A holiday to Bali

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Seminyak and Kuta

We decided that we ought to use the opportunity of living in Australia to visit places where it would be too difficult or expensive to visit if we lived in England, so after weighing up all the beautiful places, we chose Bali as our holiday destination for 2009.
We chose a private Villa in Seminyak, for our first week and the subsequent week in a lovely family friendly hotel in Kuta, one of the main tourist desinations in Bali.
The journey was good, but perhaps a little long (just over 6 hours), and when we arrived at the airport, the processing time for visa's, passports and customs was a long one. It was very warm and humid and everyon was hot a tired after a long flight. Eventually, we got outside and the villa owner had arranged for a car/driver to pick us up from the airport. We arrived at the Villa about 30mins later which was absolutely beautiful..... paradise, with our own private pool, 3 bedrooms all with en-suite, 2 maids, poolman and gardner and a driver when we needed him. The villa had a spacious kitchen and dining room, and an outside living room with LCD TV, satellite TV, wifi and stereo.... I don't think there was anything missing, check out the photo's.
The kids went wild in the pool and we just chilled for a few days, it was ultra relaxing.
We also went for a visit to the water park, and had a really great day going on the water slides and rides, we didn't want to go home. Unfortunately, Alex up to his usual tricks, managed to slide down one of the kids slide and smash his face into the bottomof the pool and bust his nose.... blood everywhere. First I heard of it, being that Josh and Ryan came running over to the sunbeds and said "quick Mum, a man has taken Alex away.......!!".......
The drama doesn't stop there..... oh, no...... Alex once again ran into trouble. Bali, as you might have heard suffered from a few earthquakes, just before we visited, which had made some interesting holes in the pavements and roads (actually they might have already been there). Anyhow, there was a BIG hole in the pavement just outside out villa. Each day, night or whenever we went out, Stef and I would walk alone and say "hole in the pavement".... "don't fall in" (if you're galloping ahead now, you can guess what happened one day.......). Early one evening, near to the end of our stay at the villa, we were walking past the hole, usual warning from mum and dad.... Stef and I were walking up front the kids, as usual, trailling behind, and next minute, Ryan runs up, "mum, quick, Alex has fallen down the hole". We both turn around and all we can see is a mop of ginger hair and two hands sticking out the the pavement. OMG..... so we run back and Stef pulls him out of the hole! The hole, by the way goes right down to the sewers... YUCK!!. Luckily he's not hurt too badly, just a couple of bruises and a big graze down his back and hip. We take him back to the villa and how to shower him down and apply anti-septic... god knows what was down the hole!
It was much cheaper in Bali for most things, so it wasn't difficult to find a good resturant at a really good price.
The following week, we moved on to Kuta, about 20mins down the road from Seminyak, and went into the Bali Dynasty hotel. The hotel was family friendly with entertainment laid on for the kids, a huge pool with swim up bar, water slides, pool and table tennis facilities and competitions for the kids.
The beaches weren't as clean as you expected, but it was still very nice and the weather was perfect, if not a little too hot and humid some days.
The whole holiday was really relaxing, just what we all needed after working from Jan-September with very little break in-between.
Check out the pictures, we had a great time!!

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