One week in Bali was all it took for me to change my perspective on a lot of things. I booked a ticket there to untangle my mind from all the nonsense in Singapore and I got more than what I bargained for, because I ended up learning a lot of things about the world around me - culture, nature, humanity as a whole.... and much more about myself as a person.
DAY 1: HELLO THERE, BALI!
Our flight was at 10.35am, 9th April! Shucks, my body clock has been pretty messed up over the past few months so I kind of had trouble waking up! And there was a massive jam on the TPE as well so I was almost late to meet the rest :(
We flew by Tiger Airways! NO MONEY, THAT'S WHY!!! So we had to travel smart. Hahaha.
The flight was 2 hours 30 minutes long... omg. I think Tiger Airways is one of the worst budget airlines out there, and I'm talking about space wise! I feel less claustrophobic on Jetstar (I survived 6 hour flights in Jetstar before!!!!)
On the plane with Patick (extreme left) and Nahshon! Hahah check out how exhausted we look... not Nahshon though, he always has this stoner face on. You'll probably agree with me by the end of this post.
Denpasar's runway is RIGHT BESIDE THE DAMN OCEAN!!! I was just asking Nahshon "How come the planes don't land in the sea?" and then 4 days later, the news reported that Lion Air crashed into the sea, splitting into two. I think I should shut up from now on.
We checked into Alke Villas, which is located in Canggu. Er I think it's about a one hour drive away from Ngurah Rai Airport in this bumpy, stuffy ass van. A very unpleasant ride, but the welcome we received upon arrival was worth the ride.
Okay, so let me introduce you to my pals!!
Left to right: Patrick, Benjamin, Absolutely Beautiful Goddess, Nahshon, Carol & Lennard.
We're a real crazy bunch of people... let's see - to start off we barely know each other. Anyway we all met during church. HAHA. Except for Patrick, he's from TPJC. Yeah... and the rest have never met him before. Honestly, we were all just looking to have a fun time in Bali!!
We were greeted with a beautiful garland (actually it was really itchy and when the staff finally left us alone we immediately took them off & threw them into the pool) & a really sweet (literally) melon flavoured juice thing.
Our villa has 3 different bedrooms, which were HUGE. And we had one common room (the one in the picture). The pool was just beautiful.... and yeah we were beside a giant padi field which had like these damned scarecrows everywhere.
We popped open a bottle of Moscato to get into the chill mood!
Seriously, just look how blue the skies are over in Bali! Anyway it was pretty late so we decided to head over to Poppies for our first dinner in Bali! Poppies is located in the heart of Kuta (the area which got bombed in 2002).
Demonic stonefish Pina Colada. It's their specialty drink. I'm not a huge fan of Pina Coladas though. Pineapples should just remain as fruits. Admittedly, it was hard to drink because those huge olive eyes just keep staring at you.. deep into your soul as you suck the pineapple juice out of it's open mouth.
Poppies is well known for their Nasi Goreng as well, so I had to give it a try. It was really great, I tried over nasi gorengs during the rest of my trip but the one at Poppies shat on the rest.
These are magic mushrooms, also known as psilocybin mushrooms. What they do is that when you consume them, they fuck with your brain so you end up seeing loads of weird stuff & thinking a lot deeper than normal. AND THEY'RE 100% LEGAL IN BALI!!! No wonder the Balinese are such happy, carefree people. And they do DELIVERY!!! They don't have McDonald's delivery but they have drug delivery services. Singapore needs this ASAP.
DAY 2: WATER SPORTS
Woke up early (ok, we tried..) and headed to Nusa Dua beach! Nusa Dua is well known as one of the beaches in Bali with crystal clear water. I quote Carol, "The water is really clear, but no one wants to see the shit underneath."
The sand is nothing like our imported Sentosa sand. It's a muddy... sickish dark brown colour. Bleaugh. Not a very pretty sight! Anyway we managed to try out these two activities called Flying Fish and Big Mable.
Now we actually had a photographer with us the whole time, and he was snapping shots like every 5 seconds. Eventually they compiled it into a CD and passed it to us, but when Patrick got home to load it, the CD got stuck in his computer AND the disc was empty!!! SO, THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT OF US!! They're off Google, just to give you guys an idea of what went on that day.
This is the feckin' Big Mable shit. I'm not sure if it's MARBLE or Mable, but whatever, it was written as Mable so let's just go with that. The one we had could sit 3 people at a time (Nahshon, Carol and myself).. haha, basically you sit in this donut shaped crap and get pulled around by a speedboat.
It was fun!! For the first 17 seconds maybe, and then the next 14 minutes and 43 seconds it was PURE TORTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The heartless driver and cameraman was spinning the boat around and making us fly everywhere, all of us were holding on for dear life. I remember thinking: "No no no.... I can't die yet and I don't want to die in the ocean please please don't let me die now."
