Woke up early. Obviously, considering we were in bed by 8pm last night. How soft are we? I consider it to be a reasonable time to get up when I can hear the man in our Hotel Room front garden sweeping up the leaves that fall overnight. I love that sound. It is so uniquely Bali I think. You hear it everywhere in the mornings, those brooms made of twigs. Time to get up then.
I don't want to waste a minute of my holiday so I drag Emily out of bed and we head to the beach in front of the hotel. Except much of the beach is gone. It looks like erosion but I have heard previously that some sand was taken to Nusa Dua. It makes the beach look terrible and it is almost impossible to walk even to the next hotel on the beach when the tide is in. The water comes right up to the front of one of the hotel villa's walls. It is unsightly and spoils the whole point of a beach walk when you can only go 10 metres in one direction.
We turn the other way for a walk but with all the fishing and charter boats anchored there, a beach walk involves stepping over ropes every few metres and we are quickly accosted by a tour boat operator . I have to walk back to the hotel and am virtually in the pool area before he gives up. No more beach walks for us which is a shame.
We meet Hoppy for breakfast which cannot be described - its a huge range of anything you can imagine, separate areas for kids food options and cartoons for them to watch, an asian range of hot and cold food, eggs on order, pancakes, bakery items, sausages, Indonesian food etc. If you can't find half a dozen things you like, you have some serious dietary issues.
After breakfast we wait at the front of the hotel, watching the local squirrels in the trees, to catch the free shuttle bus to Bali Collection shopping centre in Nusa Dua. We are about the 2nd pick up location on the bus route, so we all get a seat. The bus is fun, its free, has no windows, and is a wild ride for about 15 minutes with the wind blowing your hair and random international tourists crammed against you as the bus fills up with each pickup.
At Bali Collection, we get some fantastically cheap Panadol Cold and flu tablets for Emily, who has developed a cold. At less than 90cents a pack of 10, these are an absolute bargain. At home I pay about $16 for a pack of maybe 4 days worth, and have to show photo ID and virtually sign a stat dec stating that I am not manufacturing drugs in order to buy them due to the pseudoephedrine they contain. Here, however, I am not treated like i'm running a clandestine drug lab, and more like an unwell patient who actually could just use a tablet and a good lie down. Ahhh Bali.. I love you more each day.
Next stop within the centre is the supermarket (Coco's I think) where I get a Bali Sim card with some credit to use in my old Nokia phone, some new Sunglasses to replace the ones that died this morning, and a few cold drinks and snacks.
Its getting pretty warm now so instead of waiting for the free shuttle back, we hail a taxi at the set price dictated by the shopping centre (50k which is clearly about a 400% markup but its hot, and we are clearly not in the mood to walk or wait for another option).
We are back into the hotel swimming pool within minutes, this time at the back of the Hotel, where you can order food and eat in the pool. That sound like a hygiene nightmare so we opt to actually eat our club sandwiches next to the pool rather than in it. After the swim its time for a nap, some more trashy cable tv for Emily and I, while Hoppy heads off to Jengalla Ceramics in nearby Jimbaran.
We have planned to eat at Beni Hana (Japanese Teppanyaki) behind the Bali Collection shopping centre so we catch the free shuttle Bus again at about 6pm. Emily is looking less and less well as we go along, and is starving hungry by the time we get there. This is made worse by the fact that Beni Hana has closed down, hardly surprising since it had no promotion, no street frontage and no customers.
We need to get some food into Emily quickly so we head to the row of hotels on the beachfront here. The first one with a restaurant is the Melia, it all looks nice, a big buffet or a la carte dinner, a deck over the beach, fire dancers and music. We grab a table, order as fast as we can and try and distract Emily until dinner arrives.
She is almost in tears at this point but we do get the food quickly which averts a disaster. Admittedly the food is very average (a few crap calamari rings, a bad pizza and some sparse corn chips which were supposed to be Nachos) but Emily is recovering and we are in and out of there in less than 30 minutes.
Our waiter here is a concern.. a few years ago, about 50 metres from this exact location, Hoppy somehow managed to attract the unwanted and persistent attentions of the local security guard - Gus Rei. He was so overly friendly, even trying to call her on my phone and telling her how beautiful she was.
Our waiter tonight looks and behaves exactly like that security guard, and we are convinced he has had a career change. He asks all our names, is very touchy-feely, and I'm sure he called each of us Darling more than once. Hoppy was squirming in her seat and doing her best to stay in the shadows until we could get out of there. The average food, with no alcoholic drinks cost us the same as a huge delicious meal with cocktails and freebies at La Scala last night, so I think that's where we will be eating next time. Plus, no creepy waiters.
Emily is feeling much better now so we have a quick paddle in the beautifully clean beach which is lit with floodlights and then back through the shopping centre for a couple of purchases. Its a bit cooler so much more pleasant for shopping at night, we don't make much effort to bargain, just not to accept the first price, so Emily is happy to pay 60k for a baseball cap and Hoppy to pay about 260k for two dresses. Another taxi back to the hotel and into bed after a very full day.