Was in Bali for the NSW school holidays arriving on the Saturday 3rd of October to an absolute Sh###t fight at Denpasar airport. We landed via Garuda at 2.30pm and as soon as we hit the immigration area it was nothing less than chaotic.
There were so many people huddled together that you could not differentiate (spel??) as to which line was for VOA and which was for immigration. Luckily an airport worker showed us the direction for the VOA and paid immediately (no queues) then we turned around to a see of people and could not work out where the lines ended. We ended up against the windows and proceeded to wait for 2 hours until we got to our bags.
I felt so sorry for families with small children as we were all so crammed together we were touching one another. I noticed some people in other lines pushing in and people arguing and others negotiating an easy path thru the queues. I overheard one airport worker being approached by an extended family group of about 10 (aussies) and they were asking how much to put through quick and he replied $200dollars (can't remember whether this was AUS or US) It was like being at the Royal Easter Show on their busiest day, I have never experienced it this bad before.
They really need to do something about the crowd control as there were no barriers identifying queues and if something bad were to happen in that area many people would be crushed. There were a total of 7 booths operating,(very slowly I might add)and at least 4-5 plane loads.
Finally off to the Jayakarta, where we had organised to stay in a privately owned 1 bedroom apartment within the Jayakarta Hotel. We couldn't get into our room until 9.30pm that night so we had a swim in the pool and took ourselves off for a walk and some drinks and dinner at Billy's. We were all exhausted by 10pm bali time and couldn't wait to crawl into bed.
The apartment was more than adequate for our family ( 2 girls 10 and 12. We had a large fridge, kitchen 2 TVs 2 DVD players, fully airconditioned and a Playstation as well, the kids were in heaven. It was very nicely furnished and big enough for all of us. More info to follow.
cheers
kathy