Have been back 2 weeks so its time to write this JBR. I went for 10 days with my girlfriend leaving the 25 Feb- no kids/husbands so treated ourself to luxury accomodation. The first 3 nights stayed at The Chedi Club in Ubud. They relocated here in July 2004 from their previous hotel which is now the Alila. The new Chedi Club is built in the middle of the rice terraces on flat ground. The hotel owns the rice terraces as well. The resort is beautiful and we were upgraded to a pool villa which was fabulous and had a huge outside bath . With the villa came our own personal butler who catered to our every whim- dinner bookings, arranging the complimentary car for drop off and pick up to Ubud, serving breakfast in our room and making afternoon tea with delicious balinese cakes. We attended a yoga class whilst overlooking the oxen ploughing the soil in the rice terraces. It was very beautiful. On our trips to Ubud for shopping it rained each time but what a good excuse to try a new cafe/restaurant for a snack. We had dinner at Mozaic and Indus over our 2 nights. Mozaic had wonderful food but Indus was not so good the night we went. We spent most of our time here shopping and relaxing.
Next 7 days were spent at The Legian Hotel at Seminyak where we have stayed before. Again, we spent lots of time shopping and one day went to Chill in Seminyak (near Bali Deli)to have a reflexology which was great. Would recommend this as a change to the usual massage. It is done in a large room with other people but it is semi dark and there are organza type curtains separating each bed that you sit up on. You are given a cd player with your choice of cd.
We also went to a Bumbu Bali cooking class. It started off meeting at The Intercontinental Hotel at Jimbaran at 6.20am and on the way there in the taxi there was a huge thunderstorm, our taxi was going so fast as there was no traffic that early and we both thought it would be the end of us. I now believe there is a lot to be said for all the traffic in Bali- it probably prevents many accidents. Our cooking class started in the markets at Jimbaran where Heinz van Holz explained the Balinese culture of eating and preparing food. As we walked through the markets all different types of food were pointed out, fruit, vegetables, sweets, meat etc. It was very, very busy so early in the morning but very interesting. After that we visited the seafood markets there, first the Balinese markets and then the Javanese markets. We were taught how to identify fresh, just caught seafood. And I can tell you that most of the seafood was old and where we thought we would be put off eating pork that we saw in the market we were actually put off eating seafood. Next back to Tandjung Benoa to the cooking school to have breakfast before cooking. We were each given our own book with the recipes we were going to prepare. This included 3 curry pastes, sate, wrapped fish in banan leaves, tuna steaks which we had bought from the markets, nasi goreng and some sweets. It was interesting learning about all the ingredients and Heinz also tells you where you can purchase some of the ingredients in Australia. We later sat down at lunch and enjoyed our cooking. The class is definitely worth doing if you enjoy cooking and it gives you an insight to the way the Balinese live. The cost was about A$100 and finished at 2.30.There were 7 of us in the group so we each had plenty of hands on experience.
Other restaurants we ate at were La Lucciola, Punto & Basta in Jalan Laksmana, Gado Gado, Cafe Warisan and stopped at Made's Warung for lunch a couple of times. All were very good.
We did a lot of our shopping in Legian and Seminyak. Also visited the new Shopping Centre at Kartika Plaza. The Centro dept store is really good but the day we went their computers in the whole centre were not working so they were only taking cash-no credit cards. The dept store doesn't sell computer games such as gameboy etc. There is a very good book/stationary store there as well as Esprit and Osh Kosh stores. And you can get your coffee fix at Starbucks. we bought all the usual stuff and can't really say we discovered any new stores.
The beaches were generally much cleaner than the same time last year although it was much hotter. Even the locals were complaining as they had not had much rain. Then on our last day it bucketed down most of the day.
We got hit at the airport with excess baggage which we knew we had but at US$11 a kilo I offered that the guy at the excess baggage desk could keep my bag! So beware when travelling with Australian Airlines that this is the charge. Also, you can now pay the VOA in other currencies A$35 per person and also in GPB and Euros (I don't know the exact amounts)
So thats all until our next family trip later in the year