Day 11 - Watch Your Step

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One of the nice things about Breakfast in resorts is that you get to eat things you don't normally eat. For example, Brett and Emily have discovered the joy of freshly cooked donuts covered with vanilla cream; a far cry from their normal bacon and eggs. Not a habit that they will return to Australia with but fun while travelling.

When walking back from breakfast to the room we saw a worker who was inscribing messages and designs into sand gardens inside the hotel. We've been looking at these each day as they have been changing on a regular basis. He had cleared all old messages and was starting fresh today so we asked him if he would write a message for us. We kept it simple "Happy Holiday Crosby Family, Bali 2017". It was amazing how quickly he worked to produce such an elegantly piece of art.

Tom decided to stay in the room whilst Brett, Pamela and Emily went for a walk along the beach. The hadn't gone far when they came across a street vendor with genuine watches at very good prices 😊. After some hard bargaining Emily walked away with 2 very nice Daniel Wellington watches and Pamela snapped up a Calvin Klein bargain. Unfortunately shopping wasn't part of the original plan so Brett had to run all the way back to the hotel room for money to pay the vendor. With bargains in hand we continued our walk down the beach.

We managed to find a small enclave of markets of varying types. It was surprising we had not noticed or discovered this before. Emily again proved to be the bargaining queen coming away with a beautiful dress. We all walked back to the hotel to swim and cool down before our driver arrived for the afternoon.

The plan was to go to Uluwatu to visit a famous temple and watch the sunset over the ocean. On the way their we stopped at the Garuda Wisnu Kencana cultural centre to view a massive statue of Vishnu. Being a holy place adults weren't permitted into the temple with their knees exposed and so we had to wear sarongs to cover our legs. Tom was particularly unimpressed with this idea but fortunately for him they considered him a child and let him enter sans sarong. After a small snack their we continued onto dreamland beach. The parking lot was a considerable distance from the beach and we had to travel by shuttle to the beach. By Australian standards it is not what we would call a premier beach. When we got back to the hotel Pamela looked on TripAdvisor and found that it was rated 0/5 by reviewers. It would have been nice to know that before we made the trip there!

We went to leave quite quickly but had to wait in line for the shuttle to arrive. Forget orderly queues, it was every man for himself trying to get onto the shuttle. We were the last on, Tom was sitting on the back of the drivers chair, Pamela and Emily had to stand in the aisle and Brett was sitting on the door hoping the lock was above typical Bali standards. It was a short ride back to our car and we were soon on our way again.

Next stop was our major destination where we planned to walk through the monkey forest, watch the sunset over the ocean and watch a cultural dance and fire show. At least that was the plan.

We really must have kicked over more offerings than we remember as the day deteriorated rapidly from this point on. While walking along a path Pamela accidentally trod on the tail of one of the monkeys. It became very agitated and aggressive but managed to confuse the perpetrator and began focussing its attention on Emily. It was bearing its teeth and lunging at her and attempting to grab her sarong. Naturally Emily became very upset at this behaviour. We continued to the end of the path only to find that the only way back was through the monkeys again. We got to the performance area with one scared camper in tow. To compound matters it started raining heavily and we were told the performance area was not undercover. If we stayed to watch we would have drowned. A team decision was made to abandon the concert and head home.

The Godos final piece of revenge was to follow shortly hereafter.

Pamela and Emily remained under cover protecting the cameras while Brett and Tom went searching for the driver. We had come out a different exit that was quite a distance from where he was parked. While running in the rain to find him, Brett slipped and fell heavily on his back. While he would like to say that years of judo training allowed him to fall gracefully and with some control it was more like a 50 year old sack of potatoes being kicked off a truck. After several seconds lying in the rain catching his breath, he managed to get up and find the driver at which point they collected the girls and headed home. Luckily for Tom he was able to see the funny side of this and laughed virtually the whole way home.

A last minute decision was made to eat on the way back to the resort and the driver found a great little restaurant just minutes away.

We've booked the same driver for the visit to the orphanage tomorrow. This is one of the few things that we had planned to do in Bali and hopefully it will be a rewarding experience.

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