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Sarah: Hellooooo Bali! Just relaxing after our third day here, when we finally did something! (Un?)fortunately all we did for the first two days was recover from a late last night in Oz and 24 hours of overnight travelling by eating, sleeping and reading, so I'll keep it brief...
From Brisbane we flew to Kuala Lumpur, waiting in their freezing airport (air con does not need to take you to the Arctic guys) for a few hours, warmed by some spicy laksa (noodle soup) before catching our onward flight to Bali. We'll be calling back in to Kuala Lumpur in about 3 months time to catch our flight back to Blighty! We finally arrived in Seminyak, Bali on Friday mid-afternoon and were shown to our enormous two storey 'villa' complete with balcony, lots of storage space and a nice enough bathroom, all for about half the price per night of our box room in Brisbane - welcome to Asia! The people here are really welcoming and can't do enough to help you. After a laze around, avoiding what would have been an ill-advised nap and waiting for the heavens to close again after a monster shower we headed out along
the 'strip' to find some dinner.
Neither of us were feeling particularly lively, but we had a nice dinner and managed not to fall asleep in it. Nick went for a rendang and I took a punt on a chicken betutu. The betutu came under 'Indonesian specialities' on the menu and was a bit peanutty, without being full-on satay, I love peanut butter as much as the next person, but I'd rather not have it smeared over meat... A bit of peanut though and a bit of spice and freshness - a betutu is the dish for me, plus it's got a nice sounding name! As soon as the bill was settled it was back to bed for a long awaited sleep, awoken only by another hammering of rain periodically through the night.
Brekkie choices included all sorts of Indonesian stir fries but assuming that we'd be hitting the ol' rice/noodles for lunch and dinner we opted for the 'American breakfast' of eggs and bacon! Very tasty it was too with nice sunny side up eggies and crispy bacon. The rain was still on and off so we carried on relaxing at the resort and sniffed out the
pool. Although it was a bit grey we had fun splashing around and lazing on the loungers. We popped out only to get a bite of lunch (duck betutu for Nick, duck nasi goreng for me) and later, for dinner. We were trying to take it easy so we could stay up for the FA cup final at 12:30am local time. We managed to make dinner suitably late and it was reeeeeaaaalllly tasty. We shared some really spicy dumplings, steamed buns, nasi goreng and curry. We had already scouted out a place showing the footie and found a seat with some Aussie Arsenal fans. A win for Arsenal meant European football for the Saints and so we were all on the same team that night! The match didn't disappoint and by 3am we were kicked out and wandered the few doors back to our place.
A late morning followed our late night and we spent the morning by the pool. The rain seemed to have cleared and the sun was out in full force. After lunch at a nearby cafe of pad Thai and tom yum soup we headed down the beach (after all, we had been there nearly
48 hours and not really been beyond a one mile radius of our place!). There was lots of big surf and kites in the shape of a pirate ship! The beach was not a patch on some of the Aussie beaches, but I think our standards have increased considerably! We took a long walk down the beach before turning around to head back. On our way back we completely overshot where we had come down on to the beach. Once we'd realised we headed on to the roads and tried to navigate back... We'd gone off the map that we had and we were plagued by scooters, taxis and other traffic on the narrow/nonexistent pavements. We ended up hailing a taxi and paying around a pound to get us back to our gaffe!
Tom and Jen were due to arrive around 8:30 that evening so we plonked ourselves in the bar outside their resort and waited. We saw them head in in their taxi from the airport and half an hour later the four of us had beers in hand and food on order. We gassed until the early hours, catching up on news from home and regaling them
(boring them to tears) with travel tales before calling it a night.
The next day (Monday) the four of us had a late start but by 11am we were heading down to the beach for a day of sun, sand and surf. We rented some loungers and bodyboards and were straight in the water. The surf was pretty strong but it was great fun and I haven't bodyboarded in about 15 years but soon got back in to it (although I did get wiped out several times, losing my hair bobble and my bikini bottoms at one point, but luckily I managed to pull them back on before exposing myself)! We cycled through swim, read, snooze (repeat) until late afternoon before grabbing some snacks to keep us going until dinner and making our way back for showers. Dinner was a shared mixed bag of sushi, wonton soup, nasi goreng, dumplings and included puddings - treats for us while spending time with friends...normally pudding is a square of weird chocolate.
Right, it is now Tuesday morning and a trip to the waterpark is on the cards, something else that I don't think I've done since Tenerife circa 2009. Tom
has vowed that there will be no 'lazy river' for Nick, only the most scary rides. I had better get ready for some serious squealing - hopefully my modesty stays intact and there are no bikini malfunctions. Note to self: These are the days when a swimming cozzie would have been much more practical than a bikini...
