This trip was a special Bali get away with 3 generations of our family and to celebrate 2 birthdays.
I bought duty free from the airport ready for pick up return and some to take with us. I got a scratchy card in my bag and got $10 off my next purchase that day, so bought another bottle for pick up on the way home. (I was glad I hadn't used my whole entitlement!)
Also bought a camera and got the tax refund once you go through immigration area.
We flew out Air Asia from Perth on the 2nd December, our flight was meant to be departing at 5.15pm but the aircraft before us had some no show guests which held up both flights. We had prebooked seats in rows 1 and 2. I had heard some negatives about row 1 and yes the arm rests don't lift up, but we still liked the fact that no one was in front so you could put your feet up and not worry about kicking someone's chair.
We prepaid our meals and booked an asian fried rice which was very dry and served with what looked like bait fish on top (whole bait fish), this was very off putting to lots in our group. I like anchovies so I thought what the hell, I'll give it a go - but they were rock hard and had no flavour so overall wasn't that great and nothing like the promo picture. My daughter ordered Chicken Rice (they ate nothing but Chicken Rice in Malaysia), and we all had the Chicken Rice on the flight back which was absolutely fine. My tip to passengers on flight would be to make sure you bring with you some Indo currency as I noticed I was being charged heaps less when I paid in rupiah versus Aussie dollars. We upsized our luggage to 25kilo on return and was great to not worry about being overweight.
There were a few things I noticed on arrival in Bali. When we arrived we had to catch a bus to the terminal. We were lucky that the immigration appeared empty so we seemed to get through very quickly, then we had a mammoth wait for our bags and several other planes arrived. The have moved the xray area (which used to be before you collect your bags) to now after it. There was an enormous line waiting now to scan hand luggage and porters were pushing their clients in, which made the whole experience very slow and frustrating as the previous system seemed SO much better.
As now so many flights had arrived there was a bit of a wait at the taxi stand but we were in Bali now so all is good.
Got to our first hotel the Febris in Tuban. This was the first time I had stayed at the Febris but we picked it as we know that the owners are the same as the Green Garden and are very good, the hotel is relatively new (we saw it being built on one of our other trips) and most of all was close to the airport and we were arriving late at night. We had asked for ground floor rooms and they weren't available when we booked in but explained that half of our party would have trouble with stairs. We ended up being given top story (3rd floor rooms) which not great. We managed to get my mum's room changed to the ground floor the following day. All in all I thought this hotel was fine, I would say a ground floor room is a must as the stairs are pretty severe as the ceilings are so high in each storey and there is no lift. My mum ended up in room 1117 which was great, room 1111 seemed closest to the pool. We only stayed at this hotel for a couple of nights. Breakfast was OK. There appeared to be a kids club and sauna area at the back of the hotel.
I would stay here again, but only a short stay as there are other locations and hotels I prefer more. My sister had an Essence of Bali spa treatment at the hotel for 200 000Rp 2hours, and came back later in our trip as she liked it so much. (foot bath, reflexology, massage on arm neck and shoulders, and either stone back massage or hair wash and shampoo.
During this leg of the journey we had booked a birthday celebration for my mum's 70th birthday at the Flying Piano restaurant (thanks to our driver Coman 0818563502 who has such good English I was able to email him and get it all organised). They had a large flower arrangement and beautifully decorated cake and the musicians get right into making it a special occasion. It was lovely and we had several great meals here over our stay.