspect, where again, I seek to reduce any anxiety around travel, particularly if you’ve concerns about connecting flights and transiting through other airports.

My morning consisted of heading to The Waffle Hut, where I got half a waffle with Nutella, strawberries and whipped cream – it was scrumptious! And a coffee of course, all for 94k =  just over £5. My friends met me at my hotel to order a taxi and wave me goodbye. I may have shed a tear, partially because I had created the most amazing memories with my best friend (and on the other side of the world), and gone the furthest without my family that’d ever done, flying on my own!

My taxi to the airport took around 40 minutes, where there is an addition drop off fee (10k) on top, so be mindful of that (139k/£7.50 altogether from Uluwatu, but this can vary depending on the time of day).

I had 2 flights to get me home to the UK: Bali to Singapore, then Singapore to the UK.

After dropping off my suitcase at Bali airport and confirming it would be passed through Singapore to the UK, I treated myself to an airport lunch of a burger and chips – woo! (196k = £10.60).

They printed off 1 boarding pass before security, and then another when I was waiting at the gate – my heart pounded when I heard my name on the tanoy! I flew with JetStar, which took about 3 hours and it even included a meal that I didn’t expect, nor could eat as I was so full so I let them give it to someone else.

Sadly, the end of my trip was a bit of a messy one. The transit time was around 7 hours, so I had to make my own fun in Singapore airport which involved a lot of looking through shop windows, walking around, reading my book and tracking my plane on my app – something I am still to this day a fan of doing with planes that fly over my house. I knew Singapore was expensive, but to give you an idea, I got popcorn and a chocolate bar for $12 – I was hungry, I needed snacks.

Here comes the part where I can’t believe I made it upon reflection and stayed sane. I commend pilots and cabin crew who most likely experience this very frequently. I was not looking forward to the 14-hour flight ahead, especially knowing I had a middle row seat. The flight was from Sydney to the UK, via Singapore, so imagine being stuck on the same plane for all that time!

Once we were boarded on the plane, we were sat waiting for ages where we were then informed by the captain that they needed to order a part in that was 25 minutes away – just what you want to hear when you’re due to head up to 40,000 feet for many hours! We kept getting updates about its status and getting engineers… 3 hours later we were ready to get in the air. My knees were so seized up and everyone was just so tired and sick of waiting. Fortunately I had a nice Aussie lady and quiet guy sat either side of me. The lady and I got on throughout, asking each other questions about the other’s country and our plans – she and her family were due to go on a flight to Italy after!

It was a long, uncomfortable flight and I could only laugh through my tiredness as me and the guy beside me were forgotten as everyone else around us had their dinner. I was served with a delightful dry piece of chicken with some sort of pesto sauce – it makes me laugh thinking about how I poured it on top, but it plopped out like a piece of jelly (I’m giggling even typing this). It did the trick and then I managed to get a few zzz’s in.

Many hours later, I’d arrived back home safely in the UK!

I was so proud of myself – I still am.

I arrived tired, yet comforted by the familiar grey UK skies, along with a Costa airport coffee – not quite the experience of Bali, but still homely nonetheless.

Again, thank you so much for reading these blogs if you’ve been following them, or maybe you stumbled across them. I hope you enjoyed them and have found them useful. If you go, please feel free to drop a comment either here, on my Instagram or my YouTube – I’d love to follow your Bali journey!