Geminis that we are, H and I decided to choose one day to belatedly celebrate our birthdays in style. The Big Birthday Blowout was to be a day of total indulgence, where money was no object.
We had the day planned well in advance. Breakfast on Seminyak beach (Breeze at Samaya? Kudeta? La L?), shopping for a snazzy new outfit to wear that evening, a treatment at Prana Spa, sunset cocktails beachside, then dinner somewhere special, maybe Sarong.
But once we got to Seminyak, we revised our plans drastically. Neither of us had money to fritter away. We scrapped the idea of clothes shopping. We could live without a new outfit - besides, most things we'd seen were too ugly, too expensive or too small! Prana Spa may have looked decadently wonderful, but we could have just as much pampering elsewhere, for half the cost, we reasoned. And as for the swish restaurants - yikes, some of them were pricey!
For a few days beforehand, we wandered in and out of spas and restaurants, rejecting this one and that one for various reasons. I was beginning to think we'd end up scrapping our idea of a Big Birthday Blowout altogether, on the grounds that it was all too hard.
The eve of our BBB, we sat outside our room, feeding Whiskettes to our new feline pal (she ate three helpings; by the time she waddled away, she looked as though she'd swallowed a bowling ball). As I thumbed through a Bali booklet, I read a review of a new spa in Kerobokan. Eureka! I think I'd found us the perfect spa! Peaceful, a good range of treatments, lovely décor - and great prices! We phoned them immediately.
Once we'd decided on our pamper place, everything else fell into place, the next day.
Breakfast was at Kudeta (neither H nor I had been before). We sat overlooking the beach and ordered the set breakfast. I was ‘egged-out', so I chose scrambled tofu with spinach. It came with a slab of toast, fruit, juice, and a very ordinary coffee. H went for the Eggs Benedict. To our astonishment, H didn't just get Eggs Benedict, she got bacon, tomatoes and mushies as well. Her meal was ENORMOUS!
How pleasant it was to sit and eat, watching Seminyak Beach warm up for the day. Horses and riders trotted by; surfers surfed; hawkers hawked; a man arranged chairs on the sand... and then there were dogs. Everywhere. Off and on leashes. Seminyak Beach, it turns out, is a huge public toilet for pooches. One mutt rushed into the surf to squat; another took a dump about six feet away from where we sat; one peed to our left. Up until then, H and I had planned to stroll along the sand to La Lucciola, where we'd book for dinner that evening and catch a cab to the spa. But when we thought of the soft sand beneath our feet, and the squish of freshly-laid barkers eggs between our toes, our stroll lost its appeal. ‘Let's get out of here,' said H, ‘I can smell poo.'
And so ended our breakfast at Kudeta.
We cabbed it to Raga, at Jl Raya Petitenget 114, Kerobokan, tel 0361 732475 (thanks for being so organised and finding their card, H), a lovely little spa. Clean, fresh and quiet - and not a dog in sight. We had scrubs and massages and facials and cream baths. They give you I-pods to help add to the atmosphere - which is great, providing you like their choice of music. I'm not that keen on Abba done to pan pipes and harps; I'd remove the ear-plugs whenever the masseuse wasn't looking, and she'd put ‘em back in again, whenever she noticed they'd come out, bless her!
Three hours later, H and I emerged buffed and puffed, and glowing with health and vitality, ready for an evening of food and cocktails.
We gussied ourselves up, and went in search of a long, cool drink. Sunset at Samaya sounded splendid (how's that for alliteration?), so in we went. The Samaya has always been on my List-Of-Places-To-Stay-When-I-Win-Tattslotto. It's not on that list any more, and I'm not 100% sure why. Service was a bit slow, my drink was disappointing, and the garden wasn't as nice as I'd expected. But that wasn't really it. Maybe I felt a bit over-dressed and under-paid among all those well-heeled people lolling about in their togs, ignoring everybody else. Or maybe it just didn't feel warm and friendly, the kind of place where people smile and say hello to each other. Whatever. But, sadly, I'm going to have to do some serious Net surfing, to find somewhere new to put on my rich list.
The evening ended with a fizzle, rather than a bang, at La Lucciola. The cocktails were great (the drink with crushed lychees, lemon grass and ginger was especially tasty - and filling), but the meals were unremarkable. Pleasant but not spectacular.
We were back in our room before ten, getting ready for bed. A car was picking us up early the next morning, for a full-day excursion. The Big Birthday Blowout hadn't been quite what we'd planned - but it had been a good day, all the same. And we'd managed to keep it within our $100 a day budget.
Next: A day in the mountains