DAY 1 17/12/2015

The day finally arrived for us to begin our month long adventure! We were rushing around reckless in the day trying to be sure we had everything for our vacation. As our flight was in the evening we left home at about 1.30pm, thankfully my older brother who wasn't travelling with us was dropping us off (no we didn't forget about him, he couldn't get time off work). We went along the M4 motorway and through Petersham and still encountered traffic, but it only took 50minutes to get to the airport. We arrived at Sydney International Airport about 30 minutes before check-in was to open. To our shock we saw the line for Jetstar. We were told they had a number of flights all departing that same evening and that was the cause of the lines.

Our Flight was VA69

Jetstar's Long Queue

We were proud of amount of bags we brought (6 Trolley Bags and 2 Back Packs for 4 people)

So we went looking around at the various shops in the airport, to our surprise the airport was looking very modern. Names like Oliver Brown and Toby's Estate were good to see. But what came with that was a very pricey tag on almost all items. Daniel and I chose to get a strawberry Milkshake from Hungry Jacks, that costed $5.00.

Only $6.00 a packet!!

Come 3.30pm we headed to the Virgin checkin area, and there was no passengers there. We were warmly greeted by Joanna at the Business checkin desk. She was very helpful, and we discovered she actually studies at UNSW in Criminology. She was the same age of us and was happy to pose for photos and to take photos of us.

It is to be noted that Bali isn't on the destination list!

Checkin Agent Joanna

Our Family Photo for our travels!!

Once checkin was completed we were given our boarding pass holder and our express path cards. We hastily made our way to get through customs and security.

We were excited to receive one of the perks of Business Class

We went to customs and we had go through a self clearance machine, where you scan your passport and then step forward for a photo. Then you walk through and put your green card in a box. Thats it! It is surprising me how technologically advanced we are getting here in Australia. Next was security, which was a joke in my opinion, as all it takes is one person to stop the whole line. And as bad as it sounds our parents held us back. As i didn't supervise them, they had liquids in their bags, so there 30 minutes of our time was wasted. After this we had to have another pit stop at the Tourist Refund Scheme, lucky they had a sign otherwise I would've forgotten. It was great, as I knew the officer from the cruise terminal. Our last pitstop was to buy some dutyfree alcohol, that was once again my parents idea, as they didn't believe the ship would have much alcohol.

Finally 1 hour later we could make our way to the Air New Zealand Koru Lounge!! The reason why is, Virgin are yet to have an international lounge, and I believe there is no plan to have one as they don't fly much internationally. We were welcomed with a warm Kia Ora (hello in maori), the lady scanned our boarding pass and let us in.

Hospitality Desk

Most people chose to sit at the lounges

Main bar in the background, which was serviced by a polite bar tender

Self-Service drinks were also available

There was plenty of room and seats available

We made our selves comfortable at the dining seating area. We first went over to the bar and got a Bourbon and coke each, we were served instantly. We then made our way to get some food, we each had a starter, main and desert from the buffet selection. I'll show you the buffet food available, before I show you what I ordered.

We were there for the dinner service.

As you can see there wasn't much to choose from, but I'm sure anyone would be able to find something to their taste. What impressed me was the live cooking station, where the chef prepared for me a Vietnamese Chicken Roll!! So I started with that first. It tasted great, especially with the chilli sauce, but a warning, it was messy to eat. 

For main I ate some of the Moroccan Chicken with rice, along with a sneaky second Chicken Roll! The Chicken was very tasty, but lacked seasoning, that didn't mean I didn't love it. I ducked across to the bar and they luckily had a bottle of Merlot for me to have with my main course. It tasted great and made the meal well rounded!

    

Next was dessert! I sampled the double caramel mud cake, the carrot cake along with a biscuit. Once I finished that I requested a cappuccino from the bar. I asked if he had any port, he checked and he did! It happened to be same bottle I had at home, from De Bortoli 8 year aged. They didn't have a small glass, so he gave me a wine glass. He just kept pouring, and I said hold it man!

The cakes tasted pretty normal, I just wasn't wowed. The coffee was great and tasted really good. Daniel also grabbed the scones which tasted pretty tasteless, maybe because we've had a few good high teas in Sydney. To our alarm, as we finished our dessert the call came on the speaker that our flight was in the final stages of boarding, we were scared, but lucky it said on the board only boarding, not final call!

Due to our commotion, I don't have photos of the gate or of us boarding the plane. There was a priority boarding lane, which meant we never had to line up. Once onboard we were met by our great head steward Chris. We stowed our bags away and took our seats. They were spacious and comfortable. Chris offered us Juice, Champagne or lemonade, we took up the champagne to start the trip in style! This was cleared just before takeoff. He followed this with giving us our Samsung Tablet and the dinner menu. 

We took off at 6:50pm and the seatbelt sign was off by 7:00pm. Chris then took our pre-dinner drinks selections, I chose some red wine with Lemonade and Daniel took up the Peroni, this was served with  olives at 7:35pm. We asked Chris for some bread to have with our olives, he happily obliged. 

   

To our surprise it took 20 minutes for Chris to then come back and take our dinner meal order at 7:55pm. At 8:00pm our table cloths and a warm towel arrived, which was refreshing. Our starters of the smoked salmon and soup were served at 8:10pm. My salmon was beautiful with a nice salad, and Daniels vegetable soup was said to be yummy. We enjoyed this with some oil and dukkah, that we dipped our bread in.

Starters were quickly cleared at 8:25pm, and our mains came out much later at 8:40pm. Yes our palate was being stretched, but we were hungry again when we smelt our duck come out. It tasted really good!

Mains were collected at 8:55pm and deserts quickly came out at 9:00pm. To our surprise they had ran out and they only had one brownie left! Lucky I was in the mood to share with Daniel!! I believe for business class they should at least have enough selections incase everyone chooses the same dish. Overall Chris did an amazing job, he just loves what he does. He was happy to keep our mineral water topped through the night. He is a testament to the airline. My only complaint is the seat, which isn't suitable for sleeping in at all. They should consider using a larger aircraft on these longer flights. 

We arrived early into Bali, no surprise it was raining when we arrived, and yes we did get wet. They packed our bus to the terminal full to the rim. We purchased our visa on arrival, at 35USD and then cleared customs one at a time. Baggage claim was a breeze as our bags were first out. The best thing we did was get luggage carts. This helped us to transport all of our bags through security and to our guides car. What nearly gave me a heart attack was when my dad was assured to see the customs guards, and they said open your bags, what they were checking was the alcohol, thank god we got through. What shocked us was the amount of staring people with name cards at the airport. Thank god our guide was there, we had to fend through a huge crowd to get to our van. We were happy to see that they had security checks to get into the Nusa Dua Resort area. We arrived at our hotel at about 11:00pm and the porters took our bags on a trolley for us, we were already impressed. We then retired straight to our room.