Day 9, Thu 24th Nov
For those unfamiliar with my family, we are:
Me/Dad/Pete (42)
Mum/Wife/Julie (36)
Jamie (9...boy)
Ky (5...boy)
Tara (5...girl) yes, twins.
This was our first ‘real' trip to Bali. (Julie and I and Jamie had been when he was 14 months old, on our way through from Europe... we stopped in at Sanur for 5 days by the pool; so on that occasion, we didn't really experience ‘Bali')
My photos are now uploaded; you can view them at:
http://community.web shots.com/user/bigpete3941
just remove the gap between ‘web' and ‘shots'.
(I have now included some photos of the guitar I bought, for anyone interested...)
A few days after we had arrived, we were speaking to some other Aussies at the poolside. They mentioned they had used a driver from outside the Dynasty (there's a little carpark out the front where quite a few cars seem to congregate), and had paid him 200,000 rp for a whole day trip. They said if we were looking for a driver, we should not pay more than this. Considering what I had read on the forum, and the recent petrol price rises, this seemed to be too cheap to me.
Anyway; a day or two later we were approached by ‘Norman', one of the drivers from out the front. He seemed very nice and genuine, and asked if we would need a driver. I explained that at some stage we would, but we weren't surer what for yet (at that stage I hadn't booked our elephant tour through BAT yet, and wasn't sure what the best way would be to go about it.) I enquired generally about how much it would cost to hire him for a day, and he said 300,000 rp. I tried to haggle him down, but he wouldn't move, and I was unsure (with the price of petrol) whether I should really try to hard. Anyway, I told him I would get back to him. Nothing was decided on, but I promised to keep him in mind.
Having done this, I realised that my hands were now tied, and I had to throw out all those wonderful drivers' names and numbers I had taken with me from recommendations on the forum.
Anyway, when I did my sums, it worked out CHEAPER to do the elephant tour as a package with BAT than it would've been to do it with Norman. We didn't see him again till the day we were waiting for BAT to pick us up. He seemed really sad (not angry or upset...) that we had not booked with him. Anyway, I mentioned to him that we were still interested in seeing the monkey forest, maybe a traditional dance, some of the Bali ‘culture' (rice paddies., village life, etc) a look at the markets in Ubud. I also mentioned that we would not want to go to any shops (commission) for silver, etc. This all seemed very ‘do-able' for him, so we arranged it for Thursday... today.
We were up, as usual, at 6:30 am; Julie @ the gym, me ‘home' with the kids till brekky at 8:00 am. We needed to get a move ob, since we had arranged Norman for 8:30 am. He had planned for us to go to a Barong dance which he said started at 9:30 am, so we needed to leave early.
We scoffed down our brekky, and headed out to the foyer to wait for him. He arrived right on time, and walked us down to his car... a shiny new silver 4WD. Had a comfortable drive through Sanur to Batubulan. He drove us up a back street where there were a few buses and many people. We were a bit unsure of ourselves here. He led us to where we had to pay (there were also lots of ‘market' type people selling all sorts of things; but we could here the music in the distance and didn't want to miss the start, so didn't stop to look). Cost was 50,000 each for Julie and I, and 50,000 all up for the three kids. This worked out to about $21 AUS; not a huge outlay, but this had not been mentioned to us before then, so it could have been anything!
Anyway, the dance was fabulous. I had heard about the different dances, and was a bit worried the kids (especially the little ones) might get a bit bored, but with our tickets, they gave us a program which explained what was happening in each of the ‘acts'. All up it went for about an hour; just long enough for our kids before they started getting fidgety.
We made our way back to the car... lots of people milling around, and lots of people trying to sell us stuff. This time we were too busy looking for Norman. We didn't want to be left in the middle of nowhere!! I hadn't paid him yet; so didn't think that was likely to happen! When I explained this to the kids, Jamie said 'Don't pay him till the end of the day!' That's my boy!
