Well I finally have a few minutes to write about our holiday..We arrived home last Thursday but things have been a little busy sisnce then. This is my first JBR so I will try to be short and to the point.
We had 18 days staying at the Kuta Lagoon resort which we thought was a great hotel and would not hesitate to go there again next time and despite all that happened to us there will be a next time...We had a group of 10 family members arriving over a few days to celebrate my 50th birthday...First to arrive was my son from London who I hadn't seen for 2 years and that was amazing....many tears were shed by his Mum when he arrived and then when he went back to London but all Mums will understand that..
We spent the first few days of our holiday just relaxing and getting into the Bali groove, we had a couple of Bali virgins with us... KLR was a great place to relax and play in the pool and the lunch menu was quite good, toasted sandwiches, pizza etc.. Breakfast was fabulous every morning with someone cooking the eggs to order so you didn't get sick of the same thing which we have found at other hotels.
We did the usual tourist things and took the kids to see a few of the sights but nothing out of the ordinary and then on Sunday we went White Water Rafting and then things took a downhill turn.... We had three boats rafting with our group and a few others on the river and we were all having a great time when the boat containing the older members of our group ( 77,73,72,72 ) was flipped over by another boat...Nobody's fault really but had to happen to the oldies..It was a scary experience but everyone was dragged out of the water safely with only scratches and bruises but pretty shaken up. The water wasn't very deep so Dad in particular was being dragged over the rocks.... Just watch your shoes if you go rafting and end up in the water cause we never saw some of the shoes again...
The next day was my birthday and we went sightseeing after a beautiful breakfast where my table was all decorated for me and then the girls decided to get their hair done at Secret Garden...Sounded like a great idea until a monsoonal rain decided to hit...Two of us have very long hair so after spending over an hour having our hair done up in pretty flash styles ( I think the hairdresser loved doing something a bit different ) we had to try and huddle under an umbrella and get back to the hotel... We went to Indo National restauratnt for dinner where my partner had pre ordered king prawns and crayfish for us all and Kerry and Milton were just great...They have a tiara now for people celebrating their birthdays and its amazing how much authority that little sparkly thing gives you..I felt like a real princess....Due to the downpour the band didn't turn up so that was a bit disappointing but we made our own fun and a great night was had by all and thanks Kerry and Milton for making it special.....
This is now when the **** hit the fan and our holiday went downhill. Dad haad a cold that he very kindly passed to a couple of others in the group but everyone was coping with that but then one morning Mum couldn't even get out of bed....she looked so sick....I called BIMC and they sent a doctor and an ambulance and immediately rushed Mum to their centre....The treatment there was fantastic...Mum was examined and found to have pneumonia so she was placed in intensive care as her condition was so low....This was a woman who was fine the night before so you can imagine our shock..We were kept informed all the way along her treatment by a lovely Australia nurse called Dyan who is there to act as a support to the family...Mum continued to go downhill so we were told that she needed to be air lifted from Bali to another major hospital...either Singapore, darwin or Perth so we had to contact the travel insurance people to get them to authorise it..The cost of the plane for us to pay privately was about $60,000 and we didn't quite have that much spending money with us...
Thankfully the insurance company came through and about 36 hours after Mum was admitted a plane arrived for her and she was sent to Darwin hospital where she remains over a week later...We are hoping she will be back in Perth with us this week sometime...fingers crossed... It is very lonely up there for just Mum and Dad...
It put a bit of a dampener on our holiday and our phone bill is going to be unbelievable but we then had to get on with doing the things we hadn't done yet which was mainly shopping and then we had to do Mum's shopping as well so the rest of our holiday went very quickly.....
I have to save up really hard now so I can go back again and get all the things I didn't get around to this time around... Maybe Mum and I will go up for a week when she finally gets better....
Bali was fantastic as usual and we felt very safe and had a lot of fun despite all that happened...