Day 11, Sat 26th 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...)
With only a couple of days until we headed home, today was our attempt at ‘last minute' shopping. This of course needed to be done ‘sans kids'.
Julie and I were up at 6:30am, managed a nice coffee together on the balcony before the kids got up and she trotted off to the gym at 7:00. The kids (and I) watched ‘Shark Boy and Lava Girl' (I particularly enjoyed it...) until our usual brekky buffet... haven't mentioned it for a while, so the price was 189,000 rp (about $25 AUS) which paid for Julie and I; the kids ate free.
This morning we had no playstation, and no gameboy allowed (a condition of the agreement signed by all parties at the summit yesterday ...) and there were amazingly no fights or arguments. Coincidence? Hmmmm....
Anyway, on the way back to our room, I stopped in at the activities office to check my emails. I was hoping there might be one from our agent about the AP debacle, but sadly, the INBOX was empty. (Well, it wasn't empty. After being on holidays for a week or two, there were plenty of offers for Viagra, various enlargement ‘tools', offers of, well, everything! I wonder what the record is for number of emails waiting when you get home from holidays! And 99% of them are rubbish!)\
I had sent an email a day or two before, but perhaps it hadn't got through. (Email as yet isn't the most reliable form of communications, as I've found out!)
So with an empty INBOX, and a sense of impending doom (we were to travel home tomorrow, and as yet had not made any progress on getting flights home...)
we headed off to the kids club and deposited the kids. Today they were the only ones there. Some people say ‘how lucky they must have been to have the full attention of the staff', but I think it would have been much more fun for them to have a few other kids around to play with.
Having left them behind, Julie and I walked up the street via the Kodak money changer (no mistakes today) and on to Discovery shopping mall. For those of you who haven't been, I should explain; it's about (and I'm guessing here) 500 metres up the road from the Dynasty, so not a huge walk. With dodging all the sellers and time share people, and negotiating the dodgy footpaths, I guess it takes about 10 minutes or so to walk there. Once inside, you are subjected to a bag search (no problem; very friendly and very reassuring) and then are welcomed by the most beautifully air conditioned shopping complex. Some say it is too Westernised; it definitely is Westernised, but ‘too' is a matter of opinion. It didn't bother me. I just like the nice cool air!
Our first stop was ‘Sports Station'. As I've mentioned, Julie and I are both very active people, and we wanted to stock up on some runners and work out gear. We tried on many things each, and ended up with 2 pairs of runners for me, one New Balance, one Adidas, (253,000rp - $34 AUS for one pair, and 176,000 rp - $24 AUS for the other) one pair of runners for Julie (499,000 rp $68 AUS. oops! Just noticed she got a discount of 176,000 rp; so that makes them 323,000 rp, or $44 AUS) Julie has had many problems and operations on her feet, and so needs very specific shoes. These are proper shoes, not market copies, and the equivalent of any of these runners would be well over $100 AUS back home.
Julie also bought 3 Spalding gym ‘bra' tops, @ 43,000rp each (about $6 AUS), a pair of Spalding 7/8 pants (7/8? I thought 3/4 was bad enough!!) for 93,000 rp ($12 AUS) and I bought some sports socks for about 50,000 rp a pair ($6 AUS). Since we were at the first shop of our trip, and we had three shoes boxes plus other stuff, we paid for it but left it there to collect later. All up, we spent just over 1 million rupiah in this shop ($140 AUS) which was amazing for what we got.
From here we walked up to Kuta square. This was about another 500 metres (guessing again), but lots to see in between, so it is an easy walk. We stopped by some market stalls, and bought sunnies, singlets and kids clothes; we bought a few multiple items, but from memory nothing cost us over 40,000 rp (about $5 AUS) per item; and to us, that's a good deal. I understand others may get things for less, but we were happy with that.
Next we were off to Matahari's. I wanted a new watch; a decent one, not a market one. I have tried many sports watches over the years and the best ones I have had have always been ‘Timex'. In Matahari's I found one of the newer models for 400,000 rp. This may sound like a lot, but equates to about $55 AUS; not a bad price by Aussie standards for a genuine watch. After buying the watch, they gave me a voucher for 125,000 rp ($18 AUS). This was to be spent on the day, in the Matahari store, on any item not on special. So off we went to buy some more! We ended up getting some more Revlon make up for Julie. Also found another pair of runners at the sports store (which is not actually part of Matahari's, but looks like it is) for 360,000 rp ($49 AUS)
In the same store, we wanted to buy the ‘skate shoe' things for the kids. We had traced around their feet, so we could work out which size to get (strangely, they didn't ask why we wanted to do it! Maybe it's a normal kind of thing to do, in a child's mind!). There were two types. One had 4 little wheels, about the size of 5 cent coins or even a bit smaller; 2 up front and 2 in the heel. These were about $12 AUS (90,000 rp) but looked kind of unstable, especially for Ky and Tara. The other type had one big wheel in the heel, so you could stop yourself just by leaning forward. These looked safer, but were about $32 AUS a pair.(250,000 rp). (The Barbie and Spiderman ones I have seen mentioned here were the first type) Spent the extra money, and got 3x pairs of the ‘expensive' ones, for Christmas pressies.
