Recently returned from a 12 day solo trip, staying in Ubud, after an 18 month absence. 12 days of glorious sunshine. Flew Pacific Blue for the first time. Impressed with the service, Much happier flying in a smaller plane.
I booked VIP VOA for the first time this trip, through Hagi recommended by this forum. Very efficient. I was walked through the exit for airline staff lickety-split and through the unmanned xray checkpoint and left near the luggage carousel while the formalities were attended to by Hagi's guy. He also got a luggage trolley and waited with me for my luggage. And waited. And waited. When it finally came, my driver from Saren Indah Hotel in Ubud was located & took over.
Saren Indah was lovely. I had a deluxe room on the ground floor, which overlooked the garden & small lily pond. I was very impressed with the service at this hotel. The room was spotless & every evening the bed was turned down & the bathroom cleaned again & towels replaced for the second time for the day. The staff were friendly and helpful. There is free WiFi in the lobby, restaurant and by the pool. The only con for my 5 nights in this hotel were the herd of elephants in the room above. Not the hotel's fault renting rooms to elephants. I also found the free meal included in the tariff very ordinary. I quickly became used to the croaking frogs at night & the muttering ducks in the rice paddy next door during the day. And I gloried in long guilt free showers and baths (bliss) after suffering water restrictions in Melbourne for some time.
I decided to rent a car for a week, so trolled the rental companies online. It pays to check the terms and conditions. Some want an insurance excess of $1000 usd! I found an Ubud based company and had a Diahatsu Xenia delivered the next day. Lovely car, bigger than what I needed but I'm used to bigger cars. Online, I also booked a GPS navigator for a week as I haven't driven in Bali for about 15 years. A bit expensive, but I thought it would be worth it, as my points of reference have changed.
I had to pick up the GPS in Sanur. Trouble is, I need the navigator to get to Sanur! I made a couple of wrong turns which I was able to correct, and managed to drive down the main road outside Sukawati market the wrong way. I was just following the main road & didn't see the no entry sign. A furiously gesticulating traffic cop soon put me in the picture and I was able to pull in a park & do a U turn. I followed another car down a couple of side roads, praying that they'd lead me back to the main road a bit further down, which they did. I finally found the shop and hired the GPS.
Mission 1 - go to Discovery Plaza, as I knew it had an underground carpark. A very polite female voice told me where to turn, etc & I found it without incident. I did have to break my rule of giving way to everything, as a couple of merging roads forced me to push in or I'd still be sitting there getting tooted by irate drivers behind me! Boy, they can be pushy down south!
In Discovery, my first visit was to Centro. I'd forgotten to pack my round brush, so couldn't straighten my hair. Hair ‘au naturale' - yuk! I had looked all day yesterday in Ubud for a round brush without success. I did get a SIM card for my iPhone in Ubud and in the process fascinated a number of young men with a demonstration of the some of the cool apps. Love that phone! Oops, I digress. Next stop, Optik Melawi for an eye test and update my specs. Eye test free. Yes, I needed stronger glasses so I chose a new pair of designer frames and left my existing glasses for new lenses. 2 hours and $230 later, mission accomplished. Very pleased.
Next mission - find Komang's the tailors in Jl Padma. Keyed in the Indonational into the GPS & off I went. Easy peasy. Only I must have driven past it once I hit Jl Padma & could not find anywhere to park to get out and look. Another car up my bum, so feeling pressured. Mission aborted. Keyed ‘home' into GPS and it had me turning left, instead of right into Jl Legian. OK, maybe it knows a short cut back to the bypass.
No it doesn't! What the? I've driven through Seminyak & Kerobokan (Hi Shapelle) and don't know where the hell I am. I've never been this far up the road - Geneva is the farthest I've been in the past. Traffic is crawling and frequently at a standstill. Can't abort as don't know another way to go other than turn around and cop the same amount of traffic going the other way. I can't turn around anyway because every time I stop I am surrounded by a swarm of motorbikes. So I have to relinquish control, trust that the GPS knows what it's doing and crank up a bit of Funhouse on my iPhone. Can't believe they still put cassette players in new cars - I haven't used a cassette in donkey's years.
Don't recognise any of the villages I'm driving through, but pretty sure I have passed through the outskirts of Denpasar. I don't recognise any of the scenery until I'm about 3km out of Ubud. Phew! I made it. Only took me 2.5 hours since leaving Discovery Plaza car park, thanks to a traffic jam because a Perama bus couldn't get past a parked car. Lucky I had the GPS - not! My own little adventure in peak hour traffic. I found that 5th gear was superfluous until on the bypass road, as I rarely got the opportunity to go above 40kmh. I also gave way to everything.
Eager to blow dry my hair straight, I jumped into the shower when I got back. In the past I had always packed a hairdryer, but mindful of my luggage restrictions I left it at home, knowing the hotel supplied one. Here endeth another lesson. - must pack the hairdryer in future. The hotel's hairdryer was like a child's toy & if it were anatomically possible, I could have blown on my own hair and it would have dried quicker! Not enough power to blow a tissue off the bench and not hot enough to style properly. Mission abandoned in disgust & had to settle for feral hair again (sigh),
Walked the 200m from Saren Indah into the rear entry of the monkey forest. I'd never been up this end before - I didn't know there was a row of market stalls along the southern perimeter either. Monkeys were everywhere.
A bus load of Asian tourists had wandered in with bananas, so I knew I was safe from overzealous monkeys. When I was here 18 months ago, it was the wet season & the monkeys were playing chasey and dive bombing each other in the rock pool. This time, a guide threw a handful of bananas into the rock pool and a few monkeys tip-toed in to get them, some only on 3 feet, to avoid getting too wet. Very funny! I had an enjoyable time watching 2 mama monkeys with their babies on a secluded path. The babes were mewing at their mums like kittens.
More to come in next instalment.