North Coast or Bust

On 1 Jan 2012 I thought I purchased a ticket to Singaraja on the north coast for travel on 3 January .

Today (2 January) I had breakfast at Inna Bali. They had changed everything around from when I ate there last. They seemed to be offering only a buffet but I asked for menu and ordered what I had before. No problem except what I got was a bit different. And in the end the bill was only 50000Rp versus the menu price of 65000Rp. While at breakfast I used there WiFi to download information from Wikitravel on Singaraja and nearby beach town of Lovina, so that I could peruse places to stay back in my room.

While going over the info I found reference Surabaya. At first I thought it was another spelling of the place called Singaraja. But, on rereading I realized they were talking about connections to Surabaya from Singaraja. Bells went of in my head as I realized the ticket clerk had booked me to Surabaya. I couldn't find that on my Bali map so I pulled out my SE Asia map which shows all of |Indonesia and there was Surabaya over on Java ( The Island where Jakarta is located). I realized a mistake had been made on the ticket even though I had pointed to Singaraja on the map I had with me as the place I wanted to go.

The ticket clerk told me the trip was 10 hours which I thought was very long but thought the route must be going over mountains. I asked her if there was a mid point to break the trip in two parts but she didn't understand. Even when I showed here the map and pointed between Denpasar and Singaraja she still didn't understand. I think in addition to language difficulties between us she may not have been able to read maps. And for my part the sign over here booth said Surabaya and some other names and no Singaraja so I should have known

Today I scurried back to the terminal hoping to get a refund (the ticket had 25% penalty for cancelling)

I got to the ticket booth and tried to explain to several men (maybe bus drivers) what had happened. They said to go to the tourist police which was my plan anyway if I failed in getting a refund. The tourist police office was just outside the terminal , I explained my situation and a policeman accompanied me back to the booth and I got an immediate full refund, no questions asked. One of the men said 'mis-communication' and everyone smiled and chuckled and agreed, yes mis-communication. And I agree it was mis communication on both of our parts and in the end everyone, including me was happy.

The policeman then accompanied me across the terminal to where there were vans and pointed me to the one that goes to Singaraja. These vans have no scheduled departure and no advance ticket sales.

They depart when they are full or overfilled.

As a footnote: As we were sorting things out at the booth some English speaking guy was very irate and yelled at the woman (same who had served me) “..speak in fucking English...don't speak in [some dialect]..I can't buy a ticket unless you speak English....” And so it goes. The poor woman had very little understanding of English.