2020.03.18 – Pemuteran – Banyuwangi (Indonesia) – At breakfast, we noticed the handful of resort guests were mostly retired couples – just liked us. We spoke briefly with a couple from Netherlands who were scheduled to return home in 10 days. We checked out of our nice resort at 9:30am and walked over to the main road in an attempt to catch a bemo ride to Gilimanuk’s harbor some 32km away. After only a few minutes waiting on the side of the road, a bemo going in the opposite direction stopped beside us as we yelled to the driver “Gilimanuk”. The driver continued his way but five minutes later he showed up to pick us up after we negotiated the price of our ride. Our private bemo cost us $10cdn while the resort’s hired car would have cost us $35cdn and a GrabCar would have cost us $16 if it was available in our area. At the harbor, we promptly boarded one of the many ferries servicing the 30 mins crossing between the islands of Bali and Java. As we exited the harbor on the Java side in the town of Banyuwangi, we took another bemo which was waiting for ferry passengers. The bemo driver dropped us off at our hotel some 8kms further. While we were checking into our accommodation, we inquired about organized tour to visit the nearby Ijen volcano – known for its unique blue flames. We were surprised to learn when the reception desk informed us that Ijen and other tourist sites in Java were closed for two weeks – as of a couple of days ago. Suddenly our travel itinerary became somewhat uninteresting. We would likely need to find a beach resort and honker down for at least two weeks.
While resting in our room, Jenny started to look for flights home. I was quick to reassure her that we would not find any flights available and/or at a reasonable price. Nonetheless, I entertained Jenny and started using MoMondo.com to review flight availability and pricing. Our first attempt to purchase tickets from a reseller led us to a message of the sort “Airline systems are too busy at this time. Please try later”. I told you so! Our second attempt came up with a flight from a reseller we had used for all of our domestic flights in Indonesia. In order to convince Jenny that this flight booking would not work either. We proceeded with the purchase of the flight tickets from Surabaya to Montreal for the total of $1,418cdn for both of us. To my great surprise and to Jenny’s great joy, the reservation was accepted and confirmed. We could not believe our luck as our return tickets to Montreal were only $21cdn more expensive than our flight from Montreal to Manila. Clearly, many thoughts and prays must have come down on us to make this happen. Suddenly, our focus changed from looking for a beach resort to getting to the city of Surabaya. We managed to change our two night hotel booking to a single night without penalty. And after consulting with the hotel’s reception desk friendly folks, they recommended that we took the train to Surabaya as the bus option did not offer clear departure times while with the train we could book our tickets online. We promptly reserved our train tickets for the next day. We also booked a hotel in Surabaya near the airport for our last two nights in Indonesia. In the evening, we took a GrabCar to a great and tasty local seafood restaurant. Later, we walked back to our hotel.
2020.03.19 – Banyuwangi – Surabaya (Indonesia) – After a relaxing breakfast at the hotel, we packed our bags and checked-out of our room. We had to ask the hotel staff to request for us a car to the train station. During our car ride to the train station, I shared my concern with Jenny that the train station might be closed as I was unable to locate the train station using my Grab application while the hotel staff had used a different shared car application (Go-Jek). It was only when we walked into the train station and saw other passengers that we felt relieved. We noticed a big change in the last 48h around us regarding the Covid-19 as more folks were wearing masks and staff everywhere were disinfecting public area surfaces. While waiting for the train, we were interviewed by a local news team regarding our views on the situation with Covid-19. We boarded promptly at 11:30am our premium train carriage. We enjoyed the views along our six hour train ride to Surabaya – a city on our initial travel itinerary. Upon our arrival at the Sidoarjo train station in the suburb of Surabaya, we ordered a GrabCar to our hotel some 13 kms away. The hotel staff in Banyuwangi had recommended that we opted for Sidoarjo as opposed to the main train station in order to avoid much of the Surabaya traffic grid lock. As we walked up to our nice business hotel, we were greeted outside by staff who needed to take our temperature with a thermal thermometer before we were allowed into the hotel. Thankfully, both of our temperature were normal. We enjoyed our evening meal at our hotel’s restaurant.
