This was a short trip, the reason was to celebrate a good friends 50th birthday.
On the drive to Perth airport at 2.30am, we couldn't help but feel a bit apprehensive because of the thick fog, but we didn't stress too much as we thought it would clear. When we arrived at the airport, we were amazed to see plenty of people asleep on the few chairs available. It was because there was at least 1 flight delayed (Jetstar I believe). Oh dear, we may not be jetting off to Bali at 4.50am on AAsia as planned. Cut a long story short, we left on time (hooray) but we lucked out by having a crying baby sitting in the row in front of us. I pretended to sleep, think I managed a maximum of 5 seconds. Oh well, we had a spare seat between us which made up for the noise. Very quick through the airport, a bit of a wait for cases but ours were amongst first off, excellent, then taxi organised to our hotel in Legain (still 70,000rph), Bali Mandira.
We've never stayed here before and we were expecting great things. We weren't disappointed when told we could check into our room straight away. We had booked a private couryard room with perks such as afternoon tea (never made it there) and free cocktail hour (we made this twice)served in a special lounge area. Anyway, the room was lovely, not overly large, but the outdoor area was beautiful, especially at night with the lights turned on. We only used the outdoor bath once, and this took about 40mins to fill, but it was worth it. I'd recommend this room for honeymooners as it had a lovely romantic feel about it. The staff at the Mandira are very friendly and the reception staff will bend over backwards to help with anythng they can. The only thing that could be improved would be breakfast. There was enough to choose from, however, the price we paid I thought they would have good coffee on offer, but it wasn't to be. A great coffee machine would be fantadtic in the breakfast area.
We hired a scooter on the street for our use during our stay which comes in handy with the usual traffic congestion, especially in the late afternoon, evenings.
We had 2 canvas photos printed at Discovery Mall and were very happy with the results. We paid 50,000rph for a small canvas, and 100,000rph for a medium canvas. We paid an extra 20,000rph to have a gloss spray which really brings out the colours.
This trip we decided we would eat at restaurants we'd never eaten at before as it's easy to keep going back to the same place. The restaurants we visited were:
Lemongass - (I have eaten here before but hubby hadn't) this was for breakfast on our first morning. It was ok but wished we had ordered from the lunch/dinner menu, that way we could have eaten authentic Thai food.
Kuli Restaurant - lunch. Food was ok.
Sushi Tei on Sunset Rd - excellent Japanese food. I did feel like the odd one out asking for a fork (I am honing my chopstick skills). I tried saki for the first time and decided it wasn't for me!!
Bella Vista - good coffee and nice meals. Hubby enjoyed his pumpkin soup.
Ultimo - we were lucky to walk in and get a table almost straight away. Meal and service was lovely.
Tepinyaki at the Padma Hotel - first time for tepinyaki and what a treat. It's amazing how filling so many small pieces of food can be. The chef was a lot of fun also. We've decided we'll try this again next time in Bali.
Sardine - we had booked for 8.30pm, left the hotel at 7.30pm and sat in a traffic gridlock for 20mins. We realised we'd be late so paid the taxi driver and found 2 motorbike taxis to take us through the back way to Seminyak (we'd just handed back our scooter as it was our last night). My lovely blow dried, styled hair was thoroughly wind swept by the time we arrived, but this is the price you have to pay to keep a much looked forward to dinner date. Luckily I knew the restaurant was on Petetinget so knew roughly were to go as our motorbike guys didn't. What a lovely restaurant, surrounding are beautiful. The highligh was our tasting dessert plate and great coffee. Not to mention fantastic mojitos. This was our most expensive meal at $200AUD, but worth it.
We had a few late nights, one of them being our friends 50th (after tepinyaki) at Legends on Garlic Lane, always a good band there, and of course a few plucka-ducks.
Another great trip to Bali, roll on October when I'll be celebrating my 50th boo hoo.