Warning - A bit long......
I'm usually a keen reader of the BTF and not much of a poster of messages, but have decided to give this a shot, this is the first JBR report I've done..so here goes:
Departed Adelaide on Pacific Blue 6th March. Found the flight over really good, only down side was they ran out of hot meals by the time they got to us (towards the back as we have 2 kids 4 and 2yrs).
The time went really fast as we had another family sitting behind us so the kids kept each other entertained...(basically we were very happy just to have the direct flights back!) Arrived in Bali and went through passport control and VOA really smoothly, took approximately 20 mins, but we did walk briskly as we noticed another plane full of people (I think Russian?) arrive at the same time.
We have been to Bali more times than I can remember, and for our kids this is our son's 4th trip and daughter's 3rd. We decided to stay at the Dynasty in a studio room. Previous 2 visits we'd stayed in a family room, but as these were being renovated the studio was the obvious choice. These rooms were great as they can be partitioned off. The 2 tv's at night were great... the kids had their down time at night and we could have ours.
My son loved the waterslides and that kept him entertained, also loved his visits to the kids club. Only down side for us was that it seems to crept up in price a bit over the past few years... the kids club and waterslide could do with a bit of a spruce up. With having to pay for breakfast on top of the rooms made it fairly expensive. The renovations were a bit noisy but not too much of a problem (for us). Last part of our stay we moved to Hidden Garden Villa number 2 at Legian. We loved it, suited our needs perfectly and the staff were fantastic, nothing too much trouble. Also very reasonable. Having the space and kids in a separate bedroom was great. Fred & Made have done a great job with the new villa - highly recommended. We also managed to utilise the kids club at the Melasti on a couple of occasions... Our son loves the interaction with other kids so this was a bonus on a few mornings...
I've decided to try and keep this as condensed as possible, so have just highlighted some of the main things:
Orphanage
By far the best thing that we did this trip was visit the orphanage at Amlapura. I had been given the details by jerryatric (Barry) on the forum. This was a fantastic experience. We shopped at Makro beforehand and bought large bags of rice, boxes of noodles, oil (that was all that they had asked for) but we also bought them sugar, tea, eggs and some other basic supplies for the kids. This was a huge eye opener for our children who are still talking about it. There are 32 children at the orphanage that Kadek cares for - she is simply an amazing woman!! They had not had any rice or noodles for 2 weeks prior to our visit, so they were extremely grateful for our visit. The children are really well cared for, but rely on donations to keep them fed. They are really struggling, so if you are thinking about visiting an orphanage while you are there, I highly recommend this one...We rang Kadek the day before we planned to go and visit to see what they were short of, we also had an Indonesian friend with us who was able to fill the communication gaps for us.. It is also worth noting that they do not at any time ask for money.
If you plan to visit, the details are:
Yayasan / Panti Asuhan,
Yasa Kerthi Karangasem,
Jln Ngurah Rai No 45.
Amlapura. Bali. Tel. 0363 21210
Kadek's mobile is 085 935 124 257 (Have someone who speaks Indonesian ring prior and and ask her what they are short of).
We will be going back in October and my oldest son (4 1/2yrs) is doing a fundraiser at school for them in September.
----------------
Other outings:
- We also took the kids to see Padang Bai, Candi Dasa that same day; they loved pottering on the beaches.
- Waterbom Park - kids had a ball and so did we:).. We used the voucher out of the little booklet given to us by the Dynasty (I'm sure readily available elsewhere), saved a few $ on entrance and included a set lunch which was quite reasonable.
- Visited fun parlour on top of Centro discovery a few times (just be sure to wash your hands afterwards!) Our kids thought this was great fun.
- Did the usual trip up to Ubud - always nice. Visited monkey forest, Cafe Wayan's for lunch, wandered around Ubud.
- A couple of mornings my husband and I had cream bath hair treatments at Johnny Andreas at Centro discovery (and once at the mall at Matahari Jl Bypass). These were great!
- Massages and other treatments at My Body (opp side to Dynasty half way up to Centro) - were great.
- Jalan Padma - seemed to be quite a few new salons... the one's we visited were really nice.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Shopping
Didn't do a great deal as there was not much that we needed..
What we did do, we did at Jenny's opposite Dynasty, (fairy dresses etc). Thought the fairy shop on Jalan Padma was a little bit more expensive this time around, my son bought a cute skeleton costume there though.
Also had some great leather bag's made at Tommy's - Jalan Padma, Legian. Had beautiful large leather Jimmy Choo bag made for a bit under $100 - really happy with it, and an Oroton smaller bag in chocolate leather for around $50 - both great!!
Found some reasonable shopping at surf factories and bought usual Revlon make up supplies at Matahari.
--------------------------------------------------
Eats
(I have just mentioned the better eating for us...)
While at Dynasty we ate at:
- Garis Garis (Near Dynasty), good service, good food, reasonable prices.
- Febris - good for snacks.
- Ate once at the Dynasty on their BBQ night (Saturday's), this was surprisingly good I thought.
- Queens Indian, out the front of the Dynasty. Very good Indian food, thought portions were slightly on the smaller side but very tasty. Prices on the higher side. Good service.
- Buppa Gumps - Colouring paper, crayons for kids was great, food was reasonable.
- Thai express - had really nice meals there, prices also reasonable.
- While at HGV we ate at Zanzibar (several times). Really nice meals and very good prices.
- Also had a child free night out and went to Ku De Ta. (the lobster spaghetti I had was delicious).. There were plenty of other choices around there that were very good, but I guess these 2 were our highlights for the trip.
----------------------------------------
Towards the end of the trip (14 days) the kids were pretty tired so were looking forward to getting back in to their normal routines. The trip back to Adelaide was rescheduled to depart at 12.50am, we knew this was going to be hard going with the kids, and unfortunately it was!! Just made sure we did absolutely nothing for the next 24 hours!!
That's pretty much as condensed as I could be!! Hopefully I have not bored you... now looking forward to our trip back in October, next time with my parents as well.