This is a very late report it is about the last two days of our December/January trip which I have previously done a few JBRs about, I am only writing it as my daughter has started reading my previous JBR's so I thought I had better finish this one!
I have been on holidays to Bali more often than anywhere else in my life, even as a child holidaying up and down the coast we seldom returned to the same place more than a few times, but in all my Bali trips I had been only been to Nusa Dua twice.
The first time in 1985 with my hubby, we were sent on a mission to say hello to my in-laws friends, we were young grubby backpackers who had been driving around Bali for almost a month and we entered the Nusa Dua enclave convinced some security guard would see us for the imposters we were and chase us out. From that first visit I remember it seeming to be over organized and having none of the ancient feel the rest of Bali radiates, we had missed the friends by a day or two and gladly slinked back to our Kuta lodgings.
The second time I went was more than ten years later and this was just a drive to the waters edge to have sticky beak with my mum and sister, again it didn't feel like the rest of Bali, just too well organized but we did think the beach was nice and clean and the colour of the water was beautiful.
When booking our last trip I said to my hubby why don't we stay at Nusa Dua for our last night rather than drive down from Ubud, after a bit of persuading and making him promise not to ask how much it cost, I booked one night and a late checkout so we basically had two full days, ‘Nusa Dua Beach Resort' was the only hotel I could find on short notice that could accommodate us with a family room.
So we travel around Bali for 16 nights, in Amed our hotel has 6 cottages and we are the only guests for 5 nights, in Sanur our hotel has 4 rooms and we book all of them with extended family, in Ubud our hotel of choice is again small and intimate it has 8 cottages and we have the pool to ourselves all but once. This is the type of holiday we usually choose, small hotels a bit out of the way with a lot of local influence.
On the 16th day we pack our bags and sadly say good bye to Ubud, we had organized a driver the day before as he had been so friendly and chatty, when he picked us up he wasn't so happy to talk seems he had been to a ceremony the night before and hadn't had any sleep he was very tired, great I feel so safe, not!!
From all our overseas trips we have brought home one very special thing this trip we decided on a very ornate gamelan, easier said than done, we had arranged with our driver to stop at a gamelan factory on the way down to Nusa Dua unfortunately we wanted a brightly painted seven bar gamelan and they didn't have any, they were either too big or too small. The guys at the factory told us of another place and after squeezing down impossibly small roads we find this huge place with all these amazingly beautiful gamelan, very sadly although they had heaps that were exactly what we wanted they weren't finished yet. Hubby went to get his phone to take a photo and couldn't find it, after pulling the car apart it is decided he must of dropped it at the last factory, we drive back and it is laying on the side of the road where we had parked, what a relief, this woke up our driver and he is much friendlier for the rest of the trip. Driver cost 250,000Rp from Ubud to Nusa Dua with the agreement we could stop when we wanted to look at things.
We arrive at Nusa Dua with no expectations feeling that our last night in Bali had been the night before and Nusa Dua is a stopover on the way home.
We drive into the gated hotel community and the kids (aged 10 and 13) are wide eyed and excited this is the kind of place they dream of while we drag them around the globe to obscure little places that we feel sure add to their life experience, after years of begging it's as close to the Gold Coast vibe as they have ever come!!
The car pulls up at the hotel lobby and all these well dressed men descend on us grabbing our bags and welcoming us to the hotel in a much more formal manner than we are use to in Bali. While the rest of us are feeling a degree of shock at the size of the place and the amount of people Tannalee is beside herself with excitement, she has worn her best clothes and has even donned a pair of big dark sunnies!
We check in and I tell the guy that we had requested a room near the pool, he gives me a big grin and two thumbs up 'you have the BEST room' he says, ha that smile we are still in Bali!, in which case I won't get to excited about the room till I see it!!
Our rooms not ready, no problem it's lunch time, as we walk towards the beach front we keep on looking at each other with big stupid grins this place is awesome, the foyer is stunning and as we wander down the grounds are beautiful.
