Apart from smashing the credit card to dust and eating our way through a pound of Haagen Daz every day, we also did a whole day of hotel visits. Why you might ask? Maybe you wouldn't but it just makes it easy to lead into the next sentence.
Why might you ask? Because then we can claim 'some' of the trip and when I say some I mean 75% of the trip on tax. Do you think people from the taxation office read this forum or are they too busy making little old ladies lives a misery or burning cute puppies paws with iron pokers?
So, we arranged with one of the wholesalers who is based in Bali to do a day of hotel visits, which in the industry are known as famils. Now if you book through an agent and something goes wrong in Bali we can get this lovely lady to rain down fire and brimstone on the hapless hotel manager. If you book on line you can suffer in ya jocks (I got that from my 12 year old niece. She'd just die if I mentioned her name right now).
We visited five hotels and tried to make sure they were in different parts of the most popular areas and in different price brackets. The opinions I make are solely based on my observations and the brown paper bag each of the managers gave me full of money......
Adi Dharma Hotel and Cottages. I was quietly dreading what I might see here but I was so pleasantly surprised that I would recommend this hotel to anyone. It had 95% occupancy when we visited and obviously someone told the rest of Australia that it is a really nice and inexpensive hotel.
I won't bother telling you the exact price for the rooms as they change daily but the Adi Dharma was about $70AU per person per night. Both the hotel and cottages are in the process or have been renovated. The grounds are really nice and the pool area at both are beautiful. The fittings used in this lower budget hotel are just the same as the fittings at the Santika where we stayed and it's about half the price per night.
The pool at the cottages is a little too near the restaurant for my liking but then I'm a pretty shy sort of bloke. The pool at the hotel is great and there are rooms with little balconies that face the pool.
Wiresh, the sales manager is a really nice guy and I get the feeling that no request would be too hard for this bloke.
The only down side is also one of the best features of this hotel. It's location. Right in the middle of JL Legian. It'd be a nightmare to get a taxi during peak hour and even harder to get one back to the hotel but if you're willing to hoof it you'd be spot on staying here.
The Dewi Sri Hotel. This is going to be a really popular spot in the next few months. It's a sister hotel of the Barong and Ida Hotels. At the moment it looks like a herd of Borneo Pygmy Elephants had a rave party in the pool area. I say Borneo Pygmy Elephants because we all know what the African Elephants are like on the p!ss.
They are offering room rates or around $25.00 at the moment and heaven forbid I got that wrong and now a thousand of you ring them. The rates are so low because they have no restaurant, bar or pool at the moment so you get a room and that's it. Once the renovations are done this place will be awesome. They have the biggest family suites I have seen in any of the hotels in Bali.
The rooms are plain but nice and the house keeping staff are on the ball. The lady in charge of Hotel Business Development for the three hotels is an Australian lady and she runs a tight ship. I was really impressed with this place and when they have the pool, pool bar (or wee bar as we refer to them) and restaurant finished this place will be a treat and at the lower end of the budget.
The only disadvantage much like the Adi Dhamar is its location down a laneway which runs off Jl Legian.
The Puri Saron Hotel in Seminyak. Very nice. Good location if you want to stay in Seminyak but also off the main drag down a small road so no traffic issues. Has beach frontage and they are replacing the mud pit out the front with paving. The grass area under the big fig trees obviously has never grown so they are going to pave it.
The pool area is nice and the hotel grounds are also nice. It's a nice place. Very popular with Australians again and they were running at 95% occupancy.
The best thing about this place was the villas. They were lovely. Private court yard, private pool and you can, for additional cost, arrange a butler/maid service. I can't remember the cost but for the two bedroom villa I think it was about $400.00US per night but for the love of all things holy, don't quote me and don't mention my name when you're shouting at the girl from Flight Centre.
We popped over to Sanur after here and almost got killed by the 4 tonne fire truck stuck behind us on Jl Legian. We didn't notice this red behemoth with the siren blaring, four inches behind us. I blame all the people of Bali for that one. There is so much to take in when you're on the road to ensure you don't get killed, kids, dogs, cats, other cars, scooters, the odd buffalo, drunken aussies (at two in the afternoon) and one or two hot Russian chicks. That's always a distraction.
They wear the shortest shorts in the world! Personally I don't rate that whole bum hanging out of the bottom of your shorts thing. Not that I would mind it at say, Cottesloe Beach, but it's just that I think the Balinese are relatively conservative and there's a time, place (mine) and circumstance for showing your ar$e. Like say when your mate is drunk after moving into his first house and he wants to say Hi to the new neighbours, while standing on a tree stump.....You know who I'm talking about Andrew.
By the way the stump was on fire. How we never got badly injured when we were young has got me beat.
The fire truck got past us and Quicksilver still burnt down. Back to Sanur.
We had a look at Sanur Paradise Plaza Suites. There is also a Sanur Paradise Hotel which is down the road about one kilometre. These suites are awesome. Some are split level and others have a mezzanine and upper level rooms. Most have two bathrooms, a kitchen and dining room as well as balcony.
The pool area is lovely and there is a kids club here. Again it's really popular with Australians. The kid's pool has a massive water slide which puts the one at The Dynasty to shame. The good thing, if you hate your own kids or everyone else's or the bad thing, if you actually like your kids, is that the kid's pool is separate from the hotel pool. There is good supervision with a fulltime lifeguard in the kid's pool area. They run movies for the kids on an old slide projector screen in the kid's club area. They have other distractions for them which would give you enough time to scratch that itch or eat more Haagen Daz. Or eat Haagen Daz while scratching that itch.
The rates are pretty good too. The rooms are really nice and the house keeping is awesome. Firman, the assistant sales manager is a really nice guy and I think he would make your stay a good one. The one thing that I think is a disadvantage is the distance from Sanur. It'd be a long walk but they run a free shuttle service throughout the day. The one thing however, that made this place stand out and while I realise this wouldn't worry a lot of you, however it's a consideration for a big part of the population, it has working elevators. This was the only hotel we visited that had elevators. I'm sure there are many others. It's just this is the only one we saw on the day.
The last hotel we visited was the Griya Santrian. This was I think the best place we saw all day. It's only rated 3 stars or thereabout and some of the beach front villas are a getting a bit long in the tooth but they were immaculately clean. They are in a Balinese style of earthy red brick and lots of bamboo furniture some of which had seen better days.
The new villas however were absolutely awesome and I personally believe warranted 4-5 star rating. I wouldn't try to describe them as I don't think I could portray how nice they are but they are the sort of place they would use in those arty Italian porn movies where they don't talk, the picture turns black and white and the curtains are see through.......one of my mates told me about it.
The grounds are beautiful and different from all the other hotels in that each set of villas looked onto its own shared pool. Each area was like its own little village set around a pool.
Tamiarta is the Resident Manager and a very nice chap. He was always smiling and greeting his guests by name and asking after them even while he was showing us around.
They do quite a few weddings on the beach front at this hotel and the setting is beautiful. My parents stayed here on their visit last year and loved it. My sister stayed at the Besakih Beach Resort which is next door and thought for the price that the Besakih was better. They agreed the Santrian was far nicer but they were happy with the Besakih.
I had the best Caesar salad I have eaten in my life here. I've never pictured Caesar being a big salad eater. I would have thought he was more of a baked artichoke drizzled with honey kinda guy.
We're almost nearing the end of this little journey and I have to make sure I don't forget my promise to Kebo. I promise I will try to change your view that I have more in me than a silicon band full of saline. That and a little bit of a social conscience.