Tigers Bombard Bali for the 2008 International Netball Tour

After a fitting send off at tour sponsor Charley Brown’s (where the international contenders showed off the super-cool tour t-shirt while drinking margaritas by the jug) the Tigers set off to Bali, travelling in two groups. The first group, comprising Captain “Lotus” Liv, Pocket Rocket Kath & Lizzy the Librarian, arrived on the Friday morning had a smooth trip. The second group, comprising Marta “Go-Low” Newport, Jumping Joey, Vron “V-Ron” and Chelsey (babe, we’re gonna need a nickname) were not so lucky….

Poor Vron (like many before her) hadn't known that she needed 6 months on her passport to travel to Indonesia, and she only had three months left before expiry. She was pulled up at Jakarta airport for a water stain on the passport, but when Immigration saw the expiry date you could hear the cash-register sound reverberating through the terminal and dollar signs lighting up their eyes. Cha-Ching!!They had taken her into a room on account of the water stain, but when she hadn't come out in 20 minutes Marta went to investigate. The interrogation hadn't gotten very far because the gorilla they had sent in didn't actually speak any English. But then they put their good cop/bad cop routine into play, and made some progress.

Fortunately Marta was savvy in such things (she used to live in Jakarta), so she asked if they could pay the 'fee' for travelling on the nearly-expired passport. After lots of to-ing & fro-ing, negotiations began. Starting price was US$200 (fortunately the girls had a pool of USD on account of visas needing to be purchased in that currency.) By this point all the girls were in the room, turning on maximum charm, leaning over the desk to expose cleavage, flirting outrageously, promising to hook up the immigration guys with their cute friends, basically doing anything to get the negotiations over the line!! Finally they settled on a reasonable amount; Vron was given a manual visa, and the girls were on their way to Bali!