Arduous Start of Trip - November 10th to 12th, 2025

 

And so it begins, the 11th trip my sister and I have taken.  Twelfth if you count the trip to Alaska that also included my husband and some friends.  The above itinerary doesn't include the first part of the trip we did on our own.  We actually left on Monday, November 10th from Eugene, OR.  We had a flight scheduled to depart at 5:45 pm but, if you remember, the country was at the end of a 40-day government shutdown and flights were being cancelled.  Yep, our flight was one of them.  We were rescheduled to fly out at 1:13 pm and arriving at Seattle at 2:25. Ok, another 4 1/2 hours added onto our trip.  But we already had a 5-hour 15-minute layover in Seattle.  So, we ended up with a 9 hour 45-minute layover in Seattle.  

Thank goodness we both have United credit cards that have lounge passes as perks.  We went to the lounge for a bite to eat.

The lounge wasn't busy, so we found a booth in the back and stretched out for a bit.  I don't know if either one of us slept but it was good to get the feet up.  They kicked us out when they closed at 10 pm.  At 12:10 am on November 12th, we flew out of Seattle on EVA Air.  Our 13 hour 10-minute flight got us into Taipei, Taiwan on November 13th.  We were lucky that we were the only two in our 3-seat section but still, neither one of us slept much.   

At Taipei we laughed at these signs then headed to another lounge to eat and relax.  Sadly, this one was busy and didn't have any places to lay down unless you paid out some big bucks for the privilege.  This was a 4 hour 40-minute layover.  

The last leg of the journey had us flying out of Taipei on this EVA Air jet all painted up with Hello Kitty characters. This was a 5 hour 20-minute flight. 

The seat backs had entertainment systems that were very old.  As we boarded, they were playing kid's music, probably from Hello Kitty.  You think?!

We laughed about the plastic ware on this flight.  Really, this is a little too much Hello Kity for me.  Service was minimal on both this flight and the previous EVA Air flight.  If you asked for water, they gave you less than 1/2 of a small cup.

Flying into Denpasar, Indonesia.  Most people just say flying into Bali, but Bali is an island not a city.

So, travel from Eugene to Bali took 34 hours and 7 minutes.  If we count the time from my house to the hotel in Bali, it's more like 38 hrs.  We were exhausted because neither one of us slept well on the planes. Below is a video of the fire dancers that performed at the hotel that night. Video taken from our balcony. Don't know when it ended because, with my ear plugs in, my body decided it had had enough and I fell asleep around 8:30 pm.