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Published: December 8th 2007
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Swimming Goddess
oh we are so going to hell... Leaving the Intercontinental was like having a warm safety blanked snatched away. It had felt so safe and protecting and familiar - yet plastic. I have been entertaining the idea that it’s about time to stop staying at 5-star resorts and start searching out unusual accommodation instead - places that haven’t yet succumbed to the tendrils of marketing agencies.
We had such an experience back when Lauren was 4 years old. We’d stumbled upon a great deal to travel to Borneo and stay in a (yes…5 star) hotel for 8 days for a shade over $1,100 per person for *EVERYTHING*! When telling people where we were off to, they would say “Borneo? Where’s that?”. There was very little information about what we were headed into - those are the types of holiday I now long for.
Our New Home After some interesting ducking and diving around some little back streets in Seminyak, Jane spotted a sign pointing to Dyana Villas. It’s down this little narrow alleyway just wide enough to fit a car or 3 people walking shoulder to shoulder with a little gaggle of security guards clustered around what looks like the end of the alley which
The beach
At the end of the street about 500m away is where our villa is.
Once here, there’s quite a bit of room to move a car around, a parking space. Someone from the villas scurried out to meet us, I had to provide a passport to prove who we were and then we were ushered into our palatial villa with a flourish.
The photos on the internet of this place are nice enough, but they do absolutely nothing to really capture what you see and feel walking in. We were introduced to our maid (Komang) and our gardener (Gede…pronounced “Gidday!”…really).
The villa we have is a 2 bedroom jobby. The bedrooms are enclosed aircon spaces and the rest is just open spaces to let the breezes through. There is a large pool overlooked by the main lounge area with abundant seating and tables - perfect for copious sippings of cocktails and letting time slide by. There is an upstairs section with a day bed and mozzie net with TV, playstation and stereo - a great place to chill. The same kind of villa thing is available back at the Intercontinental but at around US$2000 per night!!! This place is around 1/10th of that.
There are
more mozzies here. I noticed they have a little tray containing a dozen ways to kill or discourage the little suckers. Still, Jane scored about 10 bites last night - Lauren and I scored zero.
Wayne and Cathy In the car on the way over I thought it would be good to let Wayne and Cathy (the birthday couple) know we were on our way. I didn’t have Wayne’s number handy - but Cathy had SMS’ed me a few days earlier to bring a bottle of Baileys with us to Bali, so I had her number. I SMS’ed her and got an instant response - “Cannot Send, retry later”. Dang! So I just rang her instead - she was stuck in a shoe shop with torrential rain keeping her stuck inside with her friend Michelle (aka Imelda the shoe fetish woman). It was dry as a bone where we were and didn’t look like there was any heavy rain around. About 10 mins later we get hit by a massive downpour of rain….ah, we must be getting closer!
As we arrive at the villa, Wayne is standing out in the driveway to greet us. He wanders in
with us and gets a second welcome drink at our villa, cheeky. His mum and her friend were also supposed to be joining us here, but we learn that her friend was unable to fly as she was having surgery to remove a cancer this morning back in Hobart. This is terrible news and we wish her a speedy and safe recovery.
Villa Ginger About 200m from our villa, David and Michelle own their own villa that they rent out as a holiday villa, called Villa Ginger. I was pretty impressed with our villa - but Villa Ginger has it all! It’s quite a new building, the gardens are impeccable, white marble everywhere, all the mod cons, pool and spa…and even a gardener that sits in his quarters and plays a soothing guitar as background music into the night.
Fabio’s Dinner tonight - and we haven’t really had much in the way of dinner so far this holiday as the breakfasts have tended to carry us through. I think we played a bit of catchup tonight. Dinner for 7 of us consisted of a decent sized entrée (and I ended up eating Lauren’s as well as
she never eats much) followed by main and a constant washing down by Bintang after Bintang (local beer). Jane had a full lobster which looked absolutely awesome. Total bill came to just a shade under 2,000,000RP…or about A$270. We had the restaurant to ourselves too…massive restaurant.
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