We just returned from an amazing visit halfway around the world to see Erika.

By "we", I mean Sheila and myself. Our other two daughters are planning to go visit their big sister in June (not my idea, and I'm not totally thrilled by the idea of sending ALL of my children that far away, but having been there I can at least tolerate the thought), while we stay here this time.

I won't be doing much sleeping during that time, but my phone bill will probably be immense.

But back to our visit...

Our plan was to fly from the DFW airport to Atlanta, then on to Los Angeles and Sydney Australia. We would spend 4 days in Sydney vacationing and getting used to the time difference. Then using industry discounts we would take Garuda Indonesian Airlines to continue on to Denpassar on Bali where we would handle the international inprocessing, and finally to the city of Surabaya on Java where we would meet Erika. I had no intention of sitting in coach for that long a flight, so I picked our dates and flights carefully, and we used a vacation upgrade with the standby travel, something that with proper planning could give us Business Class upgrades for the longer flights.

We started out by flying from Dallas Ft. Worth to Atlanta earlier than we needed to - or so we thought. Turns out that we needed Australian visas BEFORE leaving this country. I knew all about the Indonesian visa issue and had a firm grip on the solution, but the Australian one caught me off guard. Shouldn't have, but it did.

A couple of quick phone calls suggested that I check online for a solution, and amazingly there was a fairly easy one right on the Delta Air Lines employee travel website. By leaving early I had also provided myself time to use it. We were able to purchase the visas we needed right online and print out the required documentation. Next, we took all of that paperwork with our passports to the Delta ticket counter to get our standby tickets issued and check our bags all the way to Sydney.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself when Sheila and I got on board the flight to LAX. It was all taken care of now...I thought. Wrong again, it turned out.

In LAX a quick check showed we were NOT listed for the flight to Sydney. Our bags were, but not us. I kicked myself for not triple checking all the work that the agent had done in Atlanta with our reservations, but since I had made the reservations myself I thought they couldn't be modified, and any work done on them would apply to the entire trip. Now I was learning that only the domestic portion had been arranged - we needed to do this all over at the counter in LAX, and because our flight had been delayed out of Atlanta we had less than the 2 hours I had built into our travel to do it!

I hurried into the line for the Sydney flight which was 6 people long, with 75 minutes left before departure. We needed to be listed at least 30 minutes ahead of departure according to Delta's requirements. I gave a sigh of relief, but it was premature. With 45 minutes left I was still 4th in line. Between a single agent working the desk, being distracted by various other things, and a line full of people who weren't willing to be satisfied with ANYTHING she was able to do for them, it was taking nearly 10 minutes per passenger to move the line, which wasn't working at all. At precisely 30 minutes remaining I finally got to the head of the line and was able to get myself and Sheila listed for the flight, which had been boarding for 15 minutes already. Oh, and where did all those UPGRADES come from?!! The business class seats had all but disappeared!

We got into line with the sinking feeling that all my careful planning had been submarined by circumstances but fate was on our side that day. We got the LAST TWO BUSINESS CLASS SEATS ON THE PLANE!! I felt a bit sorry for a couple of other standby travelers who had been bumped from those places by our arrival, but not sorry enough to give up those seats! They were the new ones too, with the lie-flat recliners that turned into actual beds when you wanted to sleep. That made it SO much easier to adjust to the half-day time difference. The photos below show Sheila in the new seat before departure, and then fully reclined in flight.

We didn't get to sit near each other, but those seats aren't really conducive to talking anyway. You are really in your own personal space, and talking to someone generally requires that you get up and walk over to them. We spent the time (17 hours) reading, watching TV shows and movies (all free), listening to music, playing games and sleeping/eating. It was truly quite pleasant.

On arrival in Sydney it was 8:30 am local, and we had awakened just a few hours before from a reasonably pleasant sleep - although the man seating behind me had set/forgotten an alarm which went on long enough to wake me about 2 hours before I planned to get up. By the time he turned it off I was fully awake and quite annoyed, but what can you do? Fortunately the 4 hours I was able to sleep turned out to be enough.

I had originally planned to continue on to Bali and then Lombok that same day, but Sheila had prevailed with the idea of spending those first few days in Australia. She traded in a number of Hilton Diamond VIP points for 4 days in the Sydney Hilton, a 5-star hotel. It was magnificent, the service was at a level I didn't know existed, and the location was walking distance from everything in the city. The resort I had lined up in Lombok would have been magnificent and cheap, but Sydney was magnificent and FREE. Free internet, free breakfast in the Executive lounge, free lunch, drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres in the afternoons and evenings. So that's how the other half lives! When I mentioned that to Sheila, she pointed out that far less than half of the people live that way, so I suspect that saying refers to the "other half" of the MONEY.

We did a lot of walking and sight-seeing those 4 days, but there was a lot more that we didn't see. We'll have to go back someday and spend a bit more time next time. AND go to Lombok.

After the four days in Sydney we continued our journey, taking a Zone fare ticket from Sydney to Bali on Garuda Airlines. The flight was around 4-5 hours and crossed over the middle of Australia. Talk about barren! I don't think I've seen anyplace more uninhabited; not even a road or any indication at all of human presence. We were able to get visas to enter Indonesia in Bali in around a minute - they were apparently QUITE familiar with visitors from other countries there. I suspect Australian tourists had developed that facility in Bali as it seemed to be one of their most popular tourist destinations.

A brief wait and we continued to Surabaya, where Erika met us at the airport with a ride. I'm going to try to organize the Indonesia portion of our travel into a better entry, and assuming I can I'll post that separately. Here are a few hints though: goat-brain stew, durian, bus rides, volcano damage, tofu, ants, mosquitos, bedbugs, waterpark, hired car, 9th century temples, salak (snakefruit), vascular meatballs, and more!