Given the length of my previous JBR in February - this JBR will not be as detailed (do I hear a sigh of relief??) and will basically outline the highlights and lowlights of the trips rather than me doing a day by day...that is if I can stick to the format! So here goes...
Another trip to Bali has passed us by with the same feeling...the holiday goes way to quickly for our liking. This was to be a different holiday as we were celebrating my 40th birthday in Bali, I had my best friend and her son with us for 10 days and the most important part of our trip was to find the cleansing/healing spring waters and see the holy man.
Our flights over from Perth were with Garuda on 24th July on the 5.15pm flight - no problems except the sour air hostesses refused to serve alcohol drinks to anyone at the front section (we were row 6), instead they had to make their way to the end of the plane and negotiate their drinks there. This led to huge problems when it came to people wanting drinks and wanting the toilet as the aisles were blocked! Still we weren't too bothered as we only had one drink and we were just happy to be on our way to a place we dearly love and to see our dear friend Wayan and his family. We had a quick exit, through VOA, customs and baggage collection and were out the door in about 15 minutes. The plane had landed 10 minutes early. As we exited the airport, we saw our dear friend Wayan grinning from ear to ear. Hugs and kisses and off to load our gear in his car whilst having the usual bintang on arrival in the carpark!
We had booked our first night at the Kartika given that we arrived late and when we presented there we were told we had been upgraded to an ocean front room as we had stayed with them for a long period in Jan/Feb in their ocean front rooms! BONUS! We were happy with this. The ocean front ground floor rooms are a lot different to the ocean front balcony rooms. This was a ground floor room and whilst the same size, the difference was in the bathroom which was massive, had a bathtub with shower over it. A lot of wasted space if you ask me. We were hungry so we ordered 2 pizza's to share between the 3 of us and had a big catch up on what had been happening. We had bought Wayan an authentic Manchester United soccer top and had his last name and his lucky number put on the back of the top. His face was priceless when he saw his gift. He was over the moon and promptly discarded the top he was wearing and put the new one on. He wore it many, many, many times over the next 17 days - he loved it. I told him he would wear it out if he wasn't careful, but he just laughed and said he loved the double takes he was getting from people! Before we knew it, it was midnight and we were tired enough to go to bed, so we bid our farewells (until tomorrow) and ended the day with a smile and a feeling of excitement to be in a place we love.
I should mention here that I had gone over with a gastro bug that I had for 3 days prior to Bali. This also plagued me for the first few days in Bali but thankfully I eventually came good on about day 4. Also of note, was the weather. The first 6 days we were in Bali was cloudy and overcast. It was actually quite cool in the evenings and more than a little cool first thing in the mornings. It was a huge change from Jan/Feb when it was so hot and so humid.
We were booked in to the Pat Mase Villas in Jimbaran for the next 3 nights. So at 12.00 we checked out of the Kartika and headed to the Pat Mase. Unfortunately I missed most of the morning and the trip to the Pat Mase as I was sick as a dog with the gastro. It had kept me awake for most of the night and unfortunately also throughout the morning. Credit to the staff at Pat Mase as our villa wasn't ready, it was still being cleaned, they took one look at me and promptly housed me in the spare bedroom of the villa, so I could continue to rest. Hubby and Wayan took off to the supermarket to stock up on some nibblies, beers, mixers and food that we could cook as we had our own kitchen in the villa. They then headed to Trattoria for a late lunch and returned a few hours later to find me up and moving our stuff into the master bedroom. They had also thoughtfully bought me a vegetarian sandwich to eat, knowing I had not eaten since last nights pizza. It was really hard to eat the sandwich slowly because I was so hungry!! That said, they both rated Trattoria as one of the best restaurants they had eaten at. They bought back a menu as it did deliveries and it really did look to be a fantastic place to eat. Even my vegetarian sandwich was so tasty!
Highlight of Pat Mase Villas
The sheer size of the complex you are housed in. Each villa complex has 3 separately housed bedrooms (master, queen and double bunk bed room) all with separate bathroom/toilet facilities. The master (which was where we were sleeping) was a massive king size bed room, enormous bathroom with his and her vanity/basins. Separate toilet and separate enormous shower and in the middle of the bathroom you walked a couple of steps up to the enormous bath tub overlooking the garden. Even though there was only the two of us staying, we had the whole complex to ourselves. The other two bedrooms were locked so we couldn't use them, which is fair enough as we were only paying for the one. Our bedroom overlooked the plunge pool which was a decent size, and behind the plunge pool was our massive open-air lounge/dining and off this was the kitchen. The chef came in to cook our breakfast each morning at our requested time, set the table, serve us and disappear as quietly as he came. The kitchen had all things needed, massive fridge, stove top and oven, cutlery, plates etc etc. It was perfect. We ended up cooking one lunch time which was novel for us. The rest of the time we got room service from the extremely reasonably priced menu. The food was great! These 3 days were our chill out days - we had both been working long long hours (especially my dear hubby). The lounge/dining was massive. We had a tv opposite the massive day bed and spent most of our chill out time lazing about on the day bed watching movies. It was a great set up for us as I always retire to bed earlier than by hubby, so he was able to stay up and watch tv without disturbing me. So much space...it was fantastic.
Lowlight of Pat Mase Villas
The bed was a shocker. It was so soft and had a huge bow in the middle so you couldn't help but end up in the middle of the bed. It was so bad that we both ended up with backaches and my husbands neck was absolutely crucified. He ended up having a massage a day and popping my panadeine forte painkillers as often as he was allowed.
The mosquito's were out in force and so thankfully we were prepared with plenty of mosquito coils, fly spray and aeroguard. Because there was a massive gap in the sliding doors of our bedroom, we ended up sticky-taping the other two sliding doors to disable the little suckers from getting in. We couldn't do this to the main sliding door we used as we would have had to keep doing it each night. Anyway we sprayed the room at dusk each night and this seemed to keep everything at bay.
The only other lowlight would be the location. There is nothing close by at all and you need transport to get anywhere. That said we weren't too bothered as our intention was not to do anything whilst there anyway - which we did with ease! I am grateful that the room service menu was extensive, cheap and the food was good. Otherwise it might have been a bit of a disaster!
JBR to be continued.