First Timers JBR
My first trip to Bali and my girlfriends 4th ended about 2 weeks ago now and we're more keen than ever to get back over there ASAP, we stayed at the Champlung Mas in Legian for 15 nights and being my first time there as well I thought it was a great place to stay, my better half has stayed there before, the staff were very helpful and friendly and the place itself, only being a 3 star, I thought was quite comfortable and central to everything we wanted to do and see, plus it had a great pool bar which was a lot of fun indeed. Being within walking distance to just about everything you could want for, we walked kilometres every day eating in new places and frequenting different shops.
Just around the corner heading towards Poppies 2 from Melasti was our laundry which did a fantastic job for next to nothing as far as Aussie dollars were concerned Surya Laundry is their name and they are highly recommended, unfortunately we couldn't fit them in our bags or they'd be at my place right now...there's also a little shop just around the next corner from the laundry which sells credit for your Bali mobile cards and were very helpful in finding cases and covers for our mobiles from home and even chased up a new mobile for us which was supposedly no longer available on the island and yet to be realeaed in Australia.
As far as shopping was concerned we did a lot of our shopping on Garlic Lane or Sadahewa Lane as the signpost said, particularly in a shop called Eddie Macguire Shop, opposite Billy's, the fella who works in there called himself Eddie Macguire and was quite the character and also had good clothes at good prices and didn't mind a barter battle with my girlfriend at all, we also bought quite a lot of stuff, mens and womens, at a set price shop not far from Eddie's but on the opposite side of the road and just past Billy's heading towards Padma from Melasti, the lady in there, whose name was Mandu or something like that, sorry to her if I got it wrong, was very nice and helpful and her set prices were very cheap. We also found a really good jeweller on Legian Street called Two Bob, also a bit of a character but all good stuff and quite good Pandora Bracelets and Beads as well. If your after belts or buckles we found a good place in Poppies 2 called Belt Om near the Bagus Pub from memory. Also not far from there was a place called Soft-Comp who we bought a lot of our DVD's from and also hired a player off and had no trouble at all with any of their discs, the girls were really nice and very helpful. Our daily foot massages were had at a place not far from our hotel called Carla Spa in Melasti on the corner of Sedahewa and the girls, and the couple of boys, in there were really good at what they did and we had a lot of fun with them, my girlfriend ended up getting her hair extensions there as well and was more than happy with the price and end result. The only real trouble we had whilst shopping was at a watch stall next door to Silver Instinct called Romy Watches and a clothes shop I can't remember the name of in a mini mart type of area off Legian street, these blokes are just rip off merchants and dishonest as well, steer clear of them at all costs.
As for eating we planned to never eat at the same place twice, seeing as we were keeping to walking everywhere we frequented the places closer to us and couldn't fault places like Sheppys in Melasti St, owned by a really nice Aussie couple and staffed by helpful efficient staff who knew how to serve English speaking customers, the Indonational was also very good food but the staff seemed to hover around you a bit while you were eating making you feel as if you needed to eat up quick and leave so they could get the next lot in, their breakfast is a must try though, Billy's made quite good Pizzas and the staff there love a joke and were very friendly, Piggy's Bar in Poppies 2 made the best Aussie type burgers I tried over there, the meat even tasted like Aussie meat, also we found a nice little seafood type of restaurant down near the bungy tower a couple back from the corner toward Seminyak, it had a couple of trees at the entrance with yellow coloured lights wrapped around the trunks it served great food and was a nice place to watch the sunset. We also tried a brand new restaurant apparently situated where the Dolphin Restaurant used to be, called Garlic Lane Restaurant, we went there on it's opening night and the food was beautiful but there were a few teething problems with service and presentation but it had the makings of a really nice place to eat. All in all Sheppys got our vote for the best place we ate and we broke our agreement to never eat in the same place more than once by eating there a few times, I can safely say that we never had a bad meal in the whole time we were over there at any of the many places we ate.
My only unfortunate experience involved getting new glasses whilst over there, after checking out the forum before we went I made a b-line for Mr Honeyman at the Bintang Supermarket entrance, unfortunately he was away at the time but his nephew Wawan, sorry again if this is wrong, sorted me out and went out of his way to get the right glasses for me after there was a problem with the prescription I took over from here, he made the trek to our hotel on a few occasions until he finally got it right on our second last day there and when I cleaned the lenses on our last morning the frames were loose on one arm, I headed straight over to the Bintang to see if he could fix them for me but was unable to find him anywhere so I returned to Australia and went into my local OPSM to see if they could repair them for me only to be informed they were faulty and wouldn't possibly last much longer at all, I've since sent numerous e-mails to Mr Honeyman to see if there's some way he could send me a new arm over by post but as yet haven't had any replies at all, I'm really disappointed on 2 counts firstly because of this problem and secondly the information I got on the forum suggested glasses were quite a lot cheaper over there than here but because my prescription was a particularly difficult one the lenses were quite difficult to make sending the price higher than expected, I even went over to Centro and tried all the optical shops there and they wouldn't even attempt to make them, so beware if you have a difficult prescription be prepared to pay a bit more than you may expect..
All in all my first experience with Bali was fantastic and much enjoyed and I can't wait to return as soon ASAP, the people are just fantastic, the food and drinks and just the whole feel of the place has to be experienced to be believed, I used to be one of those people who would say, Bali...why would you even consider going there??? It amazes me now at just how ignorant and wrong I was and how lucky I am to have met someone who was able to help me experience this paradise for what it really is.