We're here

We arrived in Balikpapan a couple of days ago now. I have been much to tired to even think about posting until today.

We were allowed to take the buggy onto the plane free of charge. Hooray!

We had a tearful farewell at Heathrow with mum and dad and we ventured through the security area where I asked the a member of staff if there was anyone who could assist me through. I had already asked the check in desk who said I would have to ask for help at each point.


This is the response I received:


'No. You should have brought a bigger buggy to hang everything on or travelled with someone to help you. Maybe you can find another passenger to help you.' Like that was going to happen!!


Nice! This stopped me feeling quite so upset because I was so annoyed. Despite her comment, as soon as I got to the end of the scanning queue, the staff there came up to me, asked me if I was travelling alone with my toddler and prmoptly provided two members of staff to assist me through and I got to queue jump into the bargain. Quite clearly the first woman was a complete jobsworth and on a power trip.


At the gate the ground crew helped us onto the plane. So I thought all would be well.


We settled into our seats in our little bank of two, watched some telly and waited for the in flight meal to be served. When the air stewardess reached us she asked whether we wanted the chicken or the beef. I opted for the chicken and asked whether Oscar (aka Mr Pickle) would be having the child's meal. I was met with a long stare and a request to see our boarding passes. 'You haven't booked a child's meal, he can have an adulats meal, chicken or beef?' Fabulous, i had even checked the online check in screen for a place to book a child's meal and couldn't see one.


The chicken was very spicy so I opted for the beef meal. He ate the breadroll. 

Considering the posters and banners around Heathrow proclaiming that 'It's official. Ethiad are the best airline in the world', I find this very hard to believe from a cattle class customer's perspective. They crew seemed overworked and understaffed. They did not seem interested in making our flight as painless as possible and it felt like we were flying the long haul equivalent of Ryan Air. Kirst - they needed you there to show them what customer service in the air means!


All the stewards and stewardesses were in business class as much as they could manage and our cries of 'stewardess, we know we are ugly and you are beautiful but please help us' fell on deaf ears.


We changed at Abu Dhabi and got onto the next flight under our own steam. There were people in our seats, a young couple with a screaming toddler, with a stewardess asking them to move. They vacated our seats and I thought phew, they are going to go and sit somewhere else, unfortunately the somewhere else was the row in front of ours. The child screamed the entire flight. All eight hours without stopping for breath. I think there is an opera singer in the making there.


Oscar managed to sleep for about two hours on and off and kept asking me to stop the noise. If only I could have! I managed to sleep for about an hour. I have nothing further to add about this flight other than the fact that the service was worse than the first flight and the food was terrifying. I ate a croissant and Oscar ate nothing.


Jeremy met up at Jakarta, which was a very nice surprise and a huge relief. It would have been a nightmare getting across from arrivals to departures on our own with all the baggage.Mr Pickle was very pleased to see him.


We boarded our flight and Mr Pickle was asleep within about five minutes. This was a Garuda flight and the service and meals were streets ahead of Ethiad.


It was very late when we arrived at the house so we all went to bed and woke up late the next morning. On the bright side, the lack of sleep on the Ethiad flight has meant that we got over jet lag quite quickly as we had no problem sleeping all night. Mr Pickle is struggling a bit with his stomach's request to eat dinner at around two in the morning (about seven pm in the UK). Hopefully tonight he will sleep through this as I am packing him full of food today.


We haven't seen much of Balikpapan so far but I am sure with the weekend coming we will get to visit some sights.