Well, eventually, Norman found us through the crowd, and we were on our way. As we drove through the hills, he asked if Julie wanted to buy any silver. ‘No thanks' came the answer... I thought we had already told him that. Oh well. Maybe he forgot. A little further up the road, he said, 'Would your kids like to see someone doing the wood carvings? See how they are made?' This sounded a little more interesting, so I said 'Sure, why not?'
He pulled in to a large building with massive carvings out the front, got out and started talking to the people who approached him (in Balinese). He then told us that the main wood carver had been at a wedding the day before, and so was not at work. We went inside, and, sure. There were some beautiful carvings there; but basically it was a shop, with much the same stuff we could get in Kuta. We had a look around (closely followed by one or two of the shopkeepers) and tried to stop the kids from picking everything up. After about 120 minutes we left with no purchases, and Norman with a very sad look on his face. Am I being too cynical, or was it a huge coincidence that the ‘master wood carver' wasn't there, and the kids never got to see how it was done? Perhaps I've reached the age where coincidences are sometimes just too convenient.
Anyway, after this we moved onto Ubud. It was much bigger and more ‘spread out' than I had imagined, if you can work out what that means! We made our way to the monkey forest, and Norman left us at the gate. (We asked him if he wanted to come in with us, but he said he needed to stay with the car.) Paid our entrance fee (10,000 rp per adult, 5,000 rp per child. Total 35,000 rp... Under $5 AUS) and bought some bananas (2 small bunches for 10,000 rp; bought 2 lots).
As we went in, Julie thought it was a good idea to take all the kids to the toilet. There was a ‘rest room' near the entrance, and the family (except me) lined up to go in. (One of the few queues we had to stand in the whole trip!) Apparently it was very disgusting (perhaps a squat toilet... I didn't really ask for the details!) and they were back out pretty quickly.
Had the usual fun with the monkeys, no real problems except when one tried to climb Ky's leg. He was a bit scared, so I tried to scare it away, and then it went at me. Apart from that, we had no trouble with them (well only one small problem!) We also wanted to look at one of the temples there, and had to borrow sarongs (the kids thought we looked hilarious!) and pay a ‘donation'. I had no clue how much, so gave them 20,000 rp, which they seemed pleased enough with. Was very interesting looking through the temple, but that was when Tara decided she DESPERATELY needed the toilet again (I guess she didn't go before...). So we had to leave pretty quickly. Would have liked to stay longer, as there was still a lot to see there.
On the way out, I spotted these three young monkeys all play fighting with each other. 'Hey, look, guys! There's Ky, Tara and Jamie!' I said. I tried to take a photo, and as I lined up the shot, a big old monkey came up from behind me and grabbed the camera case which was dangling down. Yes, we had been warned to take off sunnies, put away jewelry, etc. But I hadn't thought of the camera case! He was a strong old bugger, too! Luckily, all my gym sessions had not been in vain, and I won the battle of the apes. Monkeys 0, bigpete 1.
Having left the forest, Norman found us and we asked to be taken to a restaurant. We were all hungry, and I think the kids wanted a ‘real' toilet. Norman drove us all through Ubud, and we ended up a t a restaurant called ‘Adi Asri'. It backed onto a rice field, and we could watch the people work as we ate. It was very beautiful, but sadly, didn't have much on the menu the kids would eat. It was (for us, anyway) more of a fancy dinner type place, not a ‘grab a jaffle and a beer' type place. Made the most of it, and got out of there after a quick bite and drink. By now Julie was a bit annoyed at Norman, but I pointed out that this wasn't his fault; he didn't know what our tasted were, and was just trying to take us somewhere nice.
