I was in Bali Indonesia in a little town called Ubud on my honeymoon. We were married on 09/02/01 and went to Asia for 2 weeks. Our hotel was off the beaten path, no TV, no phone, no computer, etc. I didn't even have a working cell phone w/ me. Our boutique hotel had some Dutch tourists who noticed us as American tourists during breakfast on a few mornings. We know of one other American couple in the hotel. The Dutch man came over to us at breakfast and asked if we wanted to use his Mac to check up on the bombing status in NYC. He gave us details and I thought he was talking about a movie. We tried to call family but couldn't get through. We then decided to go to an internet cafe in town to get details. We saw some videos but it was a bit unreal. We finally got in touch w/ family in California and they were fine. We talked to locals and they were already worried that tourists wouldn't come any more. Bear in mind that Bali is a VERY small spot in Indonesia, one of the only spots in the area that is NOT Muslim, predominantly Hindu. Thank goodness for that.
We then flew to Hong Kong for the rest of our trip, w/ a US departure of 09/15. I asked the hotel if we could stay a few days in case the US airports weren't open yet. They said it wouldn't be a problem because no one could fly in either.
Our saving grace (at the time) was that I'm from the Philippines and my wife took my name which is a Spanish surname. We traveled exclusively on a non-US airlines, Singapore Airlines. So other than our American passports, we were not direct, US targets. By the time we got home, we wanted to see what had happened. Little did we realize that pretty much every one else was glued to the TV watching every bit of those horrible crashes, second by second. Fortunately for us, we didn't have those several weeks of constant horror.
That was a horrible, scary time. Little did we know that the tourist town of Jimbaran Bay in Bali (which we visited several times) would later be bombed, killing a lot Australia expats.
