Beautiful Bali
Whilst you could spend endless amounts of time in the paradise that is Bali, we only had 10 nights which we spent as follows;
Seminyak - two days, three nights
After living in hostels the whole time we were in New Zealand and Australia it felt pretty amazing to stay in a 4* hotel (The Visala Boutique Suites Hotel - perfect location for walking around Seminyak and to get to the Potato Head Beach Club). Bonus that the hotel cost around the same price as our hostels too! We felt like a King & Queen having room service and long lay-ins, not to mention getting our own private bathroom - no more walking down a corridor to take a shower/pee!
The next day was a little more full on as we were back in full tourist mode. Through our hotel we hired a driver for the day (10 hours), which only cost around £30 (crazy ey!?). He took us to a number of different sights including the Tanah Lot temple and a coffee plantation (note: neither Chris or I drink coffee but we wanted to experience new things whilst away... we got to do a tasting of lots of different teas and coffees, where the majority were actually really nice!). We felt like we had to buy something after the free tasting so we bought some lemongrass tea, which we ended up leaving in the car at the end of the day. We got a call the next morning to say the driver had returned our tea, how nice of him! Although the tea only stayed with us until the end of our time in Ubud where we accidentally left it again, this time in our hotel room... it just wasn't meant to be!
We also visited the Taman temple, a palace (where I got wolf whistled at by a bird in a cage... Chris tried to claim it was doing it at him but he'd definitely already walked passed by that point. We also went to Dreamland beach which was beautiful although it did start to rain a little whilst we were there and the waves were way too big to go in the sea. Our final stop of the day was to Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park to see the statues. It was a full on day but for the price it's so worth hiring a driver to see as much of what Bali has to offer as possible!
Ubud - one day, two nights
We got a taxi from Seminyak to Ubud which took around two hours due to all of the crazy traffic! As it was mid afternoon by the time we got there we checked into our lovely hotel (Meruhdani Hotel) and then arranged to meet our friends (Ryan and Sophie) for dinner. If you remember at the end of my Australia post I mentioned that we met a couple on our Atherton Tablelands trip in Cairns who were also going to Bali at a similar time to us so we arranged to meet up with them - we ended up spending the majority of the rest of our time in Bali with them which was great!
My happy place - our hotel had a bath so I got to enjoy my first bath in over two months and it was amazing!
On our second and last day in Ubud the four of us hired a driver again for the whole day. The first stop was a beautiful rice field.
Funny story - as we were walking around the rice field I kept seeing a sign that said 'goup' and after a while I asked the other three what it meant, only for Ryan to inform me that the sign didn't say 'goup', it said 'go up'... doh! Chris ended up falling into the mud whilst we were there and his flip flop broke so after two hours when we finally found our way out of the maze (rice field) he looked a little worse for wear!
We also visited two temples including Mount Kawi, which 300 steps later left us all sweaty messes, and Tampaksiring which is the holy spring water temple - we got to go into the water which was cool. For lunch we stopped off at a restaurant at the top of Kintamani which had stunning views of Mt Batur and Mt Agung, although sadly my food arrived with dead flies in it... not ideal! Our last two stops for the day were the Elephant Cave which ironically doesn't really look like an elephant and much to Chris' disappointment... there weren't live elephants there, and finally the Monkey Forest. I was a little worried about going to see the monkey's because I didn't get my rabies injection before coming away travelling but luckily I survived, even with a monkey on me!
Gili Trawangan - two days, three nights
Boats in Bali...
Where do I start?! The main piece of advice I can give to anyone planning on using a boat in Indonesia or South East Asia is... book a bigger boat! Small speed boats really aren't cut out for the trips you take. Our boat over to Gili T (Semaya One) was absolutely fine, it was a decent sized boat and a smooth trip across one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world, albeit it was late.
Unfortunately our boat trip back to the mainland was a different story. Again it was late, and also it was tiny! I don't like the sea at the best of times but I sat and cried on this boat trip. We literally flew through the air hitting every wave and it sounded like they were going to break the boat. It also smelt really badly of petrol. The trip took way longer than it was supposed to and not only that, but we didn't even stop at the harbour we had booked to go to! The boat stopped at a random location and the men said that because it was low season and there were not many passengers (the boat was full...) that they would only stop here and we would be put into minibuses to take us to the harbour we were meant to stop at, to then get on another minibus to take us to our hotel in Sanur. This ended up being a one and a half hour journey to the harbour, and then another hour to the hotel - so what was supposed to be a two and a half hour trip in total turned out to be nearly five hours!! What's more, the first mini bus had no door or air-con! It was a traumatic day to say the least!
