Bali Dive Blog

Air Asia is simply amazing … after the second Bali Bomb they donated 5,000 free seats to Bali in an effort to promote regional tourism to the island. Now they are giving away 2,000,000 free seats spread over every flight to all of their destinations. Tickets can be booked from 7-28 December, and travel from February-October 2006. Never one to let such an opportunity pass, we thought, let’s do it…

But to where? Ah… ADEX 2006 in Singapore. Now, Air Asia doesn’t fly direct from Bali or Jakarta to Singapore. but close enough… BATAM. And the advantage of crossing to Singapore on a ferry from Batam is that the fiscal is half-price: only 500,000 Rupiah!

So, we joined legions of others trying to book tickets on the opening day. Ah, the frustrations one will endure for free travel. Over and over again we logged into the website, over and over again we refreshed the page (tip to all: F5)… and finally we got them: confirmed tickets for five: Hengky, Thea, Gregor, Gavin and Mimi traveling Bali-Jakarta-Batam-Jakarta-Bali for a whirlwind trip to Singapore for only Rp. 888,000! You have to pay the taxes and for some reason the infant’s tickets were priced normally. (Gavin’s still in my stomach, but we figure we’ll take him).

Kapal Selam members went crazy… after much trial and tribulation nearly everyone managed to snag free tickets. We would represent at ADEX. So what is ADEX you are asking yourself? Ah…

ADEX stands for Asian Dive Expo. It’s held annually in different cities in Asia. This year it will be at the Suntec Center in Singapore from April 21-23. Basically it’s a dive trade show open to the public with displays from dive operators, marine conservationist programs, equipment manufacturers, distributors and suppliers, training agencies, dive travel specialists, safety organizations, tourism bodies, and liveaboard operators. Right up our alley. Sure to inspire us to spend more dollars on new equipment and trips to far-flung destinations. Yippeeee….

But since we’ll be in Singapore, it will also be an opportunity to indulge in two favorite pastimes of all Submariners… food and shopping- specifically camera shopping for all the underwater photography enthusiasts. So while I struggle with Gavin and Gregor, Hengky will certainly be loading up on new filters and other accessories to keep him busy through the year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 19:21 and is filed under SCUBA Diving, Bali, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.