Nick: Right, it is now Thursday morning and we've had a few ups and downs since Sarah wrote the above update...On Tuesday morning, after a bit of pottering about and some breakfast we met up with Tom and Jen to get ourselves down to the waterpark, which was a cheap taxi ride away. On arrival, we queued up to buy our tickets and it was only then, when I opened the wallet, did I see a blank space where our trusty credit card should be. Casting my mind back, I realised that I'd last used it the previous afternoon to withdraw some money from a cash machine near our hotel...I also remembered the dreadful design flaw in Indonesian cash machines; once it has churned out the notes, it requires you to push a button to confirm you do not want to make
The Gang
I think this looks like we're posing for an album cover, with Nick as the lead singer.any further transactions before it will return your card - the upshot being that it is very easy to grab your money and leave without remembering to retrieve the card! To put this into context, on arriving at the airport when entering Bali, we'd seen not one but two people wandering off and leaving their cards, both of whom were fortunate enough to have the following customer spot this and alert them to it...it was beginning to look like we had not been so lucky.
With urgent issues to attend, we agreed with Tom and Jen that we'd head back to our hotel for a couple of hours and meet them at the waterpark later on. Sarah and I dashed outside to grab a taxi, stomachs churning with worry, and the drive back to our part of town through the constantly grinding, gridlocked river of cars and scooters seemed to take forever. The first port of call was the minimart where I'd made the withdrawal (note the conscious use of 'I' rather than 'we'; I have to hold my hand up as the guilty party for wandering off and leaving our card behind!). Perhaps a good samaritan had used
the machine after us and handed the card to the shopkeeper for safekeeping? Nope, he didn't have anything. It was then that we realised that the machine may have simply 'eaten' the card for safekeeping. Back at the hotel, we logged on to check the balance and were immensely relieved to see that no money had been spent on the card - phew!
The better news was that we had other bank cards with us, and so things were beginning to feel a bit less panicky. However, the card we'd lost was a particular good one for travelling, with no associated foreign transaction fees...consequently, over the last three months it had saved us a considerable sum and we were both keen to retrieve it or get a replacement as soon as possible. Thus began a series of difficult telephone calls to our own bank and MasterCard. Things weren't helped by the fact it was only five a.m. or so back in England, and that the dodgy internet connection kept causing our phone line to cut out. I won't rehash all of the details of what followed, but the upshot was that (a) MasterCard would not send out an emergency
replacement card, despite advertising this service, and (b) it would prove logistically very difficult indeed to have a 'proper' replacement card sent out from England. Sarah than called 'Commonwealth Bank', who own the cash machine in question, to ask about retrieving the card; we were confident now that it was stuck in the machine. Despite a commendable performance of trying to explain our situation to the Indonesian lady on the end of phone, who spoke limited English, we were no closer to resolving the situation. As (bad) luck would have it, it was also a bank holiday so we couldn't even make our way to the bank office to try our luck there!
Having done all we could do for now, we made our way back to the waterpark and had a good afternoon there with Tom and Jen, trying and largely succeeding in putting the card issue to the back of our mind. There were plenty of slides and chutes, the most extreme of which being something called 'Climax', which basically involves standing in a sort of tubular chamber some twenty metres or so above the ground, before the floor of it disappears and you drop out the
bottom - at great speed - before whizzing around a great curving chute, finally splashing to a stop (spluttering a fair bit, in my case) at the end. I was going to chicken out until Sarah decided to give it a go, after which I felt obliged to do the same, for the preservation of my sense of male pride! With that one out of the way, the rest of the slides were a bit less intense, although all great fun, and the afternoon went by pretty quickly. Around six in the afternoon, we dried off and grabbed a taxi back to our part of town. The driver was an affable bloke who spoke very good English, and during the trip back we managed to arrange a trip to a local temple for the following day. Later on, having refreshed ourselves with a shower and change of clothes, we were back out in Seminyak. Starting things off with a couple of pre-prandial drinks, we found ourselves in a bar with a pool table so Tom and I had a few games, the score being locked at 2-2 before we were obliged to let someone else have a go. After a
couple of drinks we went back to a restaurant Sarah and I had been to before, on our first night here. For once I'll spare you the full details of what we all had - it's a bit trickier with four people! Suffice to say it was all very good, local grub. After dinner, the carousing carried on into the evening, and we didn't make it back to our hotel until the early hours. And if you must know, we did fit in the deciding pool game, which I grudgingly admit did not end in my favour.
The following morning we were due to be picked up at 11:00 by our driver, to travel a little way further south in order to visit a beach followed by a tour of a local temple. With a couple of hours beforehand with which to try and progress our credit card issue, we made a phone call to the local bank (via our very helpful hotel receptionist). We were told to come into the bank to discuss the issue, which was going to mean dropping out of our planned day with Tom and Jen. This felt like a real shame; after all
we only had their company for a few short days. Fortunately, between us, them and the taxi driver we concocted a plan which allowed us to pop into the bank on the way. Our driver was an absolute hero at the bank - he really smoothed the way, getting us a meeting with one of the bank staff very quickly, and helping us to explain to them. All in all we were in there for perhaps thirty or forty minutes. Again, I won't go into the boring detail, but the end result was that we may still be able to retrieve our card, but we wouldn't know this until the following Monday, when a list of all the retained cards was released by the main office (or something). At least we could put the issue to bed for a while, and although it did mean we would need to stay in Bali a few more days to find out one way or another, this wasn't going to be a major problem. Leaving our contact details with the bank, we were back out into the scorching sun to begin our day properly.
