So here's what happened:

I arrived for my flight at about half past eight, only half an hour later than planned, and joined the back of the rather large check-in queue. It took 45 minutes to get to the front, but I got there with about 15 minutes before bording and everything went smoothly. I got my boarding pass and my bag went through fine, so I headed towards the nearest travelex to get some Indonesian Rupiah. I figured it best to do this while I was still in an English speaking country where I knew my bank cards would work. Only they didn't. I've got two debit cards and a credit card with me and all three failed to get me anywhere. So I went and tried the cards in the nearest ATM, but no luck. My transaction was temporarily unavailable, apparently.

Now I know that logically speaking, it's unlikely that all three cards would happen to get cancelled on exactly the same day, when they've been working fine for the last month, but I had 5 minutes left to get through security and get to my gate and locic was the last thing my mind was capable of. As if to prove this, the first thing I did was to phone home for advice, waking my parents up at half past midnight (on my mum's birthday of all days), and genuinely thinking they might actually be able to help me. In the end I went over to Garuda Airways helpdesk and asked them what to do. It seemed I had the option of either running through security (not literally of course, that'd look suspiscious), catching my flight and ringing various banks once I was at the other side in the hope that I could sort it out there or getting my bag pulled from the flight and getting a transfer to the next flight to Indonesia, on Sunday. I chose the second option, decided to get down to the HSBC in Sydney and find out what the hell had happened.

Having calmed down slightly while waiting for my bag to arrive in the baggage handling place, I thought I'd try a different ATM and see if I could do anything at all with my cards. Low and behold, each and every one of them allowed me to get $20 out, check my balance or even top up my phone if I so wished.

It's now the next day, I've been to the HSBC and a different travelex and everything has been explained. First off, travelexes in Australia don't take UK cards of any description. Why the girl in tn the Airport travelex didn't know this, I don't know, but if she had, I'd currenly be on a beach in Bali. And it would seem that the ATM that didn't like me in the airport was just out of service.

So out of all this, I still have three working cards, two extra days in Sydney, my foreign money before I get to the airport, an earlier shuttle booked for tomorrow morning and I'm even gonna book my first night's accomodation in Bali before I get there. So I suppose it's all for the best in the long term. Plus I got some cool photos last night to make up for not taking my camera the first time.

Today has been spent in and around Paddy's Markets and Darling Harbour. Hardly anything to write home about, although inspired by my own blog post earlier, I bought the biggest apple I could find felt satified that I might manage my 5-a-week this week.

I'm gonna phone ahead and practice my Balinese with this accomodation booking. Hopefully my Lonely Planet guide is accurate.

I'll leave you with my photos from last night. It turns out you can do star trails in a city too. :) I didn't think that'd work.

Bye for now and hopefully my next blog post will actually be from Bali!