Went 1-20 October. Flew Jetstar, great seats at the front, nice crew. Bit of a pain when booking Frequent Flyers because they put the QF flight No., and not the Jetset No. so that caused a bit of confusion both ends!
Firstly went to Bayshore Villas in Candi Dasa where our friends have bought one of the villas. Bayshore is a lovely place, the villas were great, pool beautiful and such a peaceful spot. And the owner Brad was lovely too. Restaurants we used and liked were Vincents, Balissa, Toke and Rendezvous.
Then went to Kumala Pantai for two weeks. Just to say we love KP and this was our fourth stay. We have booked for September next year. Great staff (especially Eric and Wayan in the restaurant), great pools, good restaurant ,(very good Italian chef) and the price per night is very good. We still feel like it's a small hotel, we had no problems with crowding at breakfast and always got a lounge bed although there were people putting towels down at some ungodly hour in the morning then rocking up at 2 in the afternoon - selfish gits!
Restaurants too many to mention! In particular we liked Wayan & Friends, Uncle Norms, Yutz, Goshas (love their lamb curry!). Ones we didn't like - Papas Café, over rated and over priced and Babba Gumps again over priced and such greasy food.
Spas, other half loves the Melasti Beach Resort spa massages. I like Briella just to the right road entrance of KP. I also had a fab treatment of 2 ½ hours at Febris with my girlfriend which was lovely.
We don't do a great deal of shopping but did look in at Discovery (love the rotiboy rolls in the little shop there!) and got the usual 6 jars of Oil of Ulay Total Effects for $20 cheaper per jar from Carrefore. Got a few DVD's. Other half got some Levi jeans and they were hemmed too which I was pleased about!
Did the Bike-Baik tour this time. Didn't enjoy it as much as Bintang Bikes that we did last time. Too many stops and found the slopes slightly more uphill than Bintang where you bomb down all the way (40 kms of it!). We preferred the meal at Bintang too, wasn't keen on sitting on cushions after a long cycling trip. We will try a different one again next time if we can.
One thing we did this time was use the motorbike taxi's and what fun that was! They were totally safe - even went to Carrefore from KP and it took about ten minutes! No more sitting in traffic in cars for us! This will be our mode of travel in future.
Thank you for all the assistance once again the forum has given us. Feels horrible to be back at work and settled down to normal life already. But at least we have next September to look forward to. Who knows perhaps we will join our friends in retirement and live over there!