My partner and I have just returned from 17 glorious days in Bali. This was my 4th trip and his 2nd. As we'd done all the touristy things before, we both just wanted to escape the daily grind and totally relax, which is what we did.
Please don't post any negative comments (I was a bit reluctant to write this JBR). This was my holiday and although it may not be everyone's cup of tea, we had a blast and that's the main thing.
Flew Australia Airlines who we were pleasantly surprised with. No problems with them and no problems with our arrival (VOA). From landing to being picked up outside took a total of half an hour.
Stayed at Resor Seminyak. We really liked this hotel. The location was perfect for us as we like to eat and being located on Eat Street was devine.
Most days we'd just have our buffet breakfast and then relax by the pool meeting lots of people from all over the place. The hotel was full for most of our stay and this mainly consisted of Australians, Germans and French. It's great to see people returning to this beautiful island.
The hotel offered a shuttle to Kuta every 2 hours and most afternoons we'd catch this and just get off wherever we felt like shopping. I love all the boutique type stores and homeware stores up the Seminyak end, whereas my partner really likes the markets and getting to know the hawkers on the beach.
We brought heaps of watches (30,000), sunglasses (25,000), sarongs (20,000), t-shirts (25,000) and all the usual stuff the hawkers sell.
I made a trip to Geneva to stock up on gifts for home without the hassle of bargaining.
We travelled to Ubud for 1 day (we usually stay there for a few days but decided not to this time). It was a nice relaxing change to wander the streets here.
Every night we would stroll outside our hotel and up Eat Street (Jl Laksmana) and decide where to eat. Restaurants we dined at included Mykonos, Trattoria, Punto & Basta, Rumours, The Living Room, Ku De Ta, Cafe Moka, Bali Bakery. My partner fell in love with Mykonos and although we had agreed to try a different restaurant each night, we ended up going there twice. My favourite restaurant was Punto & Basta - they do the best brushetta !! Most nights we'd have 2 or 3 courses each and wine and beer and usually spend between $25 and $30. We lashed out at The Living Room and Ku De Ta spending $115 and $140 respectively. Both were devine although we both enjoyed the food at The Living Room better then Ku De Ta.
We visited the memorial on the second day which was a very sad experience. We noticed a few days later that there was a big tin fence erected around it. Not sure what's happening.
We booked our trip through San Michele in Sydney and arranged to have the same driver as our previous trip - Ketut Witana and Kus Kus. It was great to see them again.
They took us into Denpasar one day to do the usual Department store shopping trip. We also stopped at Sakura to stock up on DVDs (140 in all). Haven't had any trouble with any of them yet.
We took 3 suitcases with us - 1 full, 2 empty and came home with all 3 full. In fact, when we got dropped at the airport to come home, we picked up one suitcase to put in through the x-ray machine and the handle snapped off !!! We were told we were over the limit but they'd let us through - I didn't actually see the total weight.
So that was our holiday. We are sad to be home in this cold weather and already talking about our next trip. Is it too early to start counting sleeps till next July ????