• Background - Family of 5, Myself (Paul), wife (Jennifer), daughter (Victoria 10), sons (Zachary 6 & Alexander 5) from Perth, arrived 21st December
• 1st. The New Year 2006 and the midway point of our holiday. We had all planned to have a Dim Sum lunch. We just love Dim Sum but because of my job, I am unable to go on Sundays to enjoy one. Our friends from Melbourne have never had one so this would be a great introduction. The Golden Lotus at the Dynasty does a fab Dim Sum and we all meet at around 10.30am. About 2 hours later, I think everyone is absolutely stuffed full and our friends have enjoyed it so much that they are already talking about doing it again next week. I can't say the same about the kids who have all shown disgust at the concept of Dim Sum for breakfast/lunch. Well again it's a day of rest and typical holiday style fum with pool, drinks, fun and relaxing. Jen and Anita go off to Febris for a massage and myself and Carl plus kids stay around the pool, a position we do not move from right into the evening where we enjoy dinner, even more drinkies and finally we go off to bed to end yet another perfect day.
• 2nd Jan Geneva Handicraft. Today is the 13th. day in bali and we finally go to Geneva. Well we can see why everyone recommends that you have to visit this place at the start of the holiday. Jen was in heaven. We had planned a trip to Ubud for the sole purpose of visiting the markets for the exact things we could find here and of course no haggling. Placemats, cushion covers, incense gift sets, wind chimes, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, picture frames and the list goes on and on. We asked for a box as we could then keep all our wooden items separate for customs on our return (later we discovered this box weighs overs 20Kg). A serious word of caution. Don't just buy everything . We had bongo drums which we found out even prior to our return would be confiscated. We took the chance and only had the skin removed but kept the wooden drum after it was x-rayed. Also anything with water hyathin will be confiscated, so you do have to be a little careful. We took pictures of the customs board at the airport on our return of banned materials and will look at getting more info from the net before we return. We were lucky and hadn't selected any of these items though. We got our loaded box into a taxi and headed back to the hotel via Bakong Sari where Jen spots some dresses, so once at hotel with waiting taxi, we dump box of goodies and head straight back out to do a little more shopping. Mainly dresses for Jen at rp35000 each. We decide to walk back to hotel and exhausted on our return, we head straight to the pool. The kids have been getting ready for the fashion show that takes place over dinner by the pool. Italian buffet and again I end up eating too much.
• 3rd. Amazon. We had heard about this place on the net. Top floor of Centro. Fantastic for the kids. Yet another sleep in and late breakfast, we decided to take all the kids to play games. Rp100000 for 100 tokens. Most video games are two tokens and ticket games 1 token. The kids could spend hours there and there is the food court adjacent. We felt that we had to stay pretty close to the kids though as they all had a bag with 50 tokens and it was busy. The kids all ended up on the ticket machines, resulting in each of them winning around 300 tickets each before their tokens ran out. Around $6 each and we were there for some time and the kids were all happy. Good value!! Next KFC for lunch which the kids all devour and off we go back to the hotel. Well its Tuesday again and yet another quiz night at Gracie Kellys and the music of the La Rasi brothers.
• 4th. Waterbom Park & Jimbaran. Well we have waited as long as possible to go to Waterbom mainly as we wanted to go when it is a quieter with the usual departure of a lot of visitors after the New Year. Booked two Gazebos by kids pool area (new revenue raiser this year) and the kids were off. Do the normal slides including getting a wedgie from the Smashdown, lazy river which the kids noticed straight away that the 'monkey wall' had changed (they took much pleasure in the past of having the monkeys peeing on them as they floated past). I guess there must have been complaints. The kids always like shooting each other with water canons and trying to escape the drenching from the huge tipping bucket and the . The new slide 'The Boomerang' looks interesting, not quite finished. They said ready by New Year and when we got there that changed to ready by Chinese New Year (end of Jan). On planning waterbom for today, we had decided to go to Jimbaran for dinner. The kids would already be in there bathers for some beach play. So at around 4.00pm we head back to the hotel, swap towels and pick up what we need for Jimbaran. Normal pick up at 5.00pm and off to 'Ayo' a little place airport end of Jimbaran. Japanese owners but run by Korman. Now last year we came to Jimbaran and it was pouring with rain and we couldn't even see the beach. This time the weather was perfect and the sunset was spectacular. The fishermen were on the beach emptying the never ending lengths of net. The kids played on the beach. We select dinner which consisted of 3 squid, 1.5kg of prawns, a dozen mussels and a whole fish (Red snapper I think). Now the kids always get chicken when we come here as they are not that fond of fish but they do like squid (the reason for me ordering 3). Anyway if you have already guessed the outcome, I ordered way too much. Now I do have a reputation of eating excessive amounts of food particularly as I am small in size but this was even too much for me as you are actually given a couple of courses before what you have selected comes to the table. That includes a fish soup, a small salad and then the sumptious seafood arrives. We opted for the a combination of flavours. Butterflied prawns done on the BBQ with Bali style, Crispy style squid, Whole fish with chilli and mussels again with Bali sauce. After the chicken, the kids could not offer me any help with the squid, so as hard as could, I tried to finish it but unsuccessful. I felt ill once more. The old saying that your eyes are bigger than your stomach was truly appropriate tonight. My only criticism was that the squid was over done which they did apologise for. And then they bring out some fruit which of course I am not in a position to partake in. This place is small and basic but they do treat you well. As regular visitors to this restaurant, we do receive a discount although the price per kilo they are charging is reasonable anyway. The bill came to around rp700000 which did include a few wines, Bintangs & softdrinks, all the seafood and the chichen dishes for the kids. Not bad compared to Australia but could have been a lot less if I hadn't ordered so much. Well holidays are for indulging anyway and it was a great day.
• A little footnote for the next instalment. Jen has had trouble all day with her contact lense and has a very restless night which requires a doctors visit.