Sanur - one day, two nights
We spent our last two nights in Bali in Sanur. We didn't really do a whole lot there mainly due to the trauma of our journey back from Gili T. We mostly just slept, ate and did our laundry.
We stayed at Laghawa Beach Inn Hotel and we ended up changing rooms THREE times during our stay. The first was due to the fact that the shower wouldn't turn on - not ideal when we arrived as sweaty messes following the boat/bus trips. The second was due to the fact that the air-con didn't work, and the third was in the middle of the night when Chris woke me up to inform me that a gecko was basically sat on my head! We woke the reception staff up who were sleeping in the lobby to tell them and to try and get them to get rid of it for us but unfortunately they didn't really understand and when the man came to see it he said he couldn't remove it or touch it... so we just moved rooms instead!
On our last night we met back up with Ryan and Sophie who stayed an extra night on Gili T for a final meal.
Random bit of information: unless you've ever been to Indonesia or South East Asia prior to going to Bali you will get a big shock seeing all the mopeds and motorbikes zooming around. Before we went to Bali Chris & I were considering hiring a scooter to explore but in our taxi from the airport to the hotel we were left sat there with our mouths wide open cringing at all the near miss accidents we saw, so we steered clear from hiring one!
Bali really is beautiful and well worth a visit. I feel like although we only had 10 nights there that we got a good overview of the country.
It's on to Singapore now for three nights!
Until the next post,
#chollyontour xxx
Seminyak - two days, three nights
After living in hostels the whole time we were in New Zealand and Australia it felt pretty amazing to stay in a 4* hotel (The Visala Boutique Suites Hotel - perfect location for walking around Seminyak and to get to the Potato Head Beach Club). Bonus that the hotel cost around the same price as our hostels too! We felt like a King & Queen having room service and long lay-ins, not to mention getting our own private bathroom - no more walking down a corridor to take a shower/pee!
Our first day in Seminyak was nice and laid back, after a lay in and breakfast on the roof top of our hotel, we took a walk and stumbled across a spa where we each had a manicure, pedicure, facial and full body Balinese massage for around £17 each!! They were all amazing and given the price, make you want to have a treatment everyday you're in Bali! Afterwards, feeling like two new people, we made our way to the infamous potato head beach club where we sipped daiquiris in the pool whilst watching a beautiful sunset... not a bad way to spend our first day in Bali eh?!
The next day was a little more full on as we were back in full tourist mode. Through our hotel we hired a driver for the day (10 hours), which only cost around £30 (crazy ey!?). He took us to a number of different sights including the Tanah Lot temple and a coffee plantation (note: neither Chris or I drink coffee but we wanted to experience new things whilst away... we got to do a tasting of lots of different teas and coffees, where the majority were actually really nice!). We felt like we had to buy something after the free tasting so we bought some lemongrass tea, which we ended up leaving in the car at the end of the day. We got a call the next morning to say the driver had returned our tea, how nice of him! Although the tea only stayed with us until the end of our time in Ubud where we accidentally left it again, this time in our hotel room... it just wasn't meant to be!
We also visited the Taman temple, a palace (where I got wolf whistled at by a bird in a cage... Chris tried to claim it was doing it at him but he'd definitely already walked passed by that point. We also went to Dreamland beach which was beautiful although it did start to rain a little whilst we were there and the waves were way too big to go in the sea. Our final stop of the day was to Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park to see the statues. It was a full on day but for the price it's so worth hiring a driver to see as much of what Bali has to offer as possible!
Ubud - one day, two nights
We got a taxi from Seminyak to Ubud which took around two hours due to all of the crazy traffic! As it was mid afternoon by the time we got there we checked into our lovely hotel (Meruhdani Hotel) and then arranged to meet our friends (Ryan and Sophie) for dinner. If you remember at the end of my Australia post I mentioned that we met a couple on our Atherton Tablelands trip in Cairns who were also going to Bali at a similar time to us so we arranged to meet up with them - we ended up spending the majority of the rest of our time in Bali with them which was great!
My happy place - our hotel had a bath so I got to enjoy my first bath in over two months and it was amazing!
On our second and last day in Ubud the four of us hired a driver again for the whole day. The first stop was a beautiful rice field.
Funny story - as we were walking around the rice field I kept seeing a sign that said 'goup' and after a while I asked the other three what it meant, only for Ryan to inform me that the sign didn't say 'goup', it said 'go up'... doh! Chris ended up falling into the mud whilst we were there and his flip flop broke so after two hours when we finally found our way out of the maze (rice field) he looked a little worse for wear!
