Bangkok Trip, Day 5, Going back to Jakarta

Yesterday was my last day for the trip. We had half day lecture and quiz. After that we had our lunch in the cafeteria on 7th floor of the building. Thai team has prepared the menu for us.
Sui Ying managed to take a picture of us. We had to eat fast because it would take at least 1 hour to our animal lab. It’s located in Mahidol University, Veterinarian Faculty.

Everyone in the van was sleeping on the way to the university. When we reached the place, we had our weekly teleconference with our big boss. I let my direct supervisor to talk for the team.

I only had half way through doing the Lap. Low Anterior Resection because it was already 3.30 PM. I and Mr. Kim must catch the plan. We were worried that the traffic will be bad, especially it’s Monday. It took only 1 hour from the university to airport. I said goodbye to Mr. Kim before entering the airport as our check in desks are in separate location.

I had to complain again when I checked in. Airasia charged me 7 kg of excess baggage, Baht 165 per kg. My baggage was 22.7 kg. They said the limit is 15kg. I told them my baggage was more than 15 kg when I departed from Jakarta and Airasia Jakarta had no problem with that. And the staff said it doesn’t apply in Thailand. Whaaat??? How come it’s not standardized? Soooo silly. Anyway, my training binders caused it so I can claim to office. But still, I was disappointed.

Since the boarding time would be at 7.45 PM and the time was still 5 PM, I had enough time to do my prayer. The airport muslim prayer room is nice as compared to Jakarta airport. I had my Zhuhur and Ashar prayer there then working with my laptop until Maghrib time came. I had my dinner at Tate Café, at Level 3 of the airport, same level with the prayer room. There are many restaurants there to choose. I was hoping to see Dairy Queen because I was craving for strawberry banana ice cream they are promoting.
The S & P café in the airport doesn’t serve ice cream and cakes as they do in the other place across Dusit Thani Hotel.

I started to move to immigration section as time was 7.00 PM. Passing the immigration section I found a beautiful piece of art. It’s a long statue of Thai people holding long snake. I didn’t have a time to take the picture of it. Also, there’s a throne-like seat near the statue.
Many shops inside. Damn, The Creamy & Fudge is there, Dairy Queen is also there. Again, no time to buy ice cream, must hurry up to gate F4. Even there’s a corner of Thai spa products that I’d like to buy some from if I had enough time to shop.

I must go through a security check. I pulled out my laptop, took off my blazer, let the officer checked my bag and the dried foods I brought. When I arrived at boarding room, Airasia officers checked our handcarried bags. They weighed the bags, if they are exceeds 7 KG, we must pay the excess baggage. Oh man, Airasia really pissed me off on this trip! My handcarried bag was 14 KG, excess of 7 KG. The problem was that they said it was too big to be placed in the head storage so they must check it in. Means, the excess baggage was not 7 KG, but 14KG! I said I had my laptop inside it, I didn’t want to check the bag in. They asked me to keep the laptop with me. I only had plastic bag so I put the laptop in the plastic bag.
The amount to be paid was Baht 1,980 (12 KG excess baggage after I took out the laptop). When it was in the check in counter, I could go to ATM to withdraw some money, but at that time I only had Baht 500 and IDR 450,000! My credit card is over limit, so I really didn’t have that much to pay them.
Since it was boarding time, they accepted whatever money I had. They took Baht 500, so they only charged me 3 KG.
I didn’t mind to pay the excess but how Airasia did it really made me angry and upset. They should have weighed the handcarried bags at check in counter so passengers have chance to get some money from ATM or exchange their money. Another thing is that their regulations must be applied in any countries. Isn’t it strange Airasia in Jakarta let me go with my excess baggage then Airasia Bangkok charged me?????

The flight took 3 hours 25 minutes and I didn’t feel comfortable at all sitting inside the plan. I needed water but they ran out of it, so I must buy orange juice. What’s the problem just to stock the bottled mineral water on board?
Not to mention I kept thinking about my handcarried bag which didn’t have any lock. If I had a choice, I would have not chosen Airasia to fly for flight that is more than 2 hours. But it was my Vice President’s decision.

There’s another story during the hectic of my overweight hand carried baggage.
There were 2 females from Indonesia who wanted to boarding but they didn’t have boarding pass. One is at age of 40s and one is still a teenager. They can’t speak English. So I approached them and asked what happened. They came from village and will work overseas as house maids. They came from different labor agents. I saw their plane tickets. The older female will fly on January 20 while the girl must fly that night. I feel bad to see their situation. I wanted to help but I must board my plane. They are in other country and don’t know English at all. They showed airport staffs their documents but they don’t understand what the staffs said. I pray for them.

