Our Family of 6 Balid recently for 8 days Flew Garuda out of Melb as our eldest daughter 21 lives there and also it was going to cost an extra $300+ each to fly from Adelaide so we drove across the day before. Stayed at Adhi Dharma Hotel- Kuta - Good value, quiet but also Close to all things good! The hotel costed less than the taxes!
In the past we have just chosen "transport" from road outside the hotel with some mixed results but the past few times have used the driver -Made Wira Sanjaya - He works for a company that is insured! You can email him on madebagus2002@yahoo.com or you can call or sms him on his mobile 081 338 763 718 once in Bali or on +62 813 387 763 18 from Australia. Thanks Made.
The rest is borrowed from my daughters blog! G4
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Bali Highlights
The way I approached my trip to Bali was completely different to when I was in Europe when I used to leave the hostel every morning looking to experience the culture and see the sights. Bali was about chilling out, buying cheap stuff, spending some time with the family with a little culture on the side. Here's some of what we got up to, but check out the pictures below if you're easily bored.
Family Time
It was cool just to catch up and hang out with the whole family for a week- something that we haven't done in about the past two years. My youngest sister is 15 now, so everyone is pretty much grown up and we all enjoy hanging out together, going out to dinner and enjoying a few drinks. The next time we'll probably all get together again will be Christmas.
Shopping
Bali is the capital of bootlegging- why be creative when you can just copy something! DVDs, surf brand clothing, western style restaurants, Boost juice...you name it and someone has probably tried to emulate and sell it in Bali. This was our fourth trip as a whole family over to Bali, and so we didn't go crazy over the $2 imitation Billabong t-shirts. Instead I went in for three new tailor made suits. I have had suits made in Bali before and never been quite happy with them, so this time I did some internet research and paid about 3 times what I did in the past (but still way less than I would in Australia for the cheapest suit) and got some great suits that are nearly pure wool. Very happy. I also picked up some Asian Clinique not available in Oz (which for some reason suits my white girl skin) and the usual duty free booze (Mojitos after work for me!).
Food
As I said above a lot of the restaurants in Bali are trying hard to emulate Western restaurants...but this is kind of hard when the vast majority of Balinese would rarely if ever eat Western style food, and would never eat in a Western style restaurant. So you therefore get some interesting interpretation of things like pizza, pasta, sandwiches, bacon and eggs and so forth. Add into the mix that some of local ingredients are not the best of quality (especially dairy) and ordering is always interesting. All that said we did eat some great food, and I was the only one to get sick in the family. I was only sick for half a day, and ironically it was almost certainly due to a meal I ate at one of the classier and cleaner restaurant we went to. It was also fantastic to have some banana milkshakes, with bananas being $10 + a kilo over here in Australia since a cyclone wiped out the banana farms a few months back! Actual Balinese food is great, but we are spoiled in Australia with the variety of pretty authentic foreign food anyhow- but you can't beat a meal 6 adults including drinks and cocktails and desserts coming to about $60, and that's expensive in Bali terms!
Scooting around
Bali traffic would be chaotic if it wasn't so slow. While we were in Bali the Indoneisian school holidays were on too, and so there were a lot of people from the other Indonesian islands over. Because they generally bring their cars, and because most roads are 1 way and tiny driving anywhere in a car takes a while. So for the first time we rented a scooter- the preferred method of travel for the locals, and a lot of the surfer tourists. It was so much fun buzzing around, and I would totally buy one here, if I wasn't worried about getting side swiped by cars who don't look for bikes, and who travel a lot faster than 40-50kms an hour, which is about as fast as you can on Bali's roads it seems.
Getting Cultural
We stayed in Kuta, which is really a suburb that has grown into a tourist resort. It is a network of hotels, shops and restaurants that mostly cater to tourists in one way or another. Mum and Dad had a really nice driver last time they were in Bali, and so we called him up again, and went on a daytrip to Lovina, another small town right at the North of the island, and on the way back visited his village. This was really interesting, and it was nice to meet Made's family and get some idea to how they live. The highlight of the day was pig purchasing. Bali unlike the rest of Indonesia is Hindu, so they still eat pork. A big expense for the average Balinese comes from all the religious ceremonies- weddings, funerals (a big one), full moon- they seem to happen all the time.
Chilling Out
I don't think the value of a holiday can truly be understood until you work in an office, with no break in the forseeable future of doing anything else. Not going to work for 6 days was just awesome, and being away from the the usual stuff that makes up the daily grind was just fantastic.