Well here is my virgin JBR....Departed OZ on 23rd June in glorious OLD winter weather to arrive to the sound of Gamelan and smell of incense less than 6 hrs later in Bali. The new tax is a breeze(well from our exper) and I even had 4x$5 and 5x $1US so I guess they are not fussy.Our first port of call was Kumala Pantai which had great size rooms,freindly staff,good breakfasts,excellant location no complaints..Must admit larger than normal hotels for us and more crowded but granted it was school holidays as well.Only one thing that made me think "what the" was when at the crack of dawn some people would go down leave their scent in the form of towel ,sarong,book(like a dog) on a selection of pool lounges and then NOT TURN UP TILL mid/late morning.Is that fair or are they desparate.Then they would leave their scent to be able to come back in the afternoon....Is this normal pool etiquette??Sorry just a little observation of the pool area politics of mine.Unfortunately we where on buisness so a trip to the pool ususally was late afternoon for a quick dip to cool off.
I thoroughly recommend the Vodka Lime Caiprioskas next door to the Kumamla beach front end .The restaurant with the treehouse (facing the beach on your left).35ooorp of pure yum! The bar at Kumala also makes a good Arack Sunrise 15000rp.You got to love the price!
Just for interest we were changing money at approx 6350 up to 6500Rp over the 2 weeks. And as a point of interest if ever you need to get a larger cash advance BCA Card Centre at Jl Raya Kuta gives 10millRp ammounts for a 30,000rp fee.Machines will only give you 5mill/6mill in one day.Just a little bit of usless info.
Also our Simpati sim card for our mobile served us well again good service and range around Bali and texting back to Oz.Recharge cards readily avail as well.135 000Rp set us up with card and extra credits but for some, the credits you get on buying the Sim may be enough.
We only touched the ground a few days and we had a 5am departure for first morning flight to Yogja (thankyou Tera for her very useful info).We had a early morning Breakfats call from room service at Kumala-unfortunately it came at 11pm the night before in the form of 4 bolied eggs and a plate of hot bacon??? Again "what the!" so here we are sitting up in bed with a plate of hot bacon at 11pm at night.
Then half an hour after the bacon episode another knock at the door the porters to take our extra luggage not going to Yogja with us to put into storage.By this time I am thinking why not just sit up until 4am to get ready for the airport!But wait there is more? Next morning at the airport we hear over the announcements that our flight had been delayed due to "personal reasons" Hmm now what might that be?Perhaps the pilot was feeling a little crabby and didnt want to fly his plane or maybe the purser was having a bad hair day.Who knows...But lets just say all this little idiosincracies are what endear Bali and her people to us....
Yes everyone we made it safely to and from Yogja stayed at the Jayakarta Yogja(Big hotel) not far out from airport on the busiest road Ive ever seen in my life.Something more central for next time I think.For those wondering we felt safe the entire time,friendly helpful locals,lots of taxis,we also used becaks(bike and pedaller) and local buses.Very cheap forms of transport for round the city streets.In between work we did a few tourist sights.Eg Borobodour great to see but dont go on a weekend or local school holidays the entire sight is crawling with people.We could have made a bit of money the number of times were asked to be in photo shoots with local tourists.Also just before the B.sight a stop at the Mendut Temple is well worth to see the huge Budha inside.You can light incense and pray etc.
By the way we enjoyed Yogja but for those going dont expect it to be like Bali it is not as touristy and harder work to make your way around to find places to eat etc.Friendly people but not as well practiced in english in some places,this is not a critiscm of Yogja but more an insight.
Now do I keep going or is this plenty for my first edition JBR.
Well lets leave it at we then returned to Bali then up to Ubud for 7days.To be continued....By the way the we had no personal issues from the pilot on the return flight!