Day 290: Cutting It Close

The previous day I had returned to the bus station as part of my city explorations to see about booking a bus ticket to Singapore for my flight out of Asia. At the office they told me that there were lots of free seats, and that if I just showed up the next day I could just get on one of the buses that left every hour. When I actually got to the bus station to do that though, I found out that the next two buses had been cancelled because nobody/not enough people had booked it. This meant that I had to take the 1pm bus for what was supposed to be about a 5 hour ride (including going through customs) to Singapore, and my flight left at 8:20pm. I wasn't sure how long it would take for me to get from the bus stop to the airport, or exactly how long before the flight the check-in counter closed, but I knew it would be tight.

I'm pretty good at planning out contigencies and figuring out how to streamline the events in my control as much as I can, and then not stressing out about the things outside of my control. I used the extra time I had at the bus station waiting for the later bus to eat and to convert the last of my leftover Malaysian currency into Singapore dollars so I'd have money for a metro ticket to the station, and once on the bus couldn't do much but sit and wait. It took just over 4 hours to get to the border, and with the two border stops and driving through to the city it took almost exactly the expected 5 hours. The stop was pretty close to the metro line, and I was lucky in that it was on the same line as the airport, and on the same side of the city. In the end I got to the airport with almost an hour and a half before my flight, which is plenty of time. In the end, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have worried as much as I did, because I find a lot of other people tend to plan things according to the best case scenario, which is basically what happened. I just know that there can be a lot of delays in a long bus trip crossing between countries, and only feel comfortable with a large buffer. In the end though, everything worked out this time.

My flight took me from Singapore to Jakarta where I was supposed to have a 1.5 hour layover. That turned into a 4.5 hour layover as there was an equipment problem with the plane and takeoff kept getting pushed back. Eventually they got things fingured out and we took off for the overnight flight to Melbourne.