Today is a travel day. I will be trying out a new airline, Singapore Airlines, flying from Siem Reap to Bali via Singapore. I've heard many good things about Singapore Airlines on the internet so I am excited to fly with them.

I woke up around 6am and finished packing up my backpacks. I had arranged yesterday with Shwet a ride to the airport at 8:15am, and I woke up early to give myself one last opportunity to walk around Siem Reap and grab some breakfast before heading to the airport. Usually when looking for a place for breakfast, I search on Google Maps for places that appear to have good food and good coffee. Luckily in Southeast Asia it is pretty easy to find such places. Today, I walked about five minutes to Bio Lab Cafe. It was 7am and they had just opened, so I was the first customer of the day. I ordered an iced Pandan Latte, which was creatively served in a beaker (pandan is a plant commonly used in southeast asian cooking, it has a distinctive green color and tastes similar to vanilla), and eggs benedict. I love collecting stickers from cool places I visit, especially cafes, and I noticed that all of the drinkware in this cafe had a sticker on it, so I asked the guy if they had any extra stickers, and after looking around for a couple of minutes he gave me two of them! I left a 50% tip out of gratitude.

I returned to the hotel and grabbed my bags from the room, before heading downstairs, where Shwet was waiting. The ride to the airport took about twenty minutes. There was not a very long line to check in at the airport. At the check in counter, the agent made me download the PeduliLindungi app, which is used in Indonesia to track Covid vaccination and quarantine status. At this time, there is no mandatory quarantine in Indonesia, and the agent did not even check to see if I had created an account or uploaded my vaccination status once I downloaded the app, she just checked that I had downloaded (let the record show that I was never asked to show this app the entire time I was in Indonesia).

The immigration and security procedures went swiftly, and I was in the international departures section of Siem Reap Airport. The main section of the departures hall is very aesthetically pleasing, and has a couple of cool shops selling local crafts at high markups. It is certainly adequate for the small number of tourists that would pass through the airport on any given day. The airport also has a Plaza Premium Lounge which a variety of credit cards give access to, including the Amex Platinum card. The Plaza Premium Lounge is absolutely beautiful with ample seating and a small but robust selection of foods. Frankly the lounge had no business being so nice given the size of the airport. I ate a small bowl of curry laksa in the lounge before heading to the departure gate.

I made it to the gate at 9:40am when boarding was scheduled to board, but I noticed that passengers were still getting off from the inbound flight. I waited in the gate area for a little bit before it was time to get on board. There are no jet bridges at the Siem Reap Airport, and planes just park at stands located directly across from the gate area, so after my boarding pass was scanned it was a very short walk to the plane. One advantage of parking at a stand like this is passengers can board through both the front and rear doors. My seat, 52A, was just behind the center of the cabin, so I boarded through the rear stairs.

Although Singapore Airlines does not require masks anymore onboard or at Changi Airport, the Cambodian government requires masks onboard all incoming and outgoing flights. This wasn't enforced by AirAsia on the way here, but was being enforced by Singapore Airlines. I found this a little interesting considering nobody was really wearing masks anywhere in Siem Reap. The flight was operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8, and the seats were very comfortable with ample legroom. About 45 minutes into the flight a hot meal was served, with a choice between chicken rice and beef goulash. I opted for the chicken rice, which was quite good for airplane food. It was served with a side of tiramisu.

We arrived on time at Singapore Changi Airport, where I had a two hour layover. Since all flights at Changi Airport are international flights, they've designed the airport in a brilliant way where all arriving passengers are spit out directly into the main departure area, where arriving passengers can exit to the immigration hall, and transfer passengers can just remain there. Security screening is conducted at the departure gate right before boarding time. This means I was free to go anywhere in the airport. Our flight from Siem Reap arrived at Terminal 3, which is located on the opposite side of the airport from Terminal 2, where my flight to Bali was departing, so I elected to take the skytrain across the airport to Terminal 2 first. This ended up being a questionable decision: half of Terminal 2 is under construction, and the other half just re-opened recently after being closed for Covid reasons. This means that there weren't many shops, restaurants, or lounges open.

I went to the upstairs section of Terminal 2 to Straits Village Food Hall, which is basically a recreation of a typical Singapore Hawker Centre inside of the airport. There are 10 food stalls to chose from, and you can order from a central touch screen kiosk from one or more of them. I ordered a pork katsu curry set from the Japanese stall, and a cendol from the dessert stall (cendol is a typical Southeast Asian dessert, made with shaved ice topped with pandan jelly, coconut milk, and palm syrup).

After eating I headed to the departure gate, F42. At the entrance to the gate area I needed to go through security. The security officer saw my toothpaste through the x-ray and said he needed to confiscate it, because it was too big. I was pretty confident it was not too large, as the limit is 100mL or 3.4 fl oz, but there was no volume measure on the tube, only a weight measure, which said 121g or 4.3 oz (I actually find it weird that the tube is measured in weight and not in volume, is toothpaste not a liquid?). The security officer saw this and told me the limit was 3.4 oz. I tried to explain that there are two different ounces, one used for weight and one used for volume, and that my toothpaste was less than 100mL. He said "I understand you but this is the policy," which I interpreted as he clearly did not understand. Toothpaste is an easily replaceable item so I knew I shouldn't really care about needing to toss it, but I was still really frustrated about the whole situation. This never would have happened if the US used the metric system!

