Beautiful Bali Birthday

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I was initially reticent to go to Bali, thinking that it would be trashy and cheap. After some hunting around, though, I found a great place to celelbrate my birthday.

We flew over on Strategic Airlines, which had just rebadged itself as Air Australia. After some problems with the destination port, we eventually had our tickets honoured, but had to fly from Brisbane rather than Townsville. The plane was very basic, however we had a meal, some alcoholic beverages and a move (Red Dog) and a refuel stop at Darwin.

Arrived at Denpasar airport and fought our way through to purchase our visa ($25US) and then made it out to the carpark. The slap of the tropical heat and hunidity was fairly intense.

From the airport to the wonderful Villa Tenang was about a 45minute drive through the crazy throng of motorbikes, buses and cars that seemed to be moving with painfully slow progress.

I found the villa online and it was very luxurious.

On our arrival we were met by Siti and the staff who made us feel very welcome.

Located beside the villa was a dodgy little Balinese beauty spa providing basic services such as hair braiding and massages for a very cheap price (hour long massage - $5.00)

About a 2 minute walk up the road were a number of eating places. We ate out almost every night, average cost of a decent meal and a Bin Tang beer was the equivalent of about $5.00

So what did we do?

Being 7 of us in total there were always options within the group. My first expedition was to the Denpasar markets, this is where the locals go to shop. This was not the most exciting market I had been to, but there was a distinct lack of Europeans and we were off the tourism track, so that was novel.

Kuta Beach was lovely, we walked for hours from Kuta, along to almost Seminyak beach on a very hot day. The rest of Kuta is basically bars, clubs and trashing knock off shopping with the odd Australian behaving badly along the way.

A day trip to Ubud including white water rafting was great. Up in Ubud we bought the lovely ceremonial umbrellas I had really wanted to purchase.

Perhaps the jewell in the crown of the holiday was the trip to Central Java. We flew from Denpasar to Jogykarta to visit Borobudur. About the hottest day on record, I'd say. Climbed the ancient temple and also visited Pranbanan temple and a water palace. While in central Java we visited a beautiful silver factory, where I bought some pearl earings and somje aquamarine earings.

We ate a Pumpkin Head Beach Club one night, that was ubercool.

Purchases for this holiday include the batik tablecloth, sarongs and a fabulous pointed hat.

Despite my initial doubts, Bali is a place where there is something for every holiday maker.

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