We got back in the car, and headed to the Ubud market. Again, Norman ‘deposited' us at the market and went back to park the car and wait for us. Again, we didn't see a whole lot different to the Kuta markets, and by now the kids had just about had enough. I wanted to buy some vanilla beans for my sister who is a chef, so we hunted them down, haggled them down to 15,000 per packet for three packets (each cellophane packet had about 10 beans in it). Thought this sounded like a good price... in fact, she originally wouldn't go down that low, and we had to do a ‘blockie' and come back to get them. (Apparently. They are about $4 AUS PER BEAN in Melbourne, which is why we were hunting them down.... Another tip form the forum!)
Once we had our beans, we asked Norman to take us home. The drive home seemed to take ages, but I think that was because we were all a little tired from the trip. The kids really played up in the back of the car, too, and it was all we could do to keep their dirty feel off his upholstery. We felt bad that he had to put with their noise, but he did little to keep them interested or entertained. We tried to ask Norman about village life, and what happened behind all those walls we passed, but the information he gave us was brief. We would have really liked to get a closer look at village life, and I'm sure some of the drivers recommended would have been able to do this for us. Anyway, too late to do anything about that. We'll learn a lesson for next time.
Got back to the Dynasty about 2:30 pm; a short day for 300,000 rp ($41 AUS), but we'd really had enough by then anyway. (As we left, Norman asked us if we'd like another trip to look at Uluwatu, and dreamland beach, but we told him we were leaving in a couple of days, and didn't plan to do any more trips. Another sad look.)
Got changed and hit the pool. Had a quick swim, then Julie and I got some Henna tattoos. They do this at the Dynasty, and they cost us 50,000 rp each ($7 AUS) They looked good, and didn't give us any rashes or anything... lasted about 7 - 10 days. After a while, I had a fun game of volleyball (with the grown ups! Yay!) until about 5:15 pm.
We had arranged a photo shoot with the Dynasty photographer, so got ready and met her at 5:30 pm. Wendy was her name, and she knew exactly where to put us to make the most of the sunset. The photos she took are not on the net... we only have hard copies; but they are magnificent, and worked out at $6 each... much cheaper than session/studio photos here.
Oh, forgot to mention... when we went back to our room to get ready, there was a note under the door, letting us know that AP was no longer taking passengers. Oh well... guess we'll just have to stay! Seriously though, since we were sort of in a hurry (should NEVER happen when you're on holidays; but there you go) we thought we'd sort it out tomorrow. Hmmmm.....
After the photo shoot, we went to the poolside tables for the dinner buffet. It was satay night, and Jamie was rapt he beat me by eating 13 satay sticks!
We ate quickly and got the kids to bed. Tonight, we had booked Linda, one of the kids club girls, to baby sit, so we could go to Gracie Kellys and watch the band and play the trivia game (I'm a sucker for those things! Think I know everything!) Got the kids to bed before she arrived at 8:00 pm, so it was pretty easy for her (our kids are very good once they go to bed...)
Had a nice time at Gracie Kellys. The band weren't bad (I used to play in bands myself, so I'm a little critical). It was funny watching a band of Balinese guys play Jamaican reggae songs (Bob Marley) in an Irish pub. That's what I call a culture shock! Had good fun, didn't know many of the trivia questions (who the hell knows the butler's name in Batman? Except Jamie, who watched it on the plane over...) And who knew the only animals with four knees are ... well, you tell me!
Got back to our room (after coming third and winning 3 x copy DVD's !) at about 10:00 pm. We weren't in for a late night, just some adult time without the kids. We paid Linda 60,000 rp.($8 AUS) This price is organised through the Dynasty, and Julie saw her the next day and slipped her an envelope with a little extra in it. Ridiculously cheap baby sitting, and once again, she really needed the money.
And so another day was over. The journey is soon coming to an end, just 3 days to go...(oh yeah... I checked my journal and realised it was 12 days total, not 11 !!!) and we still have so much to do and see. Guess we'll have to come again.
Tomorrow: A return visit to Waterbom park, more trouble from the kids, (big surprise, that!) and a return dinner at Pantai (and did we get our flights home organised????)