Food

This trip was planned around a combination of food and relaxation, with stays planned in Lombok, Hong Kong and Singapore.

After being dropped at the airport by the parentals, we embarked on our first ever Jetstar experience. Checkin was smooth and easy, and within 5 mins we had made our way through immigration and the security checkpoint.

I was "randomly" chosen to be irradiated to confirm I was not hiding dangerous items then also chosen for the drug search - but still a very quick and painless procedure.

Even though Qantas no longer flies internationally ex perth, the lounge is used by other oneworld member flights, so when we arrived we were informed that the lounge would be closing at 9.30am as the next oneworld flight wasn't until 4pm. So we had time for a quick hot drinks and stashing some Cokes and Sparkling water for the flight.

We headed to our gate, and around 10 they stated boarding. We had purchased the extra leg room seats in row 1 and for $30 they were well worth it. No seats in front of you, no barrier either. And we were lucky enough to score an empty seat next to us.

Included in our ticket was $10 to spend in food inflight (although I was pretty sure I hadn't chosen this option) so we both went for the toasted ham and cheese sandwich - it was small but ok.

The investment in the first row definitely paid off. I had read up on it and due to having to line up to get a visa on arrival and then immigration, you can end up waiting for over an hour to get through. Instead, we were first off the plane, first through both the visa on arrival counter ($25USD) and through immigration - all on about 3 mins. Unfortunately our dive bag took 20 mins to come out but probably only 20 people had come through immigration.

After heading out of the airport our car transfer to the Sheraton Senggigi was waiting for us, and we had a nice air conditioned van for our hour long transfer. We passed a lot of rice paddies, and a lot of scooters, and thanks to our driver KoKo we arrived at the resort with a few food suggestions to check out later.

At checkin we were offered some deliciously cold slushies, and when I asked what they were as they were delicious we received another round of drinks.

As we are SPG members we were housed in the SPG wing, and I am fairly sure we got a room upgrade. We have a nice balcony overlooking the pool and ocean, and we settled out here to finish our slushies and share the cake that was in our room.

After unpacking and chilling (literally - the aircon is quite cold) in the room, we went for an explore around the resort, and headed out to explore Senggigi. We found an ATM, eyed off a few restaurants and massage places, and more importantly we found a place to go watch the Geelong game tomorrow.

We headed back to the resort and went looking for drinks and settled on drinks at the pool bar for some half price happy hour drinks.

It was time for dinner so we went for a walk and settled on Asmara, about a 5 min walk from the resort, which serves German and Indonesian cuisine.

We were given bread, which tasted like a cross between bread and pretzels with genuine French buerre!

For dinner Ben went for Gulai Lemak (beef curry) and I had Pepes Ikan (fish cooked in banana leaf) - both were ok but not mind blowing.

During dinner Ben made a friend!

A good first day, and the 30C heat is a welcome reprieve from the cold back home.