Forgotten bits:
The day we left Bali there was an Australian family who were from Serb descent (mum, dad, 2 kids, nanna and pop). Now from what we can gather the Australian family had 'reserved' with their towels 6 loungers in front of the pool, but according to the Asian couple, there were no towels on the two loungers they were laying on (from what I could gather the Australian woman had only put a towel on every second lounger, given that they come in two's and so assumed that this would block the whole 6). The Australian woman let rip on this poor girl saying that they were their loungers, they had reserved them with their towels and that everyone knows that when you put towels down, that they were reserved, that it was a universal rule! She was literally going off. The asian lady said to her that if she had asked nicely, she would have moved, that she didn't deserve to be abused in such a way, when she had done nothing wrong. The Australian woman then said to her, I kid you not, 'Why don't you F*ck off back to your own country. You f*cking Asians think you have a right to everything. You all give me the f*cking sh*ts. They were her words, with no embellishment. We were so embarrassed to hear this garbage coming out of this lady's mouth. We were in an Asian country for goodness sake so what gave her the right to trash anyone like that. We were gobsmacked. She noticed us looking at her with our mouths open, and basically sneered at us. The asian lady was so upset (and rightly so), the pool guys tried to intervene but she wasn't having any of that, and went to file a formal complaint - fair enough. What got me was the Australians were leaving in a couple of hours (according to the photographer, who had never seen anything like it before either), and so were only actually on the loungers for about 30 minutes max! Don't know if this lady had some serious PMT or was just having a bad day, but she had no right to trash the asian lady in the way she did.
Pat Mase drama - We had booked the Pat Mase villas through their website and used my husbands credit card to pay for it (so we thought). The cost of the villas was on our online bank statements, but apparently it is only blocked for that amount and not actually paid for. We were unaware of this throughout our stay. When we went to check out we were confronted with the room bill as well as the extras we had accumulated during our stay - well over $600. We only ever bring one credit card with us to Bali and it is usually mine as it only has a $2000 limit on it, our theory being that if it did get copied and used, they cant run amok with it. Anyway we explained the whole situation that it was paid etc etc. They advised us that no it was only blocked. We then logged onto the internet to show them the transaction against my hubbys credit card, and sure enough, it wasn't there! We apologised of course, and I paid for it on my credit card. However they should have advised us of this at some stage when we booked or when we checked in.
Ramada - Be careful when checking in at the Ramada as they like to block 5,000,000 on your credit card. This worked out to be over $600 Australian that was blocked on my credit card. Given that we had paid over $600 for the Pat Mase and to have another $600 odd blocked, was making me uncomfortable. We had plenty of cash, but I do like to have the security of knowing that if we need to use my credit card, we can. We let that slide for a day or two and then Wayan spoke to them on our behalf and advised them that it was basically too much money to block - given that the entire time we were there we paid for our food etc that we purchased at the hotel as we went so as to avoid a big bill at the end. We eventually came to a compromise and I got the $600+ reversed and gave them $150 cash as a deposit. Mind you the $600+ took over 5 days to reverse and in the end it took Wayan to again speak to them about it, and with that they rang the bank and advised the bank to drop the block. Unbelievable. The upside was because we stayed at the Ramada for over 12 days we got a 20% discount on all laundry, food and beverage - which we used often!!
The Russian hosties and pilots etc stay at the Ramada. So you are very much amused throughout the day with the hosties strutting their stuff in gold bikini's and wedge heeled shoes around the pool. There was not one guy at the pool every day that they came down and did their strut that didn't have their tongues hanging out (hubby included!!). Unfortunately a couple of Australian guys got stung hard by them and after exhausting their money on them and even calling home to get more money to spend on them, basically were left high and dry when they left. We basically sympathised with them and told them that they were taken for a ride, and that just because they are in a foreign country doesn't mean to say that they should drop their guard. They told us they wouldn't have done the same at home, which was my point exactly!