Flew Garuda 22 February from Sydney. They were fantastic. VOA paid for at Sydney airport and immigration processed on the plane. You are given a blue card and on arrival in Denpasar just needed to pick up bags and head on out.
Myself, husband, two sons (18 & 16) and friend (22) were picked up by our wonderful friend Made (Manager of The Niche Hotel) with an esky full of ice cold bintang and softdrinks (which after a long walk to the carpark lugging surfboards and four bags worth of clothing and pressies for our friends) were much appreciated. Nothing tastes as good as that first cold Bintang in Bali does it ?
We again stayed at The Niche Hotel Jl Legian Kuta. We stayed here last year and found that this year it was an ideal place to stay due to it being so close to the nightclubs for the older boys, they didn't have far to travel home, although our 22 year old friend on the first night got a little lost and ended up at the Legian Café, he got into a cab and asked to be taken to The Niche Hotel, he said that he didn't think the cab driver was going in the right direction so he got out of the cab further up Legian Street and got into another cab who then took him home. I've got to say we were impressed he made it home, do you have any idea how far the Legian Café is from The Niche Hotel ? (I'll let you in on a little secret....accross the road (...)).
My husband vowed this year he wanted to remember going to bed at night rather than being in a Bintang blur, what can I say, he definitely remembered going to bed the first night but doesn't remember knocking on the door at god knows what time in his underpants, I thought the kids were knocking on our door so I opened it up half asleep to find him standing there in his undies and when I asked him 'what are you doing?' he mumbled something and got back into bed. If you know The Niche at all all rooms surround the pool so you can pretty much see each door and there was a lot of laughing going on out there, I never did find out what he did and he still doubts it happened!!
We spent two nights at houses of our friends Pucak and Made and had the most amazing Indonesian food ever, I have to say that both these evenings were definitely highlights of our trip.
Our lovely friends from Melbourne, Pete & Jen, who we met in Bali a hundred years ago managed to overlap their trip by a couple of days with ours so we had lots of catching up to do the last couple of days.
My husband and eldest son had tattoos done by Ganesh Tattoo Jl Legian Kuta. They were both very happy with the results.
We stayed 14 days, the weather was for the most part wonderful the last few days overcast and a bit of rain but it didn't really matter. This holiday was very relaxing mornings spent at the beach chatting with locals and reading then onto lunch on the way back to the hotel, most afternoons were spent having massages, being pampered or shopping and then off to dinner. It was just what we needed day in day out of endless nothings to do after a busy busy year.