Hello everyone I've been reading this forum all week, makes me feel closer to Bali,the thing is I have no one to talk to about Bali as they are all over there!!!!
My mum, two of my sisters,a neice,nephew,and now my husband! so while I would normally ring one of them, or talk to my hubby about our past trips, and when and where we will go next, I am reduced to texting over and over "what u do now, details!!" I think I am driving them insane.
So I thought I would chat on here and talk to you guys about my Bali holidays and leave them alone for a while.
My first Bali holiday was 25 years ago when I was 15 years old, I was starting work the following year, and mum wanted me to have a holiday with her while I still could, an older sister had been to Bali the previous year and raved about it, so Bali it was !!!!
Oh my God what a holiday, we stayed in Sanur, I can't remember the hotel, I will have to text mum and ask her. I do remember it was like no where we had stayed before it was huge and we loved the fact we could sit on a pavillion near the beach and the scarey hawkers would come up to it and show us things but they couldn't GET us, we did nearly all our shopping there.
The first day we got there my younger sister, aged 12 at the time, was cursed by an old lady on the beach because she wouldn't look at her hats, or something like that, the lady told her if she went swimming in the ocean she would drown, someone told us there were sharks too!!!
On the first day my poor little sister got sunstroke, not just your average sunstroke, but the kind you get when you are in Bali for the first time, with only your mum and big sister, you are getting the flu and you have been cursed.
She was incredibly ill I can only imagine how scared mum was, my sisters temp. was getting higher and higher and we couldn't bring it down, we put her in the bath but the water wasn't very cold (I have tears in my eyes as I type this),my poor mum was running around the hotel trying to get ice and they kept bringing boiled water,it was a long time ago, very late at night and we couldn't find anyone who spoke english well enough to understand us.
The next 24 hours are a muddle in my mind and out of order I'm sure, I remember my sister having a fit with her eyes rolling back in her head while she was talking to her granny (who had just passed away)we yelled at her to stop saying granny was there, she was scaring us!!!,I remember mum fainting next to the bed and I was sponging both her and my sister,I remember a dutch doctor came and gave her an injection of stemital which was an overdose as mum was already giving it to her in tablet form, I rember she nearly died but she didn't.
So that was my first, shall we say, 3 days in Bali, but one thing most people will agree on about me is I'm very head strong and full of determination, so off I went on bus trips, while older people on the bus promised mum they would watch me,mum and my sister spent the rest of the time in our room, I think on the last day they came on a tour but my sister was very weak.
I have a small scar on my right hand were a shop lady tried to drag me out the back to show me a sarong or something, I got scared the bus was leaving and pulled my hand away, her nail got me and broke the skin it really scared me and I can vividly remember it.
Months after we got back the health department knocked on our door, and asked questions about the monkey forrest tour apparently there was a rabies scare.
I remember how beautiful Ubud was, the monkey forest is still one of my favourite places in the world, all the little shops on dirt roads, the smells, the colours,the smiles, the heat, I still have 3 sarongs I bought on that first trip, they are so beautiful.
With all the horror that happened on that trip I still fell in love with Bali and it's people (except a couple).
It would be about another ten years before I returned to Bali dragging my husband along, he didn't want to go, he said "that's where everyone goes" but as I said to him "there is a reason everyone goes " and guess who wanted to live there?
Cheers