Things started to go (unsurprisingly) south once we got to Jakarta to change planes to connect to Lombok. Like everything in Jakarta, the airport is gigantic. Our flight from Singapore landed at their new Terminal 3 which was very pleasant and efficient. Because we were changing to a local airline, we had to get our bags and go through immigration, then head to Terminal 1. Immigration here was a breeze. For Americans, we can either get a Visa On Arrival by standing on line at the airport, or they have a relatively new EVOA which you can do in advance (which we did). If you do that, you head straight to the automated immigration area where there are about 1000 gates lined up - you scan your passport and look in the camera where the facial recognition software says hello, then off you go - done! Before noting the rest of our odyssey, I have to mention that a few days before our trip, my wife did something to her ankle heel - we're not yet sure if it's a sprain, tear or something else.... Edit - it was a stress fracture.... Getting from Terminal 3 baggage claim to the airport train to take us to Terminal 1 required an eight mile walk (with some moving sidewalks along the way). Once at Terminal 1 train stop, there is another eight mile walk (or maybe 10 miles?) outside under a covered walkway (with no moving sidewalks) that you do with all your baggage, btw, to get to the departures area. Outside the departures area is a 100 yard section of hawker stalls selling all manner of food stuffs, then once inside the departures area, a nice, leisurely 30 minute wait on line to check our bags.
Once we (finally) dropped our bags, we went back out to the hawker area to pick up a few snacks we were curious about....
One stall was called Chez Choux - chain in Jakarta - they had a bunch of premade choux pastry which was filled with 1 of 4 fillings at the time of order. I wanted to get one because they had their seasonal durian flavor available.
After filling, they put a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top.
We also got this industrially made snack from the mini-mart a few doors down:
The durian choux was awesome. Creamy durian filling in a still light, airy and crispy choux pastry. I'd be in big trouble if I could get these at home. The pandan filled croissant was less good - it was completely edible and mildly tasty but I wouldn't be tempted to have it again - but not surprising given the industrial nature of it.
Once inside, we wound up taking several mile long laps of Terminal 1 as our flight was delayed a couple hours and they kept moving our gate from one side of the terminal to the other. Repeatedly. That and the fact that there were no display screens at each gate saying what flight was leaving from there - just 1 display which showed the flight status of all the flights for the next several hours, which was not updated nearly frequently enough as it displayed our flight finalizing boarding while the hard to hear announcements said that it was delayed for 2 hours.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Terminal 1 is seemingly not air conditioned and every seating area surrounds you with people in various stages of having the plague.
At the end of it all, we must have walked a few miles - seriously, my phone fitness app said that we walked about 6500 steps in the Jakarta airport!!!! I felt really bad for my wife as she sort of limped along. I compensated by portraying a pack mule and took all the bags.
Once we landed in Lombok (around 8PM local time) and took the 70 minute drive to the hotel, we were barely conscious but did order some sate from room service before we passed out.
Chicken and beef sate with peanut sambal, lontong (rice cakes) and acar (pickles). Some sweet soy sauce underneath the sate. Hilariously, the hotel garnished every plate with some curly parsley! They must grow it onsite as I've never seen it anywhere in Indonesia... hehe....
