I re-blogged a post about the airport and here is my view.Arrival
It is relatively hassle free, but it does take time. The queues for the vision arrival (USD 25) and immigration are long and slow. So be prepared with things to amuse the kids if you have had a long flight. There are people saying you can jump the queue for an extra USD 25. We didn’t go for this and I have no idea how legal it is but we saw people doing it and jumping the queue OK.
We had a driver pre-arranged and that worked well for us, obviously I can’t comment on the availability of taxis or their cost. But as you may have already have read on a previous post about taxis they are better at putting on the meter now-a-days.
Departure
We got there early as we didn’t want to have problems with traffic and getting through immigration. The traffic in the end wasn’t an issue.
Heads up they the departure tax has been raised relatively recently to IDR 200,000 each with no discount for kids. But getting through immigration again was quick and no hassle. We were there really early just as the bag drop opened. We checked in online the night before and found an internet cafe to printout the boarding cards, this was definitely worth doing as there was a queue a checkin that we jumped and the printing cost IDR 7,000 yup less than a sing dollar.
Take food, once you are through there really isn’t much choice and it’s all full. They are still fitting out the airport so hopefully over time there will be more and more options but at the moment it is minimal. It’s also more expensive than town as you are a captive audience but not excessively so. There is some shopping but again not that much, good book shop, normal alcohol, perfume and tobacco and a few other shops selling chocolate and travel goods but not your big brand shops.
One of the good things though is that you can walk past all the shops and there will be empty gates. Here the kids can make as much noise and run around as much as they like. Good to burn off some energy before having to sit in one place for x hours on a plane.
All in all
It’s a modern airport lacking the atmosphere of the old airport where you knew you were in Bali, now there are big pics near the ceiling but really it’s just a modern concrete building.
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