Just arrived home yesterday after 2 weeks in Bali. This was an all girls trip with 2 of my friends and our daughters (5 between us ranging in age from 15 to 20). For 2 of us, this was our 9th trip to Bali, so we thought it would be nice to rent a villa for a change. We found Villa Ramasi via a real estate website on the internet and although the photos of the villa looked good, we were a bit nervous about what would await us when we arrived.
The good bits were: Having our own private place to hang out, listening to our choice of music while sitting around the pool, making our own cocktails with fresh tropical fruit and our duty free alcohol, having our washing done for us at no extra charge, plenty of room to accommodate the 8 of us.
Now for the not so good bits: There were only 2 sunlounges when we arrived - after some hassling down at the real estate 4 more sunlounges appeared on day 3, the villa was a bit exxy for what we got, we found the owner of the real estate (an Aussie) quite rude whenever we asked for anything (like having a light fixed in a dark and very steep stairway, or reporting that we had no hot water in 1 of the bathrooms), we had to supply our own loo paper (trivial I know but you do get it supplied at hotels that charge only half the price), the hot water ran out after 1 or 2 showers, we had house staff that came in every day between 9 and 1 but I don't think they changed the sheets or cleaned the toilets during the 10 days we stayed there, the security service promised was quite random - no security guard for the first few nights until we enquired, then the guard would turn up at all different hours usually after finishing an all day shift at the Bintang Supermarket - needless to say the poor guy was tired and usually slept most of the night. The villa was down a very dark and pot-holed laneway approximately 500m from Jl Raya Seminyak so it was quite a challenge returning home after dark (and a few Bintangs). One night we returned home from dinner to find the plasma TV had been replaced with a very old and much smaller TV set. The excuse given by the house staff the next day was that the plasma set was on loan because the original villa TV was broken. We were really annoyed that they had come in to the villa without notifying us to take the TV, especially when we later found out that the owners of the villa had just moved out to rent the villa during the high season and were staying close by - we think that the owners sent the staff in to get the TV because they wanted to watch the World Cup final on a bigger screen.
Oh, I nearly forgot the frogs - we were woken most nights sometimes, several times during the night, by the noisiest frogs I've ever heard (not sure if there is a breed called the screaming frog but that's what we called them). They were everywhere in surround sound - so much for the relaxing Bali holiday, didn't sleep for more than 2 hours at a time before those frogs worked themselves into a frenzy!
We stayed at the villa for 10 nights before moving on to a hotel for the rest of our stay. Overall the villa was quite nice but a bit expensive compared to what I usually pay for a hotel (villa cost US$250/night). I didn't like the location as it was hard to get to the beach (again down a laneway that had huge uncovered pits every metre or so along the path) and there were no good restaurants within walking distance. I wouldn't stay there again as I think you could probably find something better if you looked yourself when over there and I'm sure you could bargain a better price as Bali is still very quiet.
More to come soon.