Background - Family of 5, Myself (Paul), wife (Jennifer), daughter (Victoria 10), sons (Zachary 6 & Alexander 5) from Perth, arrived 21st December
• 27th. Lembongan Island. Up early and what a shock to the system. I think this is the first time we have been awake prior to 7.00am since arriving. Indulge in the buffet breakfast for what is going to be a long day. We are picked up at around 8.00am a group of 9 (us 5 and our friends from Melbourne) and head off for Benoa harbour. There are Polish and Australian tourists in the bus already. Eventful journey as one of the Polish gentleman insists the driver stop so he can take a picture of the huge statue that is the centre of the round-a-bout outside The Galleria. To our frustration the driver stops right in the middle in heavy traffic. While this passenger leaves the bus to take his picture. None of us were very impressed. Anyway arriving at the harbour with loads of time to spare, we take a few photos before embarking on the boat. About an hour or so to get there. We are given a snack with tea/coffee and various people are moving around providing info on scuba diving, snorkelling etc. The pontoon itself we thought looks a lot older and smaller than the pictures on first impression. Those on the beach club cruise depart for the island. First thing we do is get ourselves set up with a few beds on the upper level, a locker for valuables and then we board the semi submersible coral finder. Kids loved it. The kids also liked the slide which drops you at the end about 2m above the water. Shock!! the salt water catches everyone off guard as we have been so used to the hotel pool water. Quickly onto banana boat rides and as there isn't a huge amount of people the kids just stay on for a serious of consecutive rides until someone else gets in line. We have to go to the island for lunch as there are not many people between the two cruises and they have combined the lunches together. We plan on doing the village tour as well after lunch. Jen and the girls do a bit of snorkelling before Alexander the youngest of the group at 5 screams 'I want to do that' pointing his finger to the sky, where he is watching one of the other passengers parasailing. It wasn't the first time he has asked. He always looks at the brochures. Now Alexander is not only the youngest but he is tiny for his age. I make enquiries and the only way he can go is if he goes tandem. Now I am terrified of heights but Jen has been pushing me for years to go bungy jumping to face my fears. This was a compromise. To go tandem they charged US$30 which I thought was great value for both of us, so we got ourselves organised and off we went. Absolutely fantastic!! What an experience and Alexander thought he was superman and immediately wanted to do it again. Well that was it, all the kids now wanted a go. Victoria and her friend Rachael went first followed by Zachary and Michael. They all had a ball. Next lunch on the island which was OK and then the village tour which included a visit to the underground house. Basically a serious of caves cut out by a guy in hiding over 15 years. It was stinking hot so this part of the trip I could have done without as all the kids wanted to do was more water sliding and banana boat rides. The island looks like a great place to stay and we would look at that option the next time in Bali. We head back to the boat and before we know it we are on our way back to Benoa. I mentioned before that we thought this day was going to be long but in actual fact it went very quickly and we struggled to do everything on offer. A definite lesson for next time. Well today is Tuesday and back in the hotel we are planning to go to Gracies for another quiz night while the kids order room service and enjoy the evening playing their Nintendo DS games. A huge day followed by a great night out at Gracie Kelly's.
• 28th. Wednesday and we have a huge sleep in followed by a late breakfast by the pool. Yum, Eggs Benedict. Kids relax in kids club while we go off for a massage at Febri's across the road. Great value rp110,000 each for an hour and a half, new, clean and modern. After some more pool time its time for dinner at the Green Garden. Always like to have dinner here for reasonable food and price plus we get to organise our massages which we book for Friday. Not much I can remember about today. Pretty relaxing and casual as we had planned a big one for tomorrow
• 29th. Off to Denpasar. Its another big shopping expedition day. We always like to go and check out Ramayana & Matahari for clothes, shoes particularly for the kids. Malik is not available so we pick another driver and off we go. On the way we stop at the Surf factory for their sale and all though there wasn't much left for the kids, we did manage to get some Roxy and Rip Curl clothes for Victoria. Ramayana is great for kids clothes particularly since there is a big sale on. We manage to fill up a few bags before we are ready to move on. It's a comment we we made last year but the system of the cashiers does slow you down. Trying to find the right one and then the reasonably slow system of actually paying for goods. Anyway the big shock is when the kid say they want to go to the toilet and I have flash backs to last year to the stench of the toilets on the top floor. The kids really have to go and I now feel ill. Well on to Matahari and yet more clothes, shoes, a beautiful dress for Victoria to wear on New Years Eve and we finally let the kids buy some new Gameboy advance games. Absolutely shattered, we head back to the hotel. Its pretty late when we get back around 7.00pm or so and we dump the days purchases and head for another quiz night and dinner at Gracie Kellys'.
• 30th. We are up reasonably early this morning for our pick up to go to the Green Garden Spa. Jen is having a 3 hour deluxe package and me just a normal massage. To tell you the truth, I get a little bored with the body scrub and lying around stuff. I depart and head back to the hotel when my massage is finished leaving Jen to enjoy the rest of her pamper. I go past the DVD shop where we have already purchased the PS2 from and where our order of DVD's are waiting. They did offer to deliver to hotel but as I knew I was passing decided to collect myself. Since the kids were glad to be in Kids club after yesterdays shopping, I decided t have lunch at Febris. I ordered a burger and didn't enjoy it at all but just to have a little quiet time, watching all that went by was very relaxing. No sooner had I finished then Jen yells from a passing car and promptly joins me and orders a Nasi Goreng, a particular favourite of hers. So we stay a little longer before heading back to the hotel. More pool time etc and yet again we are back at Gracie Kellys. Steve (Entertainment Manager) had previously told us last week that we had to come this particular evening to see Elton John (Impersonator). He had been at the hotel the previous week prior to our arrival and we had heard that he wasn't very good. Well what a laugh, no offence but imagine an impersonator who doesn't know the words. Unbelievable. But in the spirit of things we all still got into it and helped with the singing of the songs. This was followed by the strangest looking fellow doing a bizarre rendition of Hotel California. Antyway typical Gracie style the party went on and we had yet another great night.
• 31st. New Years Eve. I will have to admit I cannot remember what we did during the day apart from eat and drink but Hey, we are on holiday, so I will have to skip right on up to the Gala dinner. Huge party at the Dynasty. The theme was a Brazilian night and to be honest the music from the band got too much for the crowd so they had to switch to requests to try and revive the audience. Highlight for us was we won two prizes one being two nights free accommodation, handy for our next visit, the second was a voucher for rp150,000 to spend on food at the pool which we later shared with our friends from Melbourne. At about 11.45pm the staff are all allowed to join the party and it is great to see them really enjoy themselves. We bring in the New Year Staff & guests and the party goes on till the wee small hours before we get the kids off to bed. We have had a babysitter for the evening mainly for the two boys who seem to take much enjoyment in having someone follow them around for the entire evening. Admittedly we sometimes feel a little guilty as the cost of a babysitter is so cheap but back home if you are to go out it can double your evening expenses with the babysitter alone. We do always though give a good tip to our babysitter which makes us feel better. Next instalment will begin with the New Year 2006