The four of us flew out of Sydney on the usual 11.50am Garuda flight for nearly 2 weeks in paradise, the women, T & W, had at least 7 or 8 visits between them, myself going for the 3rd time and old mate, W's hubby, for his first experience. The flight was, as usual, pretty good with a few quiet Bintangs consumed by old mate and I while the girls snoozed, we arrived pretty well on time as expected having done the Immigration deal on the plane, as is the way with Garuda from Sydney nowadays, so we were out and onto the bus and into the terminal waiting for our luggage before we realised we were there I think, it really is an excellent VOA set up without the waiting in line crap we used to have to put up with, good on ya Garuda, this is why we'll never fly with anyone else to Bali.
So we're now in Bali and old mate's eyes are wide open and darting from side to side, I tried to convince him to sit in the front of our transport to our accommodation but he declined so I took it on and before too long we arrived at our digs, the Town House in Kuta apparently I have to say it like that to allow me to put the name on here???
First thing we did after putting all of our stuff into the room was head off to our favourite cafe for our first Bali meal, T, W and I had been planning this first meal for a while before we flew out so it was straight to the Bali Corner Cafe we went. Turning onto Poppies 2 from our laneway I nearly fell over with shock as we were the only people we could see in any direction on a Sunday afternoon around 4 o'clock, we'd heard rumours about how quiet it was over here but this was ridiculous. It didn't take long for the people to start to appear and by the time we got to our Cafe the usual lines of tourists were filing past, though still to a lot lesser degree than previous visits, we scoffed into our much anticipated, and as expected, yummy meals then decided to walk it off down Benesari to the Champlung Mas, where we were booked into for a 4 day stay in the middle of our visit.
Now this hotel used to be our favourite place to stay but over the past couple of visits it's gone downhill, some of the people that work there we have become very friendly with and they are fantastic folk but the people who run the place are much less fantastic, possibly the nicest way I could put it.
We continued our walk up Melasti onto Legian and back to the Town House for a couple more quiet Bintangs on the verandah before bed, old mate was feeling a little on the tired side after our walk so he said his goodnights to T and I sitting on our top floor verandah and off he went to bed downstairs, seconds after he left us we heard a huge bang and groan and when we raced from the verandah inside to see what it was we found old mate in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs in a rapidly growing pool of blood, seems with his dodgy knees from years of playing footy he attempted to go down the stairs a little less conventionally than most of us would've and ended up going down the fast way, he hadn't even had enough Bintangs to blame them, he is a tough old bugger though and with his wife W slapping on the Betadine straight away he was well on the mend by the next morning but he gave us all quite a bad fright when we first spotted him.
Next morning found us all in pretty good spirits with T and I heading for our first Town House breakfast then off to do our first round of shopping while W and old mate stayed and got a bit of R & R after the previous nights fall, T and I returned from our shopping adventure and I took a turn at the R & R with old mate to have a few Binnys and a relax to help him recuperate. I talked him into heading across to the bar to watch the mighty Sharks play and have our first experience with the now infamous Town House Vodka Slushies, which he took to like a duck to water, after a couple I decided that they were evil and I stopped drinking them but he loved them and continued on his healing way. The girls returned and we ended up having a quiet night in after a few drinks on the downstairs verandah, for safety...
Next morning no breakfast for T and I as we hit the shops early but returned later for brunch and a swim and, of course, a few of those evil Slushies, the girls and old mate loved them but I just couldn't get past a couple before I got scared and had to return to the Binnys, once again, for safety reasons. T gets the traditional hair braiding done in our room and then some more relaxing and drinks, again on the downstairs verandah, which has now become our designated safe drinking area.
Woke a little slowly this morning but soon got back into the swing of another day in Bali, breakfast Town House style then T, W and I are off to Discovery Mall for a look around then back for the afternoon relax and drinks by the pool, I was cluey enough to book us into Un's for dinner that night as we strolled by on our way out and how popular was I for this brain wave, old mate and I met the girls there after they'd had their eye liner tattoed on???, it's a girl thing I suspect, and then it was into the nicest meal I'd had since arriving I think, well very close indeed, casual stroll back to digs after dinner and a bit of impulse buying along the way. Stay tuned for more to come...