(Finally) Welcome back to Tassie...

Ok almost there... on the way back to Hobart from Devonport... yes Devonport! All was going fine, I spent my last day in indonesia cruising around Ubud, a coffee here, a bit of lunch and a read there, then got dropped back to Denpasar after dinner for my flight out. Met up with Beki and Drew, who were also studying thru ACICIS, paid a huuuuuuge amount in excess baggage (bloody garuda, the no-frills airline from jogja charged me about a tenth the price) and hung round the airport waiting for our midnight flight. Everything seemed positive- our flight was called to boarding gates on time, we got thru the security gates- and then were told our flight would be delayed by 2 hours. BUgger. Beki and I had a bit of a stress cos our domestic flights to tassie were due to leave at midday, giving us an hour and a half to land, get thru customs and onto the next plane, so we asked the Garuda people if we could let Virgin Blue know we were running late but would indeed be there (fingers crossed) and what could we do... they were really dumb lol, but eventually took us to the head office, let us call oz, who told us if we get an official letter saying we were delayed, our domestic flights could be rescheduled wihtout having to pay again, if we missed them. Garuda gave everyone some midnight dinner- a toasted sandwich and chips, woo hoo, then we finally got out of there. Annoying transit passengers from Jakarta, tsk tsk. The flight was even later than they said originally, we werent scheduled to land til 11am and explained to the flight crew we had to get off quick for our connection and they said no worries, talk to the ground staff and theyd rush us thru. No such luck. We got off, had to wait 45 mins for our luggage to come out, then get thru customs, and didnt stand a chance of making our flights. And there wasnt a single Garuda ground staff around, not a single person in the terminal could help us. Stress! We got to the Virgin counter and we told there were no flights to Tassie with seats available til CHRISTMAS DAYYY... arrrgggghh stress... we headed off with our billions of bags to find the Garuda office (empty) or a Garuda counter (empty), and eventually grabbed an official looking person, had a bit of a teary explanation of things, and she found us a Garuda person, hiding amongst the empty check-in counters. Tsk tsk. The man was really nice tho. Cos Garuda delayed us and as a result we all missed our connections (about ten people, all over oz), they had to get us home... Solution: stay in Melbourne for the night, get the ferry back to tassie then taxi to hobart. Lol expensive for them... We did get put up in a nice hotel tho, the food was yummy, taxi all paid for... v early morning tho, Spirit of Tas late getting in, and late leaving... just wanted to get home! We only had sitting seats so bagged a nice couchy area and watched some tv and dozed to kill the time (all ten hours of it). Very rough seas (and lots of sick people :S) but we made it. Several titanic moments staggering down corridors and falling all over the place... and we made it! Nice deep sleep in Devonport then back to Hobart, lovely Hobart, at about lunchtime. Only 48 hours late. No biggie, rubber time- Coming from Indonesia after all ;)