Another early morning wakeup to the sounds of sweeping after rain overnight and an overload of Breakfast. We steal a handful of rice bubbles to feed to the Koi fish in the ponds while our room is being cleaned. One Beach seller spots us and is very nice but incredibly persistent. We give her no encouragement and chat for a while but call it all off and head back into the safety of the hotel grounds as soon as the Watch seller silently appears beside us. Once it starts to feel like a feeding frenzy its not fun anymore.
We throw a couple of bits of food to the resident hotel squirrels which are stealing food left for the birds. The squirrels move so fast and can be across the tree and onto a roof in no time.
Its still quite overcast so we abort our plans to go to a nearby beach club and instead arrange a hotel driver to take us to Discovery Mall in Kuta. This is my preferred way to visit Kuta now, having previously stayed there and seen most of it before. Drive in, shop and drive out suits us just fine. I'm getting old, obviously.
We stop at Hardy's in Nusa Dua first to buy bulk amounts of Carrots. The reason for this will be revealed shortly. Hardy's have a weird system where you get a sticker to wear on arrival, which you have to hand back before you pay. I have no idea if someone is getting a commission for my purchases, but it seems very inefficient. We take the toll road into Kuta and are parking under Discovery in no time. Traffic was fine.
First stop is the huge DVD shop. Emily is in heaven, filling her basket with the equivalent of about 200k of DVD's. The Lego movie is sold out here and also in the next DVD store we try which really says something about its popularity. I buy some Revlon Foundation at Centro, which is about $4 dearer for 3 bottles than it was last year (340k for 3 bottles), but it is still one third of the cost of at home. Very happy with that purchase but it just reinforces my developing resentment about being ripped off at home when I shop!
Back in the car and we take the long way home (ie. Not the toll road) so we can drive to McDonalds at Jimbaran for Emily to try.
A four nugget happy meal and a Mcflurry costs about $3.60 here which is half the price of home and Emily assures me the McFlurry was delicious.
Back at the hotel I label and leave my portable Hard Drive at reception to be collected by Made who I have previously emailed and asked to load with movies and tv shows. I'm allowing a level of trust here having never met him, he could just take off with my $100 worth of Hard Drive and return nothing.
Into the pool, Hoppy and I share lunch of Risotto and a Calzone. The risotto is amazing with prawns, basil oil, very creamy and garlicky but delicious. The calzone, so so. I think they are very hard to get right... the egg still undercooked inside.
Hoppy has a massage at the hotel, expensive by Bali standard but excellent quality and location. Our last dinner is at La Scala again, the same meal as before.
We pack our bags for an early checkout tomorrow morning and Kadek and his family (wife and 2 kids) come for a visit. On our last trip to Bali, we were invited to their home and felt very welcomed and honoured to have had that opportunity. This time we are just meeting in our hotel room, but they seem to love it, and inspect the huge bathroom and bath in the middle of the room like its a museum piece.
We assure them our rooms at home look nothing like this.
I had taken a photo of the front of my house and my street to show them where we live in Melbourne, and Kadek is fascinated with the Nature Strip. He wants to know what it is? What do you do with it? I guess it seems like a waste of space to him, but he thinks that it would be great to park cars on in Bali.
His kids have a ball with Emily. We have brought a lot of inexpensive gifts so they can play together without a language barrier. Glow in the dark Balloons, some Lego, Loom Bands, Flouro light sticks and some hand puppets. Kadek and his wife just love the puppets and I am starting to have weird images of these two grown ups playing with the puppets instead of the kids.
Kadek doesn't believe we will be up at 6am tomorrow to check out at 8am when he takes us to the safari park. We will see.