It had been a long time since we had a decent holiday and we’d had this trip to Bali booked for a long time! In fact, I booked it back in December last year! This is one of my top travelling tips, if you want good deals and to not spend as much money on your trip – book well in advance, when the deals come out! The flights to Bali ex Auckland were just under $1,000NZD for the BOTH of us!
I took ages to decide whether or not to take my laptop with me on the trip so that I could blog while we were there but decided against it for a couple of reasons. One being that we had a small baggage allowance between us (15kg), and the other being that we were supposed to relax and recharge rather than work, so I decided to leave it behind and not worry about keeping up to date with the blogging.
We spent the first day just checking out the sights in and around Kuta and relaxing on the beach. The beaches are beautiful over there, although after seeing a couple of other beaches on our last day, I must say Kuta isn’t the best beach, by far. If we were to go back to Bali I think we would spend some time either near Padang Beach or Uluwatu as the beaches over there are beautiful, less crowded and there are fewer people trying to sell you sarongs!
The second day we were there we decided to do a tour up to Lovina Beach, not because we were eager to see a black sand beach (they were quite excited for us to see it! We had to look as though it was an awesome sight when in reality we live about 300metres from a black sand beach ;)), but because it took us across a decent chunk of the island and we wanted to get out and see some more of the country and get our bearings for where else we may want to go to.
We covered a lot of the Island over the day, and it was an incredibly long day. We didn’t realise that we had booked the trip on the Sunday after they had just had a 10 day religious ceremony and that everyone was on holiday for the weekend and would be travelling back into the city on the Sunday night – at the same time as us! Traffic was thick and slow and it made for a long journey home! I really enjoyed getting out and about and getting a view of the country from the comfort of our air-conditioned car. We were lucky enough that we were the only ones booked on the tour so ended up with a private guide. In hindsight, next time we would just hire a driver for the day as this was actually cheaper, so we discovered on our last day!
The next day we had a day relaxing by the beach and the pool, mostly reading and not doing a lot. We booked a trip for the following day to go on a Downhill mountain bike ride however during the night Kyle got ill (we think it was probably food poisoning) and we had to postpone the bike ride by a day. Kyle spent the day in the hotel room and I had another day relaxing, I went to the beach and read my book, spent some time by the pool and did a dinner run for both of us as Kyle didn’t feel well enough to leave the hotel room.
Luckily the next morning Kyle felt well enough to go on the trip, albeit not feeling anywhere near 100%. We travelled for about an hour before we stopped at a coffee plantation and tried the Luwak coffee (the coffee beans are digested by a cat-like animal and once excreted the beans are cleaned and used as coffee), we had tried this on our first day trip. This is Bali’s tourist ‘thing’, most countries seem to have at least one thing they try to sell you on all the tours and for Bali it is Bintang (Beer), Coffee Luwak and Sarongs. I didn’t try the coffee as I don’t drink it, Kyle gave it a go on our first day trip and thought it was a bit average. In fact he thought all of the coffee he had in Bali was pretty average.
After we were herded back into our mini van we travelled another half an hour or so until we got to the top of the hill we would be cycling down, it was in Kintamani. Before we took off we were offered more coffee, tea and a banana (which came deep-fried so didn’t get eaten). The view from the top looking out over the Mountains and lake is seriously stunning. I’d recommend the trip just to check out the view!
The cycling trip truly was a downhill cycle, I think I literally peddled the bike like 5 times the whole trip! If you can ride a bike you can definitely do the tour. There was one section of gravelled road near the start which I hated every second of, if it had been like that the whole trip I think I would have gotten off the bike and into our van which was following us. I don’t mind if there are bumps in the road but gravel and sand are not my friend at all! Luckily this didn’t last for too long, even though it felt like forever at the time.
We finished up the trip with a lunch at the owner’s house – it looked like any other restaurant aimed at westerners outside of the chain restaurants. The food was quite tasty though and we were given three courses including a soup to start, a typical lunch and then a fruit platter for dessert. I had been looking forward to some pineapple the whole trip and I didn’t enjoy it at all as it was quite dry. By this point I was starting to feel a little bit ill so I was glad to head back to the hotel. It took what felt like forever to get back and the air conditioning in the shuttle van was no help to those of us in the back.