First impression is WOW wish we had stayed longer, then we round a corner and Nusa Dua is laid out in all its glory, this hotel has 381 rooms and all the people that go with them. I wrote in my diary 'Oh my God! We walk around the corner and onto the set of Miami Vice!! An elderly lady walks past in high high heels and a tiny bikini, she has iPod plugs in her ears, she is so brown it is unsettling, at the restaurant there is disco music playing the whole place is surreal, we are not in Bali, but where the hell are we?'
We go straight to a beach front restaurant for lunch there are people everywhere, so many that at first Riley keeps on saying 'Mum I don't feel comfortable here' when I ask why he shrugs his shoulders and says 'I just don't feel right', to which Tanna dressed all in white, wearing her over sized sunnies and sipping on a welcome drink replies loudly 'I love it, this is my kind of place!' where did I go wrong?
Our room is still not ready so we find a spot by the lagoon pool and settle in for a swim, after 2 hours we start to feel more relaxed and get used to so many people, the kids fall in love with the sand fringed pool and we spend almost our entire stay in the water.
Finally our room is ready and we follow the guy down a long long hall way, all the time expecting the worst but hoping for the best, we get the best!! We paid A LOT of money for a family room and end up with two adjoining rooms looking over the pools to the ocean beyond, could not of asked for better.
We are starting to enjoy this place, all the staff are so friendly and once we are over the shock we see there are different areas of the hotel that appeal to different types of people, we stay away from the main pool and the disco restaurant and end up falling in love with this huge hotel which really surprises me.
There is a walkway along the beach and we walk from our hotel to the head land, the vibe is very upbeat and busy, everywhere you look there is something happening seems no little corner is left idol, music ,people, chairs, bikes and more people and chairs.
Then all of a sudden it all stops, it all just stops, the path stops, the chairs are gone, there is no music and there are no hotels, a few people venture like us along the sand and we are back in Bali. Out in the water a fisherman has a long bamboo pole rod and stands in waist high water gazing out to sea, a few locals gather under a tree they have bags of stuff but it's too hot to chase the tourist, it is so hot today the kids want to go back to the pool, just a bit further we say and they complain that we promised Nusa Dua was for lazing around the pool as there was nothing else to do, we did promise, but it would seem we were wrong! Just around the head land is a beautiful beach, big waves roll in and there is no one there, what is this place? Hmm hubby and I are interested but we know we are only here for two days and if we don't turn back we will find it hard to stop, so we walk back to the hotel, we talk about how beautiful the area is and what else might be near here, our interest in Nusa Dua has definitely just been stirred.
We walk out of the enclave for dinner the first night and almost straight away find the Nusa Dua Beach Café, food here is really nice and the price is good, it is surrounded by market stalls and Tanna and I shop while the boys wait for our meals. I have to say shopping in this area was fantastic the people here are so friendly and don't push, if we looked at something but didn't want it, no hassles they were very friendly and happy for a chat, some even chatting rather than selling it was a breath of fresh air after the heavy sell tactics of Ubud. I can only think it was combination of their normal clients spending big so they weren't as stressed and the fact that they were happy to talk to some friendly people for a change as many of the tourist around here were not so nice to the locals. Also as usual when they find out you know the price and have been around they are smart enough not to lose a sale, we brought a lot of things here and paid no more than anywhere else.
Because of the rabies out break there are big signs as you drive into Nusa Dua stating no animals aloud we don't see any dogs but a few well loved cats and two very cute kittens that the kids pat behind my back even after been warned that if they get scratched they will have to have about six needles.
In the hotel grounds there are squirrels everywhere and they get extra fat in the two days we are there, Tanna won't stop feeding them. Ry turns into a fish and spends the whole second day in the water only coming out to eat, our two days in Nusa Dua are sheer bliss, the weather is very hot and we give into lazing around the pool, hubby walks down and swims in the ocean every now and then, I don't bother as I am just too comfortable around the pool and I am surprised to realize we will most definitely return to Nusa Dua next time and have a proper look around as this is a very pretty area with plenty of locals to meet.
Nusa Dua might not be the Bali we are used to but for us that is part of the attraction a whole new side of Bali to discover! It would seem that although the hotels were built away from the populated areas of Bali in the beginning, ‘the real Bali' has slowly filtered through and made its claim on the areas surrounding the hotels.