Our party of 7 consisting of myself, other half, my mother, my other half's sister (SIL) her partner and their 2 children master 10 and master 12.
We all travelled out from Melbourne on Jetstar direct to Bali. Our flight was delayed for an hour due to fuel being placed in the wrong location and the urn malfunctioning, (hey can't have travelers go without their coffee). The flight was a nightmare as every time we woke up from our snoozes we thought that we were in a nursery. Memo to parents of infants, please remember, for the enjoyment of your fellow travelers and more importantly yourselves, please consider the use of Phenergen. We have been to Bali every year for the past 4 years and in saying that, we also do other OS trip to either the USA or Europe and I note that there are very little travelers to the US or EU with infants. This trip to Bali, the plane was full of them and their excessive noise was annoying to say the least. Anyhoo we arrived in Bali at approx 11:30pm and as mum, my partner and myself traveled on the pointy end of the plane, we were out first, got our VOA and went through immigration with absolutely no wait at all.
My other half has a business and goes to the US frequently so he brought a couple of grand in USD currency. For our VOA we paid un USD. SIL and her family were charged $26 AUD for their VOA, which doesn't make sense as the AUD is trading higher than the USD. Anyhow, they paid their VOA, went through immigration after us. Funnily enough even though we were fist off the plane, it seemed that our bags were the last ones off and we cleared customs after they did.
Walked outside expecting to be hit with a strong wave of heat/humidity and was surprised that we weren't. SIL had found our driver waiting for us and we were transported to our 4 bedroom villa in Seminyak.
The villa is really nice and just as described on the Internet. We were after a villa that was enclosed and were pleased to see that it was. The boys were brave and took a dip after midnight. We kicked back for a chat and retreated to our bed.
I woke up around 5:30 am Bali time, I had slept on and off on the plane and it seemed that this coupled with my natural Melbourne wake up time of 6am and crowing roosters is to blame.
This villa has free wi-fi so my iPad as well as the masters iPads are connected. My other half (OH) and I have both connected our iPhones whilst the phones are in airplane mode so that data via the carrier isn't accessed at all. I did bring an older mobile phone to use, which isn't a smart phone.
At 8:30am Bali time we are having our breakfast cooked for us and then we will be off.
All previous holidays we have stayed in Tuban so our plan is to go to the Kodak shop to exchange money, take mum (first timer) to Dianne's to stock up on holiday clothes, book our tours and activities at the booth outside of Dianne's. Grab sim cards and stock up at Carrefour.
I will update later with further information pertaining to the villa as I have yet to explore it all in the day light.
We are staying at the villa for 6 nights and at the Dynasty for 6 nights....