After this, we needed a new suitcase to pack all our treasures in. Downstairs, they had them on sale, and we picked up a nice ‘Polo' one for 200,000 rp ($27 AUS). By now we were getting a bit sick of shopping, so it was almost distressing when they handed us another voucher, this time for 75,000rp ($10 AUS). We decided the girls in the Dynasty kids club could use a few toys for their own kids, so we spent our last voucher on those, and got out of there before they handed us another one!
We grabbed our suitcase, put all our other shopping in it, and walked back down to Discovery. I have no clue how many people asked me if I wanted ‘another bag'... the funniest was a guy who offered to sell me one (I'm sure it was genuine, too) for the bargain price of 200,000 rp. Geez, how did I pass on that offer?
At Discovery we grabbed some quick lunch at BreadTalk, picked up our things from Sports Station, and made our way ‘home' to the Dynasty. On the way in, I checked my emails once again (still nothing) and started to think I'd better get some things arranged. The girls in the ‘activities' room at the Dynasty were lovely, and very helpful. They made many calls, but it seemed that since it was now Saturday afternoon, all of the airline offices and travel agents were now shut until Monday morning... no help to us, since we were due to fly out Sunday night.
Well, rather than bore you with all the details of who I tried to ring, (at one stage I tried to ring the Australian embassy number, which was on the note sent from AP. My 10,000rp of call credits were gone while they were still going through the ‘press 1 for...press 2 for... ‘ options! Didn't even get to talk to someone!) I eventually decided to ring (from the phone in our room) the Qantas office in Perth. I spoke to a lady named Wendy who was marvelous. Took all my details, sorted out some flight options, and had us booked within half an hour. Man, was I ready for happy hour after that! The only problems with the flights were:
1. We had to leave 1/2 a day earlier than planned; therefore wouldn't have time to take the kids surfing in the morning (they've never done it and were busting to give it a go)
2. We had to fly home via Singapore, which added about 5 hours air time to the overall trip. As it worked out, we were leaving at 3 pm instead of 11 pm, and still getting to Melbourne at the same time (6:30 am Monday morning).
Aside from these little hassles, I was just wildly relieved to have a booking. As much as we'd fallen in love with the place, it's nice to know how you're getting home!
So, it was happy hour. (YYYYAAAAAYYYYY !!!!) Spent an hour or so playing with the kids, having some half price Bintangs, and snacking on some fries by the pool. At this time, Julie was meeting the tailor she had ‘contracted' earlier, taking delivery of the pants and stuff she had made. Very happy with both the clothes and the service.
The kids wanted to buy a last few PS2 games and DVD's, so we got changed and walked again up to Discovery centre (It's handy being so close!) to see what we could find. Much to their dismay, the shop we had been to a few times had NO pirate PS2 games on the normal shelves, and when Jamie asked the girls, they said ‘maybe tomorrow'. When I looked closer, all of the ‘pirated' DVD's (which normally covered about 3/4 of the shop!) were also gone, with legit looking ones in their place. (The shop was also empty of customers!) I guess they must have gotten word of a police bust or something coming through. As we walked home, past about 4-5 other DVD sellers, we noticed they had all shut up shop. No coincidence there, I don't think!
While the kids were disappointed, I told them that we weren't to leave the Dynasty until about noon the next day, so there would be still time the next morning, if the stock was back up on the shelves. And if it wasn't there was nothing I could do about it! (A small point they often seem to forget!)
Dinner that night was a buffet by the pool. Tonight was ‘Aussie BBQ' night, and as we'd paid 3 times before for a buffet by the pool, we got this one free. Consisted of all the different salads, snags, steak, chops, bbq'ed potatoes and onions, all the usual stuff. Kids enjoyed their last night swim (now it's starting to get sad!) before we toddled them off to bed by 8:30pm.
We gave the mozzies their usual feast while the kids drifted off, then watched some crappy TV and tried to pack a little (gave up... do it tomorrow!) till we nodded off about 11:15 pm
Tomorrow: The epic journey home, and all the excitement and drama that goes along with it!