Habitat for Humanity - Bali 2010!!! part 1 'Leaving NZ, and arriving in Bali'

SOOO!!! Hey guys~~
I finally got around to writing these posts, which I should have written a while ago, but now that I've started, I feel the obligation to finish this account of one the most amazing trips I've had for a LONG time.
Part 1 - 'Leaving NZ and arriving in Bali'
Part 2 - 'Week 1 in Bali'
Part 3 - 'Weekend in Kuta'
Part 4 - 'Last week in Bali, and leaving for NZ'

On the morning that I was to leave (Plane flight was at around 11 at night), I woke up and felt like CRAP (probably because I pulled an overnighter the night before, on the day of Stage Challenge - Note to self, not a good idea). I had a pretty bad fever, a headache, and lost all the energy in my body. I could barely walk. My parents were so worried that they were like 'OMG. Don't go to Bali and just stay here in NZ'. Good thing I didn't take their advice. By the end of the night, I still had the fever, but my headache had gone away courtesy to countless Panadols and other random pills. I finished packing everything I needed (a lot more medication than I had anticipated), and off I was to the airport!

Even before I got inside the airport, I met up with Song outside, and if I recall correctly, Myung Jee was also outside and the drop off area, unloading her luggage. We lugged our stuff into the airport, hoping to meet up with everyone else. (Got to the airport at 8.. a bit early IMO but we had to for various reasons that should be familiar if you have asian parents) There I encountered a group of Japanese students who were going back to Japan for the holiday. We took some photos just for the sake of it, and then we finally saw our own group. The group going to India for ECC was also there.
We checked in, checked in our luggage, got our boarding passes, and went off to the boarding gate. We stayed at BK for quite a long time, because there was nothing to do, and everyone seemed a bit tired from... well it was like 11 so yeah.. Eugene got a bad piece of chicken in his tender crisp, so he got a refund, and some free fries :P

Finally it was time to get onto the plane to Singapore (We went from Auckland to Singapore, then Singapore to Bali. In other words, we wasted another extra, i'ono what, 5-7hours on the plane. But apparently there is no direct flight from Auckland to Bali sooo :\). I was sitting next to Mr Montogomerie, our 'supervisor', and Leo (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Leo also did the overnighter, and he also had a fever and headache and crap... what have we learnt? Don't do overnighters after stage challenge). And then was the long long LONG flight to Singapore. (Btw, I was wearing A LOT cos it was cold in NZ and I was sick.. sigh.. bad idea much?)

When we finally got to Singapore (the flight was delayed by 40minutes because they needed to switch 2 tires...), we had to go directly to our next boarding gate. And then it was another long long flight to Bali. After we got to Bali, we did a Visa on arrival! Which took a while. And also, the customs visa thingy also took a while. So we spent like 1 hour standing around, doing nothing.. in the heat (Bali airport isn't very well built. It's efficient, and does the job, but that's about it).

When we got out of the airport, we were greeted with a gush of hot air. Plus I was clothed for the winter... fail much? Our hosts for the trip can over and loaded our luggage into the van, welcomed us with flower necklaces, and then we were separated into separate vans with around 4 students in each of them. We went to the money exchange place, which had excellent air conditioning (exchange rate was like, pretty epic. We were all millionaires by the time we left the building :P), and then we were off to our hotel. (the car also had AC so it was all good :P)

The ride to the hotel was even more tedious than the plane ride. We wounded through mountains and almost everyone on the van got sick. Well, mostly it was just Eugene that got sick but anyways. We sang to try and pass the time, we tried everything we could. But the 3 hour ride was too much for us after the plane rides that brought us to Bali. But FINALLY, we got to our hotel, and boy was that feeling a feeling of liberation, freed from the entanglements of sitting in a contained space for over 20 hours. We were welcomed to the hotel with fresh fruit beverages, and then we were taken to our rooms, which were a LONG way down from the reception... It seemed to take years to get to our rooms, but we were finally there.

As soon as we went to our rooms (I was sharing a room with song), I raced for the showers. Hehe~~ After that, I just went exploring around the hotels. It had a swimming pool, a pool bar, a spa, a massage thingy, and right behind the pool was the beach!!!! ><
When dinner was over, we met up in a small hall, where we introduced ourselves, and the Indo hosts introduced themselves. We were shown a video, and a Powerpoint about our stay in Indo, giving us information about our host families and other info about Indo. After this, I went straight back to my room, and went to bed while everyone else was probably doing some crazzzzyyyy stuff (hey hey, I was sick and not feeling well. And it was like 9 in the evening) Oh yeah forgot to mention, at night, in the hallway outside our rooms, geckos and frogs and other various forms of wildlife would come out and.. yeah.. do stuff O.O