After the Island trip Which is well worth the money but it does pay to shop around for best prices as they can vary from information desk to the next , we went with a Japanese couple and they have no concept of bartering neither do they have the need or want to gain the skills involved they just see it as demeaning to themselelves and they want no part in it, thats why you see so many Japanese in department or fixed price stores,what we see as a bit of fun trying to get the price as low as possible and the vendor trying to get the highestprice possible they probably see as a total waste of time and resources anyhow i digress .
We went to Waterbom as my son was promised we would take him and we went with another family from the Hotel whos son was the same age as ours and he was celebrating his birthday so we had a jolly time getting wet and wild , At this point i must tell you that on future holidays i will not try and race my youngest son down what they call the race anymore as i have found a way of beating him downhill by using only my backside as a contact point on the slide, all was well untill i tried to sit down and found two HUGE BLACK AND PURPLE BRUISES
on my undercarriage The lady that used to give me a massage outside the Bali-hai thought that these two bruises were so funny she used to call her friends over to have a look and laugh but she also gave me progress results of the bruising over the next week and a half her name by the way is Renitta [no 25] and she gives a great massage for about 70,000 my wife usually shops on the grass while she waits for renitta to do her magic we also met a great ice cream seller called Tony who is also outside Bali-hai and we would joke everyday that i would buy 25 icecreams for my son each day but in reality would buy about 3 or four and on a few occasions we would buy one for Tall man if anyone has stayed there they probably now of these people interacting with the local sellers and friends is to us as much a part of the holiday as sightseeing and shopping.
We had some prescription glasses made at Optic Seis in Discovery Mall to use as back up glasses they cost us about $ 40.00 aus each and we reckon they are great value , the wifey got some leather boots made At Hero leather in Singaroysa st in Kuta they cost about $70.00 aus and
took about 3 days to make , i also bought about ten or twelve bottles of something simular to visene at the local pharmacy for about 7000 rupiah each [$1.00 },we paid over the mark for juggling sticks but they are a lot of fun and we take them to parks here and practice with them all the time they do cause a fair bit of interest , oh one thing that may be of interest to anyone travelling there, my wife bought a Samurai sword from one of the stalls and i was really concerned about getting it through customs and so forth especially back in Brisbane so all i did was wrap it up in brown paper and fully taped it up with gaffer tape and put it through as normal luggage then i declared it on the customs sheet when we arrived in Brisbane i was carrying a 3 foot Samurai sword through customs and they just let me straight through the trick i think is to be up front and honest and declare everything [or maybe it was someting to do with the young girl operating the scanner asking us on the way through how our eldest son was doing after uni and to say hi from 777777 haha the people you meet ]
more a bit later
All the best Smirf