Left Melbourne flying Garuda on the 5th March for my 4th trip and my 8 year old sons 1st, with a return date of the 22nd. The plan before going was lots of family type activities during the day and knowing he's never been a night owl, earlyish nights but was really hoping he would step up a bit once we got there.
We stayed at the Inna Kuta Beach Hotel. This was the 4th time I'd stayed there. Even though I knew it wasn't a real kids style hotel I knew there would be plenty of fun for E down on the beach. With him wanting to learn to surf I new that would give me an hour each day not having to keep an 8 year old entertained whilst Jack took him out for some one on one surfing. He has his boards at Sam's bar. I got to know Jack for the first time back in 2005. He's great with kids. I always kept an eye on him but felt really comfortable when either Jack or his brother Muka took him out. I enjoyed sitting back having a few cold bintangs watching him catching waves. Little did I know that he would find going down to Sam's bar heaps of fun. I thought I'd get an hour day to catch up with the guys but at 4.00 everyday he was dragging me down there. Eric, Han and Muka played heaps of soccer with him down on the sand and the other boys spent heaps of time playing with him and teaching him magic tricks. His new best mate Mull (he text's him ever week) took him out on the bike a number of times and spoilt him rotten with those great little toys that light up and change colours. Ice Cream Jack was well and truly kept busy with plenty of orders for magnums and cornettos (and a few from dad as well). E spent a lot of the time sitting with Sam on the esky spruiking for business. Passes by had strange looks on their faces when they heard him singing out ‘BEEEEERRROCLOCK'. Got some terrific photos.
The beach was fairly quiet for the sellers with a lot of tourists from Java but not a huge amount of westerners. And me who said I wouldn't need any more t shirts or singlets etc did really well accumulating plenty of those tied up plastic bags that we find on the floor of the room and when packing the suitcases think............don't remember buying those. E bought heaps of movies and cd's from Wan on the beach. The quality of everything we've watched so far has been brilliant including some new movies like Gran Torino. Previous have mostly been good but really pleased this year.
Night times were as I thought they'd be. The first week I dined with one of the grumpiest 8 year old you'd ever meet. It was actually quite funny watching the stages. It would start with slightly tired, then really tired, then hell boy would show up and say ‘I wanna go back to the hotel'. A week of being on the bed at 9.00 pm watching TV was a bugger but it got better. We had some great later nights in the last week and a half.
We manly ate cheapish. There were two places in Poppies 2 that we ate at heaps. They were Jegeg Bulan (on recommendation from a friend) and Tamin Sari (great place from previous trips). Jegeg Bulan has terrific prices. Bali regulars will say you can eat a lot cheaper but the food and the setting was really great and I thought the prices were lower than what they could have charged. An average dinner bill for nasi goreng, a main meal and something for E like pasta or burger etc, garlic bread, a few red fanta's, banana split and 3 or 4 bintangs was around 150,000. Breakfast prices were crazier. We didn't get breakfast at the Inna because E doesn't eat eggs and I thought it would be a way for me to eat healthy. Wishful thinking. Breakfast was his favourite meal. Pancakes everyday. He especially loved the day he had ice cream on the pancakes. At Jegeg bacon, eggs, toast and juice was only 15,000. That's nuts. The last breakfast we had there we got bacon, eggs, toast and juice, 2 extra serves bacon, a serve of mushrooms, E's pancakes, E had another fresh juice, 1 water and being the last day he got to have a banana split for morning tea. I really had to question that they'd only charged 66,000 for everything. Tamin Sari has great food as well especially their chicken nachos. Great place to drop in for lunch as they have the cold towels to cool you down, really cold beer and great prices. There were a few other places but just the normal. Took the boy to Bubba Gumps as I heard it was fun. Great night out though cost us 400,000. So won't be first on my list next time I take him. A few times for lunch we had both nasi goreng and or the best sates on the beach at Sam's. The boys at Sam's will order them for you and the people at the Warung will bring them to you. There are 5 or so little warungs at the bottom of the art markets only 50 metres away. 10,000 for a great nasi goreng and 15,000 for 10 sate's and rice. With either you feel guilty when you hand over the money. Sitting at Sam's with a beer or cold soft drink eating real food for next to nothing was great.
ACTIVITIES.
We did the normal things, Safari Park (we both loved it and the bus ride that I thought would be lame was excellent). Waterbom twice. The second time we met up with 2 other families that we'd organised to meet on BTF before we left. Lisa and Frank had 2 boys around E's age and one little bloke and Peta and Paul had 2 boys just older than E. It was one of the best days of our trip. All the boys got along really well as did the parents though I found myself doing laps of Waterbom for the first few hours wondering what to do with the free time that I'd found for the first time in 2 weeks. Thanks to both Peta and Lisa for answering my post. We also did WWR which this time we did way up north near besiak temple (sorry about the spelling). Great day.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers Ross