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Published: August 17th 2008
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Furama Villas - at night
You can see the pool in this, I could just do with a splash around now! Hello all!
This is our last day in Bali (though you may not read this until a bit later as we have another technical issue with the blog - a fault of the blog and not me I hasten to add, despite the various insinuations to the contrary in previous blogs....) and so before nipping off to the airport we've decided to complete our text and photos for the blog.
We've had a lovely stay here - we also had an unscheduled overnight stay in Singapore courtesy of British air traffic control systems delaying us out of Heathrow, but we got a nice lightning show out of it so can't complain...
I considered this our real honeymoon - tropical island, beaches, warm weather.... And I haven't been disappointed. Ross I think thought of this as his start to surfing and he hasn't been disappointed either!
As it was the start of our honeymoon I'd booked us into a luxury villa near Ubud (Furama villas on Lastminute.com - I would recommend it), the cultural capital of the island, for our first 3 (now 2 due to the stop in Singapore) nights in Bali. It was absolutely fantastic, we
had our own private pool - small but perfectly formed in the garden along with a pagoda with massage beds and lovely outdoor shower, none of which were overlooked. The villas are in the middle of the paddy fields, I've never really seen any before and I'm still intrigued to know how you get from a rice plant to rice itself, is it a seed or does it grow around the roots? I've no idea, I really must look it up.
We had a lovely relaxing time, had a look round Ubud itself which like all Bali is absolutely full of small shops - but here they sell more paintings and carvings than sarongs and board shorts. This is consumer culture taken to extremes! On our way to the villa in a taxi we'd noticed that the roadsides were full of lots of shops selling huge stone pots and statues (how you'd get these home I don't know... especially along with the huge wooden tables, pagodas, paintings etc. Though it was pointed out to me that Bali has a thriving export business).
We hadn't booked all our accommodation before arriving in Bali as we thought it should be
quite easy to find hotels once we arrived. Hmm... Well, unfortunately for us (not the Balinese who are having a well deserved celebration and holiday) today is independence day in Bali and it seems that every man and his dog has been in Bali over the past week or so, including lots of Indonesians, booking up the good accommodation. So it hasn't been as much of a breeze as we expected. We haven't slept on the beach yet though and our third hotel (the second hotel we only stayed in one night and isn't worth a mention) was definitely a good find.
Stretching from a road down to the beach front in a resort called Legian the hotel (Kumala Pantai) had a fabulously long pool (it must have been at least 25m which is big for over here) which I particularly enjoyed as I'm not much of a sea swimmer. Like all the hotels here there were lots of palm trees and tropical flowers growing around the buildings and we had a good sized balcony to dry our things on overnight.
The beach in the Legian/Kuta area is a big draw for surfers, particularly beginners, and so Ross
had great fun having a lesson and then later on in the holiday hiring a board and practicing. I'm afraid readers that the large waves scared me to death, I'm really not a fan, I did have a go body boarding though and I think I can cope with that, you don't need to go to far out! We didn't do much sea swimming here as there are fast rip currents (every year there are quite a few drownings, despite having a number of lifeguards on duty) - not really a good location for snorkeling either. So onto our next adventure - a trip to the island of Lembongen just off the coast in between Bali and Lombok.
This is much more my idea of a tropical island, white sandy beaches running down into crystal clear blue water, few and little waves, coral reefs, yep I was in paradise! When we started the trip I wasn't convinced about snorkeling, however we went on a snorkeling trip out to a reef just off from the resort and the fish were fantastic... See the pics which were taken from a semi submersible which we did before snorkeling (this is what convinced
me that snorkeling would be a good idea!). They were very curious of snorkelers, you only had to lie still on the water for a bit and the fish would come to take a look at you and swim round your arms. Best of all, there were no jellyfish!!! The fish didn't look poisonous and Ross even pointed out a sea cucumber to me! Wonderful.
We stayed overnight in a hut by the beach with a thatched roof, these are quite common around Bali, and we enjoyed the quiet when the day trippers had gone.
And so we went off back to Legian with fantastic memories. Ross got a bit more surfing in and I had a nice sunbathe and shop. All while sat on the beach. Having been offered a pedicure by almost every Balinese woman walking past, including ones looking very concerned at the state of my feet, I finally succumbed and had one done by a lady who could do little flowers with your nail polish... She was also very nice I hasten to add! And we had a lovely chat while she did my feet, followed by my hands (I really am gullible... but
the French polish looked good afterwards!).
We didn't see all that the island had to offer - we didn't go up to the volcano which we regret a bit - but when you don't stay at one place for very long these things are hard to organise. Plus it's very hot which makes such efforts seem just a little too much.. If we return it will definitely be on our agenda, especially as at least one of them is still active! Our overall picture of Bali is probably as follows - very friendly people, fantastic beaches (oh ok, and great waves for surfing), great snorkeling on the islands, average food and a lovely warm climate.
You'll be pleased to hear that we've finally got our visas approved (talk about in the nick of time..) and so we should be able to get hold of them once we're in New Zealand. We've booked our campervan so our next blog will be about a bit of a roadtrip, no idea where we'll be going yet but no-one will miss us (see escape campervans online for the reason why... or our next blog!).
Keep in touch, we're enjoying hearing from
you - makes it less of a one way conversation!!!
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