We also visited two temples including Mount Kawi, which 300 steps later left us all sweaty messes, and Tampaksiring which is the holy spring water temple - we got to go into the water which was cool. For lunch we stopped off at a restaurant at the top of Kintamani which had stunning views of Mt Batur and Mt Agung, although sadly my food arrived with dead flies in it... not ideal! Our last two stops for the day were the Elephant Cave which ironically doesn't really look like an elephant and much to Chris' disappointment... there weren't live elephants there, and finally the Monkey Forest. I was a little worried about going to see the monkey's because I didn't get my rabies injection before coming away travelling but luckily I survived, even with a monkey on me!
Gili Trawangan - two days, three nights
I was really excited to head over to Gili Trawangan as I'd heard so many good things about it. We decided to just stick to the one island which gave us a good amount of time to relax and we even extended our stay by one extra night (we were planning on going to Nusa Lombogan but it turned out we would have to go back to the mainland first which seemed a bit of a faff given the fact that boats don't really run on time in Bali!).
We stayed at Natya Hotel which was beautiful and we spent our days on the island snorkelling with turtles, biking around the island, trying paddle boarding for the first time (a lot harder than people make it look), and chilling by the pool.... with a cheeky trip to the spa of course! We also really enjoyed sitting and listening to some great live bands/singers at night.
Boats in Bali...
Where do I start?! The main piece of advice I can give to anyone planning on using a boat in Indonesia or South East Asia is... book a bigger boat! Small speed boats really aren't cut out for the trips you take. Our boat over to Gili T (Semaya One) was absolutely fine, it was a decent sized boat and a smooth trip across one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world, albeit it was late.
Unfortunately our boat trip back to the mainland was a different story. Again it was late, and also it was tiny! I don't like the sea at the best of times but I sat and cried on this boat trip. We literally flew through the air hitting every wave and it sounded like they were going to break the boat. It also smelt really badly of petrol. The trip took way longer than it was supposed to and not only that, but we didn't even stop at the harbour we had booked to go to! The boat stopped at a random location and the men said that because it was low season and there were not many passengers (the boat was full...) that they would only stop here and we would be put into minibuses to take us to the harbour we were meant to stop at, to then get on another minibus to take us to our hotel in Sanur. This ended up being a one and a half hour journey to the harbour, and then another hour to the hotel - so what was supposed to be a two and a half hour trip in total turned out to be nearly five hours!! What's more, the first mini bus had no door or air-con! It was a traumatic day to say the least!
We spent our last two nights in Bali in Sanur. We didn't really do a whole lot there mainly due to the trauma of our journey back from Gili T. We mostly just slept, ate and did our laundry.
We stayed at Laghawa Beach Inn Hotel and we ended up changing rooms THREE times during our stay. The first was due to the fact that the shower wouldn't turn on - not ideal when we arrived as sweaty messes following the boat/bus trips. The second was due to the fact that the air-con didn't work, and the third was in the middle of the night when Chris woke me up to inform me that a gecko was basically sat on my head! We woke the reception staff up who were sleeping in the lobby to tell them and to try and get them to get rid of it for us but unfortunately they didn't really understand and when the man came to see it he said he couldn't remove it or touch it... so we just moved rooms instead!
On our last night we met back up with Ryan and Sophie who stayed an extra night on Gili T for a final meal.
Random bit of information: unless you've ever been to Indonesia or South East Asia prior to going to Bali you will get a big shock seeing all the mopeds and motorbikes zooming around. Before we went to Bali Chris & I were considering hiring a scooter to explore but in our taxi from the airport to the hotel we were left sat there with our mouths wide open cringing at all the near miss accidents we saw, so we steered clear from hiring one!
Bali really is beautiful and well worth a visit. I feel like although we only had 10 nights there that we got a good overview of the country.
It's on to Singapore now for three nights!
Until the next post,
#chollyontour xxx
Oh Holly! This took me back - we were in Bali last June for 10 days as part of our honeymoon - we didn't travel as round as much but spent 5 days in Ubud and then 5 days in Nusa Dua.
ReplyDeleteWe also had the thoughts of hiring a moped and as soon as we arrived and were in our taxi to Ubud we were like... nope that ain't happening!
Unfortunately we were blessed with such unseasonably shit weather whilst we were there so whilst we'd planned to do some rice field trekking we were too hindered to, but we did stop off and have a peek on our journey back down to Nusa Dua - your pictures look so gorgeous, I definitely want to go back and do that part properly in future!
Helpless Whilst Drying