December 23, 2006: One day trip to Singapore (Airport)

I had to make decision to go to Singapore to pick up the equipments for Margono Hospital. Selvi and I have monitored the shipments for the whole week.
Integra has done some mistakes!
My concern now is that Christmas is coming, people and office will have their holiday.
Even IndoExpress, our freight forwarder is off on Friday, Jan 22. Another change of plan then.
I asked them to prepare things before their day off so when I'm in Singapore nothing's gonna go wrong.

======

So,

It's time to go to Singapore, pick up the goods, and deliver them to the hospital. I couldn't sleep the whole week thinking what will happen during my trip.

Once I arrived at Changi, first thing to do was to call Birkart (our other forwarder), and check if everything is OK. I saw free public phones but (this is silly) I didn't know how to use it although I have read the instruction.

I went to exit door, found a seat, thinking what to do. Called Rose at Birkart, with my cell phone (I can imagine how much the figure on my next month bill).

I asked her the progress of the shipment. I and Selvi knew that we took a risk to come here, but I have pushed them for shipping it on time.

Rose told me that if I take the goods out of their office I must pay 5% GST. I was surprised, because my boss told me that he picked up Thermage machine from IndoExpress without paying the tax because it didn't go out of airport area.

Rose said her office is not in Change airport area.

Decided to have my lunch first, bought Burger King, I forgot the name but it was good. It has mushrooms in it. Then I took a taxi to go to Birkart's office.

It was far from airport, I thought it was in the same area. I see the situation now.

Arrived in Birkart office, looked for Rose. She was a nice lady, she's malay.

The goods worthed around EUR 20,000. I didn't have any money to pay 5% tax (although I can reclaim it at the airport). It wasn't required so office didn't give me much money.

Then I asked Rose to check status of the shipment, goods were still in Taiwan, . Yesterday night it was in Taiwan too, no progress????!!!!

Those were the most important goods I need.

While there were some disposable goods (small package) already arrived at IndoExpress office and have been delivered to Birkat office, Rose could not release it as she didn't know how to prepare the permit without me paying the GST. My goodness! I called IndoExpress in Indonesia, Rose called their Singapore office. No one there, it was 2.30 PM. All Birkart people has gone home, it was holiday season, it was Saturday. Only Rose and her colleague (she asked to) stayed.

I waited for any progress, seems nothing happened. Suddenly Rose's colleague scolded me, asked me what my company wanted them to do, etc, and what didn't make any sense that she had bought movie tickets and would be late because of me.

I was under HUGE pressure thinking about us failed to deliver, got scolded with some stupid reason given!

What the he** lady! You don't talk like that to your customer! I'm your customer, and you gave me a selfish reason: you were late to watch your movie. What a

I work in a service business, I sacrifice my personal things for my clients!

I stared at her. Didn't know what to say in English! I was sooo upset. Fortunately Rose was still helpful, I felt bad because held her at work at this time. But we didn't have any choice.

I called Selvi, said that we have done our best but we didn't get any results today.

I really want to scream loudly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How come this can be happening? It's like my nightmare come true.

======

Went to Changi airport with a long face.

While waiting for my flight, I tried to enjoy Changi facilities and services.
Had some snack, yeah,....never forget my dear tummy :)
Took some pictures. They had a live music in the lobby of departure hall, playing Christmas carols.

My dinner was on 2nd floor, had Hainamese chicken and rice.

Flew home


======

I went back to Jakarta empty handed. Must report to boss, to our partner, and to the hospital. We can't afford to pay huge amount of penalty, USD 35,000! It doesn't make any sense.
The key is to negotiate things.

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Power down in Palembang Aiport! (February 11, 2006 )

It has started! My travelling schedule again...........

On Feb 8, I went to Palembang (it's capital of South Sumatera).

It was so amazing how can they let the power down for 2 hours in this new airport!

Every time I travel, I always hope to get home soon, at least on time. But, you can't rely on the local airlines here.

At first, I could predict that it would be late, as usual. When the plane arrived in the airport (30 minutes late of course) and we were about to boarding, suddenly the power went down.

We waited, and waited....No one cared to explain to passengers about what was happening!!!!

I sighed...............There goes my night! Babies started crying, the gentlements got angry......No airline officers or airport officers in the boarding lounge. What the he_ _ !!! What a bad customer service. I was getting hungry.