The first stop on our road trip was
a beach area he had recommended. Sadly, it wasn't really what we were looking for; the sea was given over to water sports, to the extent that it wasn't safe to swim. Jetskis and banana-boats notwithstanding, we were also told that swimming or snorkelling was off the cards due to the jellyfish in the area. The beach itself, whilst quiet, had no shade whatsoever, and the day was the hottest we'd had yet, far too hot to sit out and frazzle. The watersports themselves were hideously pricey, and so we all concluded it would be best to move on. Back in the car, we carried on down to the Hindu temple, built on top of a cliff by the sea. Each donning a purple sarong (required before entering the temple), we were approached by a local man, a very small-built old chap who was offering to give us a tour and we agreed. He was a charming sort of bloke, and whilst his tour guide skills weren't too polished, he was very keen on taking photos for us! As we were entering the temple, we spotted a few monkeys wandering around. Posing for a photo, two of them started clambering
around on Sarah's head, which was funny if somewhat disconcerting! It turns out there are monkeys everywhere around the temple, and they seem to have a strangely dual relationship with the locals - they are revered to a degree, and there was a large statue of a monkey within the temple. On the other hand, they can be a real menace, and will steal anything they can get their hands on, and there were plenty of warnings about the place to safely stow away sunglasses, cameras, etc. A perk of having the guide with us was that he carried a catapult with him, and the monkeys clearly knew not to mess with him!
We walked around the temple and took in some of the great views out over the cliff tops. We had a few further encounters with the monkeys, having to pass through a big group of them, including some large and slightly scary ones that would snarl and bare their fearsome incisors from time to time. Aside from a tug-of-war between Tom and a monkey over a water bottle (Tom won) we got through unscathed, which was a relief given the sheer number of single flip-flops and
broken sunglasses that was evident in the surrounding bushes, testament to the monkeys' thieving inclinations! By the time we'd finished we were all sweating buckets under the roasting sun and glad to get back in the air-conditioned car. By this time it was mid-afternoon and we began heading back towards Seminyak, stopping on the way for a late lunch at a restaurant in an area called Jimbaran. We picked some fresh fish (red snapper) from the day's catch and then relaxed at our table on the beach whilst it was cooked on a barbecue, before being served up with rice, local greens, and assorted Balinese condiments: soy sauce, sambal, garlic sauce. Fresh fish, simply cooked, served on the beach - it was as good as it sounds.
Fed and watered, we made our way back to Seminyak and said goodbye to our wonderful driver; he'd been an absolute gem and we gave him a bit extra as a thank-you for all the help he'd given us at the bank. We'd been dropped off at a beach club not too far from our respective hotels, and had a cold drink or two before wandering back along the beach to get
showered for the evening. This was Tom and Jen's last night before they left early the following morning to make their way to one of the nearby Gili Islands; it been intended to be our last night here too, but we now had new plans to stick around a few days more to try our luck with retrieving the credit card. As it was our last meal together, we decided to treat ourselves to one of the more upmarket restaurants and picked one which had rave reviews (good ol' TripAdvisor), 'Chandi'. It's no exaggeration to say we had one of the best restaurant meals we've had in a very long time indeed. We kicked off with a starter each, Sarah and I both going for the mixed dim sum; four little parcels of pure tastiness, with assorted fillings that included (respectively) crab, short-rib beef, prawn, and coconut curry, all served with their own accompanying garnishes and sauces. For main course, I'd picked a lamb shank in a curry gravy, which just fell off the bone, but Sarah's was undoubtedly better: giant river prawns served with squid ink noodles with assorted veggies and heaps of ginger, it was just superb. With
such good food on offer, none of us could resist taking on a dessert, although being so stuffed Sarah and I decided to share one - a dark chocolate fondant, with vanilla pod ice-cream accompanied with a Balinese dessert wine (a Pinot apparently, which tasted like a Madeira)...well, I'm running out of appropriate adjectives but you get the idea.
What with our late lunch, we'd not started dinner until quite late at night and by the time we'd finished our three course feast it was getting very late indeed. We went for one last beer together, before saying our goodbyes and going back to our respective hotels. It had been such fun seeing our good friends from home for a few days, and we were sorry to see them go. Whilst the credit card debacle was an unwelcome intrusion into our few days together, I am glad that it didn't get in the way of things too much and we were able to enjoy ourselves. As I said above, it is now Thursday morning and we have decided to stick around in Bali until Monday to try our luck at getting this card back...but it is fair to say we've both had our fill of Seminyak for now and so today we will be planning a trip out to the east side of the island, an area known as 'Amed' which is reportedly far quieter. We will see what happens come Monday - good news or bad news, we will be moving on from Indonesia next week, but at least we will know where we stand by then. Watch this space!
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