Bali flight delays leave Melbourne family stuck in Indonesia with 'an hour's sleep, crying kids and a monkey eating our breakfast'

A Melbourne family holidaying in Bali are stuck on the island for at least a week and are thousands of dollars out of pocket, after a volcanic ash cloud grounded flights to and from the island for days.

Adam Perry, who has been in East Bali and Ubud for two weeks with his wife, Sarah, and children Elliot, 5, and Charlotte, 3, said he only discovered the volcano had erupted a day before the family was due to fly home Saturday morning.

“We had purposely turned our iPhones off, no Instagram and that sort of thing, to get away from social media,” he said.

“So I was none the wiser until yesterday afternoon, when I booked my taxi to the airport and then someone turned around and said ‘are you sure you’re going?'”

Mr Perry said even if they had known, it would not have changed their predicament, because their carrier, Air Asia, did not confirm their flight had been cancelled until the middle of the night before they were due to fly out.

“I spent the whole night making phone calls to Air Asia, checking if the flight had been cancelled, and Sarah was next to me with Bali belly, getting up every five minutes, so we got about an hour’s sleep last night,” he said.

“[Air Asia] didn’t really have any information or call lines, so I spent quite a few hours on the phone trying to get through to someone.”

He said Air Asia offered to put them on the first available flight out, which would not be before July 20, for $4,000.

“We could have got a free Air Asia flight if it was in the next seven days, except every single seat has been booked out,” he said.

“Virgin for example are sending new fleets over to get all their passengers back, but Air Asia didn’t do that.

“I thought ‘that’s ridiculous’ I got onto Jetstar for $2,000 but by the time I pressed confirm it told me someone else had got the flight.

“So we eventually got one that was $4,000 on Sunday [July 19] – that’s the earliest we can get.”

Mr Perry said he was still not sure if Air Asia would fully or half-refund the family’s original flights back to Melbourne, which cost more than $2,000.

He said information was hard to come by from the Denpasar airport’s website and the family were mostly relying on news updates from the Australian media.

Extended Bali holiday ‘like a bad dream’

After spending the night up trying to book accommodation and looking after his wife who was suffering from food poisoning, things only got worse for the family, he said.

“We got up and went outside for breakfast and we got attacked by a monkey – they basically jumped up and devoured our entire breakfast,” he said.

“The kids screamed and cried – so we’re there with an hour’s sleep, crying kids and a monkey eating our breakfast.”

Mr Perry said his insurance would cover up to $1,500 in expenses, which was not enough to cover the new flights, accommodation, food and another week off work for both him and his wife.

“I think I’ve been lucky we got any insurance though actually, some people haven’t got anything because it’s considered an act of God,” he said.

Mr Perry said they were now looking on the bright side of an extra week in Bali – with no new passengers coming in, alternate accommodation was not hard to come by.

“I was just very glad we didn’t find out at the airport … we’re going to try to make it a positive thing and have a really nice week I think,” he said.

“It’s like a bad dream, but we’ve turned it around, we’ve found this great place by the sea, and we’re going to go.

“At least we got a holiday, a lot of people couldn’t even come, so we’re quite lucky in that sense.”

Flights partially resumed flying out of the Denpasar airport on Saturday afternoon, with Jetstar confirming their service would begin flying again from 3:00pm and Virgin from 8:00pm.

Contact numbers for tourists

Jetstar:
Inside Australia: 131 538
Outside Australia: +61 3 9645 5999
Indonesia: 001 803 852 9779
Singapore: (65) 6499 9702

Virgin:
Inside Australia: 136 789
Outside Australia: +61 7 3295 2296
Indonesia: 001 803 061 2002

Air Asia:
Inside Australia: 1300 760 330
Inside Indonesia: +6221 2927 0999

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade:
Within Australia: 1300 555 135
Outside Australia: +61 2 6261 3305

This article was originally published by ABC News. 

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