If only the plane didn't arrive late, we would have been on our way back to Jakarta then!

The silly thing was, the airport office didn't have a certain answer from the power company, when the power would be on again.

Lots of yelling and shouting from passengers...........Finally, I was home again! Thanks you ALLAH.

Airports

(I have my story about this on August)

Following my posting on August about Jakarta International Airport (Soekarno-Hatta), here are some pictures I took from airport waiting lounge in Incheon (South Korea). Kinda dark....

I need to get the pic of KLIA waiting lounge from Henry (Kuala Lumpur International Airport). Henry told me that he accidentally deleted all of our pictures from his digicam. Oh well, I got to use mine then:

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, waiting room

August 11, 2005 : SOEKARNO-HATTA AIRPORT (compare to the ones in other Asia countries)

This feeling always appears. I went overseas, I saw great airport buildings (the structure, the decoration, the cleanliness, the sophistication, the great environment and arrangement).

When I landed home, I must face the reality here. Jakarta airport is still in good condition, but it really needs redecoration and staff improvement!
Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Guangzhou airport are like exclusive shopping malls.

The waiting rooms have wall to wall carpeting, the seats are comfy.....Those are airports in big cities. Not to mention airports in smaller cities, like Penang-Malaysia and Kun Ming-China, SAME!

Now, see Jakarta airport: it's gloomy, waiting rooms aren't nice, no carpeting, the seats are old and not comfy for my butt and back. One good thing is that they have wash room and mushola down stairs.

I got a not-so-good treatment from a custom officer after I got back from KL this Monday.
See, I wear jilbab. And there were Indonesian women workers came back from Arabian countries and they wore close clothing and jilbab.
But they can't go through custom in the regular queue, they had to gather and will be lead by some officer (actually these officers just want some money from the workers!)
I continue my walk to custom gate.
No discipline there, there were a lot of people wanted to go out of the gate, but only few gates were open. Only one gate was open for Indonesia passport holders, but four gates for foreign passport holders. But we all didn't care, we queued everywhere. As long as we can go out fast.

When it was my turn, I handed over my passport to the officer.

A conversation occured:
Officer: Dari mana neng ? (dengan nada melecehkan) - Where did you go, dear? (harrasing tone)
Me: Dari Kuala Lumpur (dgn nada agak kesal) - from Kuala Lumpur (annoyed feeling)
Officer: Emang Kerja apa di sana? (masih dgn nada belagu) - Well, what did you do there? (still in that same tone)
Me: Training! (with disgust feeling)

(Hey, I know what you think shithead! You think I'm one of those workers, huh, because I wear jilbab? You can't treat people that way, especially to the same Indonesian. Either it's me or workers, your job is to provide service. So, smile and be nice, not be an a**hole!)

Oh God, when you all snap and realize how you can be modernized and improved with that attitude?

July 14, 2005 : Lounge Room in airport: It's so cool....

I may say I was a little bit late to enjoy a previlege I have from my gold credit cards (ehemmm......). I always wanted to go in a lounge room everytime I fly. But, don't know why, I have never stepped my foot in the lounge room, although the waiting room in airport is not comfortable.

So, yesterday when I and my colleague waited to fly back to Jakarta, my colleague, Heri talked me in to this. The waiting room in Hasanudin Airport is not very bad compare to the one in Badarudin Airport (Palembang). At that time, it was hot. I had an idea to go to lounge room, I asked Heri if he has gold credit card too so we can go in together. He doesn't have it, but he encouraged me to go there and enjoy it. I said no, because I will leave him alone. He said it was fine. Then after some time of persuasion, I decided to check out the lounge room. Just to see if we can use my two gold credit cards.

So, went we go to El-John Lounge, we found out that my NGA card can't be used there, but my other card can.....And, surprise, surprise, with only 1 card, it can be used for 3 persons, FREE!!!! Oh, I love it.

And, it was very comfortable. Many snacks and drinks are served! There was toilet and mushola. Very cool......We enjoy those right away. The flight was delayed, so we must wait for 1 more hour. But I didn't mind this time.

One problem : there were some old men smoking! Hey, it's an AC room here!!!!

I couldn't stand the smoke and we got out. Do you know what we did? We went to another lounge room-TORAJA Lounge Room! Just next door.

Voila.......The room is a lotta nicer, there are couches.......Great, we were sleepy and we found couch! No one's smoking, even better!

Next time, I'll wait in the lounge room!

Toraja Lounge Room