JBR Short stories, part 1: Laundry

Posted by bigpete on Thursday, 15. December 2005 at 06:46 Bali Time:

Now that I have finished my JBR's, I have noticed a few bits and pieces I wanted to talk about, but left out.

LAUNDRY

After reading many reports about bringing home a suitcase full of freshly pressed clothes with that ‘Bali' smell, Julie and I looked forward to the same thing. When we arrived at the Dynasty, part of the ‘welcome pack' was a ticket for so many items of laundry for free.

After about 4-5 days, we needed some fresh clothes. It was mainly socks, undies, a few pairs of bathers and singlets... all small stuff. Julie carefully sorted the stuff out and put it in the bag provided, as well as the sheet you need to fill out. The bag disappeared while we were at brekky, and came back the next day nicely packed. However, it seemed the ‘free' voucher only covered about half of the stuff (do they count each sock as one piece of clothing???!!!) and despite the ticket, we were still charged about 35,000 rp. The was still less than $5 AUS, but we were a bit annoyed at the principle.

During the next week, we tossed up our options. Take home all the dirty stuff? Pay a fortune and get it done? Find somewhere else? During our travels, we had noticed a laundry right outside the Dynasty front gate. We didn't know if this would be any cheaper, or if this was in fact the one used by the Dynasty, but we thought we'd give it a go. Again, Julie wrote down all of the items on a bit of paper, including what were kids clothes and what were adult, and packed all of our stuff into a plastic shopping bag (obviously we had no proper laundry bag supplied by this place). We left the stuff in our room to take on our next trip out, and headed to the pool.

When we got back, the bag was gone. DOH!!! The laundry service had come and picked it up, just as if it were meant for them. (I suppose that was our fault... we should have taken it with us, or hidden it! LOL)

Well, when it came back the next day, the cost (added to our bill) was....

256,500 rp !!!! (that's about $35 AUS !!!)

For LAUNDRY!!!!

We didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We considered complaining about it, especially since on the itemised bill they gave us, there was nothing noted about kids clothes, which were supposed to be charged at 50% off (and most of the clothes were kids clothes). In the end, we put it down to experience, and decided that it was one of the areas that we need to research a bit better next time we come!

Any advice about where/how to deal with laundry for next time will be much appreciated!