After security I proceeded to the gate area where my boarding pass was scanned. There was also a QR code for passengers to scan to fill out the customs declaration for Indonesia. It is an electronic form with only a single field for your full name, and my name did not fit in the field (I'm not sure why they need a character limit for a field on an electronic form, surely there are other passengers out there with long names too!). I got on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that would take us to Denpasar in Bali, and just like the last flight my seat was 52A, a window seat.

Like the last flight, the seat was very comfortable with plenty of legroom and a modern in-flight entertainment system. Shortly into the flight, a meal was served, this time there was a choice between a chicken pasta or a shrimp tom yum soup. I'm a little wary of seafood on a plane after I had a very overcooked fish dish on an Air France flight a few weeks ago, so I went with the chicken pasta. The pasta was very good but I couldn't find any chicken! The pasta was served with some chocolate ice cream.

It was an easy flight and we touched down on time at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali. It is currently the rainy season in Bali so we flew through some storm clouds on our final approach, and landed amidst a downpour. Luckily we parked at a jet bridge and did not need to walk through the rain. I waited in the very short line to pay for my Visa on Arrival, which cost $35 for an up to 30-day stay, and then proceeded to wait in the longer line for immigration.

Indonesian immigration is really slow, probably because the officers love to ask questions. Of course you want to tell the truth when being interviewed by immigration officers, but they get really confused if you provide an answer different from what they were expecting. Here is how the conversation went: "You are from the USA? Yes. Do you live in the USA? Yes. How long was the flight from America? Oh well I flew here from Singapore (I gave him my boarding pass so he knows this). How long was the flight from Singapore? About two hours. How long were you in Singapore? It was only a layover so about two hours. Two hours? Yes it was only a layover. How long was the flight from America to Singapore? Oh well I was in Cambodia. How long was the flight from Cambodia? About two hours. (Maybe he is confused because I keep saying two hours??). How long was your flight? Cambodia to Singapore two hours, then in Singapore two hours, then Singapore to here two hours. What is your job? I'm a student. Okay, how long will you stay here for? Three days. Only three days? So short? Yes I know it is too short. Then you go back to America? No then I will go to Australia. Australia? For transit back to America? Yes (this is not true but what does he care, this conversation is long enough already). Where will you stay here? In Ubud. Ubud? Yes Ubud." Then he handed me back my passport. The whole conversation took about five minutes.

Finally I made it through immigration and customs and headed out to get a ride to my hotel in Ubud. In Indonesia, people commonly use one of two apps for ridesharing, Grab and Gojek. I already had Grab downloaded from prior visits to Southeast Asia. At the airport in Denpasar there is even a "Grab Lounge" which is an air conditioned waiting room where people will help arriving passengers use the Grab app to call a ride.

After waiting about ten minutes my Grab arrived and I settled in for the 90 minute ride to Ubud. The ride to the hotel is only about 35km, but the roads in Bali are very narrow, winding, and congested, so the drive takes a while. The hotel I was staying at shows up in Google Maps but not in the Grab app, so I had to manually drop a pin on the map inside Grab. The driver did not believe me when I told him the location was correct, and insisted that I help him navigate. As we approached the vicinity of the hotel, the driver asked me to tell him when to turn (his phone showed the correct street so I was just going to tell him to turn when his phone would tell him anyway). As we approached the turn I told him repeatedly to turn right, but he either couldn't see the street or was confused and just kept driving. Then I repeatedly told him he passed the turn and so we had to find a place to turn around on this super narrow road. Then, as we headed down the street where my hotel was located, he wanted me to tell him where to stop (the same place his GPS was going to tell him to stop), and got very confused when I told him to stop there. In the end, I made it safely which is all that matters.

It was 9:30pm and dark when I arrived at the hotel. The guy at the front desk just gave me the key, showed me to the room, and told me to talk to his friend in the morning (he spoke very little English). The hotel was cash only, so I had not paid yet, and assumed I would pay in the morning.

I had no toothpaste and none was provided by the hotel, so I decided I would go to a convenience store to buy some. In the Ubud area there are plenty of 24/7 convenience stores but my hotel was outside of the main area and the closest one was about a 15 minute walk away. I decided to take a Grab Bike to get there. Grab Bike is a rideshare service where instead of riding in a car, you just ride on the back of a bike. You request a ride like normal in the app, and a biker shows up, hands you a helmet he has stored under the seat of the bike, and you hop on the back. It is incredibly affordable, nearly every ride I took while I was in Bali only cost the minimum fare of 12,000 Rupiah (about 80 cents). When there is a lot of traffic, you also get there faster when riding Grab Bike than you would in a normal Grab, because the bikers are good about weaving around cars to get through the traffic. I do wonder though if the app is called "Grab" because you have to grab on tightly since the driving is so crazy. I headed to a nearby Indomaret (an Indonesian convenience store chain) and bought some toothpaste.

When I got back to the hotel, I was a little hungry, so I used Grab to order some food delivery to the hotel. I ordered nasi goreng, which is Indonesian fried rice, and is found widely around Indonesia. Indonesian nasi goreng is a bit different flavor-wise than the fried rice of other cultures, it is made with some seasonings that give it a very nice smoky flavor. I enjoyed the late-night snack, then promptly fell asleep around 11pm.