2020.03.20 – Surabaya – Surabaya (Indonesia) – We had a nice courtesy breakfast buffet at our hotel as the restaurant appeared deserted. Back in our room, we completed our online check-in for our tomorrow’s flight. Later, we walked out of the hotel to visit a local barbershop identified under Google maps. Although the barbershop was not officially open, they accepted to give me a well overdue haircut for $3cdn. It was re-assuring again that our body temperature upon our exit and entrance at the hotel were again normal. Back at our hotel room, we rested for a good part of the afternoon. Just as we headed out for a swim in the hotel’s nice infinity pool, we received an email from Malaysia Airlines informing us that our April 9th flight from Jakarta to Istanbul had been canceled. We were silently hoping for this news as this would enable us to apply for a full airfare refund for our previous planned visit to Turkey. We had anticipated this visit before returning home in the middle of April. We had once again our evening meal at the hotel. Later in the evening, we re-arranged our luggage in preparation for tomorrow’s 8:30am flight to Hong Kong.
2020.03.20 – Surabaya (Indonesia) – Montréal (Canada) – We woke up early this morning and were comforted by Cathay Airlines’ flight reminder email. Jenny and I showed up 10 mins earlier at the hotel’s 5:30am buffet breakfast. At 6:00am sharp we boarded the hotel’s shuttle van for a 10 minutes ride to the airport. We were expected a very chaotic environment but as we stepped into the airport, it was deadly quiet. We checked in our bagages without even queuing. The counter agent was very friendly and looked almost sad to see us leave Indonesia as he wished us a great flight home. We took pictures in front of some of Java’s famous volcanoes that we would be missing this time around. It was very strange to pass through immigration and security screening counters without queuing. All the airport staff looked happy to see passengers show up. We boarded the Cathay Airlines aircraft promptly at 7:45am. The aircraft took off 5 minutes early with about 40% of its seats occupied. The flight to Hong Kong was pleasant and uneventful without anyone queuing for the washroom. On board service was usual, except flight agents wore masks and gloves – as expected. Once at the Hong Kong airport, we walked over, as transit passengers, to our gate for our next 11h flight to Vancouver. Along the way, we were confronted once again to a very quiet airport with barely any passengers.
Prior to boarding our Air Canada flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, the staff reviewed everyone’s boarding passes and asked every passenger to verbally answer three questions regarding to Covid-19 symptoms. That’s it! No thermal temperature checked what so ever unlike we had encountered at the entrance to the Surabaya airport. We were a bit dumbfounded by the lack of health control. On board the plane, the flight agents did attempt some social distancing measures by moving passengers to emptier rows. Beverage service on board was limited to water as we were told to avoid cross-contamination. We did not quite understand the reasoning but we were fine with water.
At the Vancouver airport, we were expecting again some extensive health monitoring measures but again we were surprised to see that only a few questions at the immigration kiosk were the only extra measures in place. Some extra immigration officiers were also present and inviting passengers unwell to self-identify! As we had a very long 8h layover in Vancouver, we splurged a bit and used our credit card LoungeKey benefit to gain access to one of the Domestic Airport Lounge. We were surprised to see that the place was fairly busy. Nonetheless, we had no problem finding comfortable seats. Throughout our six hour stay there, we enjoyed free beverages (lattes, juice, soft drink) and food from a small buffet options. Exceptionally, due to Covid-19, the shower facilities were closed. When we left the lounge, we felt we got good value from the $32usd/person access fee.
2020.03.22 – Vancouver – Montréal (Canada) – The check-in for our flight to Montreal had essential to health monitoring measures. Our red-eye 4h flight offered no food service – only water. Our arrival in Montreal was no different than any other time. After retrieving our luggage, we managed to reach the nearby Dorval ViaRail station after inquiring a few times about the pick-up location of the free ViaRail Airport shuttle. The train service to Ottawa was pleasant and efficient. Upon our arrival at the train station, we ordered a Uber ride to home. Thankfully, Victoria had kindly managed, with help of Nick, to fill-up our fridge with basic food supplies ahead of the start of our 14-day quarantine.