Later that evening Kyle booked himself on a Motorbike trip through the Indonesian Forests, motorbikes aren’t my cup of tea so I planned on having a relaxing day. My original plan was to find a cooking course however they all seemed to require a minimum of two people to go on them. Luckily I didn’t book a cooking tour though as I was feeling progressively worse as time went on and I spent the whole of the next day barely leaving the hotel room. I went for two short walks, one to try to find a Boost Juice Bar – I think I was one block off it and realised I needed to get back to the hotel ASAP or things were not going to be pleasant. Later on that day I went for a walk to find lunch, I had been feeling not too bad despite the circumstances for the past hour or so, so I decided it would be safe enough to go for a short walk so long as I went somewhere that would have a decent toilet. I managed to find some lunch, enjoy it and JUST make it back to the hotel room in time. As the afternoon stretched on I felt worse and worse and I was getting a bit nervous as the next day we had booked a private driver to take us around as it was our last day. Kyle had to return the favour and do a dinner run for us both that night.
The last day I woke up feeling better than I had the day before but still not 100%, well enough to do our day trip, thinking if worse came to worse I’d just have to get the driver to stop a lot. We spent the day checking out a few spots that we hadn’t managed to make it to yet. First up we headed out to Tanah Lot Temple which is a temple which is only reachable by walking across a small section of water, we didn’t cross into the temple – I’m not actually sure if we were allowed to or not as I didn’t see any westerners over there. I’d definitely recommend a trip to Tanah Lot, I’m pretty sure our first day trip was supposed to include this but we were quite late back with all the traffic as it was so we never got here.
After Tanah Lot we had an unusual request from our driver, to find the abandoned plane near Nusa Dua. It was all fenced up by Kyle snuck underneath it to take a few photos. Rumour has it that someone purchased the plane with the intention of opening a themed restaurant but ran out of money. Either way it’s completely random to see a huge plane next door to houses and a Dunkin Donuts!
We then moved on to Nusa Dua, I didn’t really know anything about Nusa Dua except that there were a lot of upmarket resorts in the area and that I wanted to see the blowhole. Turns out Nusa Dua is a private area, however the public are allowed to go in and swim at the beach. This means there is pretty much no-one running after you asking you to buy a damn sarong (I’m actually not a fan of sarongs!) and there was open grassy areas, there were big wide open spaces and everything wasn’t crammed together! It was seriously beautiful over this part of the island, although I don’t know how much of the local culture you would be subjected to if you were to actually stay at one of the resorts there.
The reason for going to Nusa Dua was to check out the Blowhole, it wasn’t really a blowhole at the time of day we visited however. The sea wasn’t rough enough and the tide wasn’t in enough to actually make the water blowhole up through the rocks. I’m still glad we went over to Nusa Dua though as it was beautiful. We were going to have lunch at one of the small stalls there (not a hotel restaurant), but when they gave us a menu without prices we decided against that! Us accountants like to know what we are in for before we decide what we are going to eat.
After Nusa Dua we found somewhere for lunch along the way to the Suluban Cave and Uluwatu, I’d highly reccomend both of these! We also stopped at Padang beach as well, which I was surprised to pay 10,000IDR (about $1NZD) each to go down to, but it was beautiful! We got to Uluwatu not long before Sunset and it was beautiful, although a lot of tourists! You can also see the monkeys here, we saw one who had stolen someones reading glasses and another one try to steal someones camera so keep your belongings close! After Uluwatu we headed towards the airport and stopped along the way for Kyle to get a haircut!
Bali is one of those places that you could easily get frustrated with, due to the number of people who are constantly trying to sell you something. It is rather overwhelming for all the senses as there are people trying to sell you something left right and centre and then there are signs and things to look at EVERYWHERE. And when I saw everywhere, I truly mean it. I noticed this on about the third or fourth day and I was beginning to long for big open areas so that my eyes could get a break from all the stuff. It was a nice change of scenery when we went for our downhill bike tour and on the last day when we checked out Nusa Dua.
Have you ever been to Bali? – Would you like to go? – Comment below and let me know, I love hearing from you!
Looks like you guys had an awesome time despite the sickness. I’m so jealous of your jet setting, it always looks amazing. xxx