DAY 3 - Today we hired a driver to take us to a few places on our way to Zen Spa at Ubud, as I failed to get numbers from forum of drivers this was the only thing I forgot and it the most important we ended up getting a driver from out the front of the hotel. Ketut bestbalidrive@yahoo.com or check him out at www.balidriver.com his phone number is 081-338 415 724. We negotiated 200,000 for the day. We started of going to Seminyak but as this was the start of a 3 day ceremony in Bali some of the shops were closed as locals travelled home to their villages to prepare for Nyepi Day. We continued to Denpasar and checked out the gold jewellery, not sure if it was what we were wearing but we didn't receive a friendly reception at any of the shops no one was prepared to assist, we walked into one and were the only customers there were about 6 of them standing around and not one of them made the effort to serve us so we decided to leave and continue on our journey and decided that it must for the rich locals only...
Went to Bali Deli to arrange a hamper for Nyepi Day....not that simple...they don't have pre-packaged hampers you need to choose your own items....this proved too hard for Brenda and myself as there were too many unusual choices, nice clean venue and will go back when the heat dosnt affect our thinking capabilities.
ZEN SPA - well it dosnt look like their website that's for sure, where's the rice paddies that one looks over whilst having massage all we could see was a brick wall.
So we had to make the most of it as we were there for our 4 ½ hours of pampering. Oh god how we make these sacrifices.
The entry into the facilities was different walking on large stepping stones over water which was inside the building. Hard to describe but very Zen. We enter the double room as we have been friends for 30 years or more we had nothing to hide from each other.
The room was a bit dark - a small fan again - the window with no glass looked outside into the garden which was no rice field, a big double bath in the corner and in the other corner a shower.
They started to fill the bath and the noisy old gas heater was making some pretty strange noises and so this kept running during the 11/2 hr long massage and lulur scrub and yoghurt bath, so one would say it wasn't really relaxing as it sounded more like stomach rumblings. After a shower and bath with tea and fruit we were off upstairs to have our facials still no rice fields just the brick wall again but a bit cooler upstairs and very relaxing. An hour later we moved to the verandah for our manicure and pedicure, wait, we see a rice field if you stand on the corner of the verandah, but who cares we were so relaxed by this stage all we did was close our eyes so it didn't matter there was no rice fields.
5 hours and 300,000 = $41 aus later we emerge , our driver Ketut had been waiting all this time for us, he was happy as his boss had rung him to asked him to call in on his way home to pick up some food for Nyepi Day and was very apologetic to have to put us through this detour, we kept telling him it dosnt make any difference to us we don't have anything else planned and besides we got to see some more local sites.
On arrival back to the hotel we gave Ketut a 50,000 tip and we thought he was going to cry, he was so grateful.
Dinner was a bit of a battle as their wasn't much open due to the preparations for Nyepi Day so the only place open in was PURI BALI INDAH Melasti Street, it was very crowded and noisy but we didn't have much choice, so they found us a seat for 2 and then we waited and waited and waited during which time the entertainment was the waiter getting the fish out of the tanks and chasing them around the floor to put in his bucket, after 1 hour our meal arrived, we were a little over it by then, but worth waiting for 2 course meal with drinks for the 2 of us was 80,740 = $11, good tucker we will be back when its quieter.
But wait theres day 4.....................