I literally FLEW out of the f*****g Big Mable thing and landed back inside (THANK GOD THANK GOD THANK GOD) but I was upside down. Thankfully, the camera dude realized this and instructed the driver to stop to let us rest awhile. I had salt water enter my eyes, they were burning like crazy...... god, never again!!!! Lennard & Ben both ended up with abrasions on their knuckles cos they too were holding on with all the strength they had!!!!!!!!!!!!
Next up was the Flying Fish activity:
Ben and I are pretty scared of heights... and basically anything that scream danger. So we were terrified of this after our stupid Big Mable experience, but it turned out to be really fun!!!!! When we were up in the air, in the middle of the ocean... all was calm. Don't think I've ever felt so relaxed before! It was great fun :) Sadly this didn't last very long, sigh!!! I'd gladly have 15 minutes of flying instead of sitting in that wretched donut ever again.
After that, it was just about to rain... heh, look at those pretty rays coming out of the storm clouds. I'm not sure what they are (poor Geography student here) but who cares, they looked nice.
Had A&W for dinner after that! SHIOK, I TELL YOU! Carol & I both went with their spicy chicken. Drools.
I think it only cost us about $14 SGD in total! I miss those root beer floats :( Lennard & Nahshon went to get pool floats after that haha, so we had something to chill on.
It was starting to drizzle so we brought all our stuff back inside, haha.
I got really exhausted (seriously, holding on for dear life is HARD WORK!!!) so I decided to turn in early while the rest got wasted till the wee hours of the morning.
DAY 3: WHITE WATER RAFTING!!
Got up really shit ass early because the rafting company told us they'd fetch us at 8am sharp. Well, we were late, as usual. Did our rafting at Telaga Waja, which was a freaking 3 hour drive from our villa.
Ben, Patrick and I went in one raft with this silly instructor. I mean silly in a good way because he kept laughing at everything and purposely bumped us into waterfalls to drench us whole!
The whole trail lasted about 2 hours ++ and we had a mini break in between to take photos with the waterfall. Hahaha. Sound so silly. Stop to take photo with falling water. Hahahaha....
There was a 4 meter drop at the end but we survived it! ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
Okay, it looks really small here but I swear it was pretty terrifying :(
We had a complimentary buffet lunch after that... (not without having to climb what seemed like 75 storeys of mossy stairs up to the lounge area) and aiya it wasn't that amazing but the highlight of lunch was this SUPER ADORABLE DOG.
He stared at me like that for... I don't know, maybe 15 minutes? Every time I turned around, he'd already be looking at my direction. With those beady little eyes. GOODNESS. I wanted to run down to pat his head :'(
Headed back to our villa and we got a massage!!! JUST LOOK AT THIS TROOP MAN!!!
They handed us sarongs to change into. Haha. Told us not to wear anything underneath so we obeyed. Carol and I went to the bedroom upstairs.. thank goodness, cause these massuers immediately started pulling the sarongs off of us. "Eh!! Wait wait what are you doing!?!?" HAHAHA CAROL AND I WERE QUITE SURPRISED I rmb her turning to me, "OMG, have you done this before!?!?" "NOT BUTT NAKED, AT LEAST!!!"
But the massage was really heavenly. God, if only the masseurs were much hotter, younger women. Ok, no, no, I kid *slaps self*
After that we went out to try some famous Nasi Pedas thing, which means spicy rice. It tasted real nice!! (And.. er, spicy.)
It's like a mix and match kinda thing, you can ask for whatever you want. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what anything was.... so I was kind of pointing to stuff that looked edible.
Indonesia has this famous drink known as Tehbotol. Patrick went NUTS over it, saying it was his childhood drink and all. Personally, I don't know whats so amazing about it. It tastes exactly like green tea, which I happen to dislike with all my heart.
We went to stock up on our snacks and drinks after that, and Nahshon treated me to ice cream! He had an oddly flavoured magnum, Chocolate Brownie. Sounds heavenly, doesn't it? Haha. It was legit magnum, and it only cost about $1.60 SGD. I saw this Spongebob Squarepants one and I was super duper excited to try it! :)
So I quickly unwrapped it, and....
WTF????????
I was really disappointed!! I mean the wrapping looked real... HAHAHAHA the rest all just burst out laughing at me. It was chocolate banana flavoured and gosh, did it taste bad!!!!!!!!!!! It literally makes you go bananas.
Went back to our villa after that... SHIT, did I mention the amount of pesky critters that'd find their way in every single bloody night? There are crabs EVERY WHERE. These dumbass bastards love scurrying into our pool that reeks entirely of chlorine... they're just there chilling at the bottom of our pool and the next day we'd wake up to find them dead. STUPID. YOU GUYS DESERVE IT.
Another stupid crab making his way into the swimming pool of death.
Lennard and Patrick were out cold by 2am but the rest of us stayed out to relax by the pool.
The stars filled every last corner of the pitch black sky that evening. I've never seen such a beautiful sight in my entire life before. All of us were just sitting by the pool staring up in awe. Carol said that she liked how it felt like as though the stars were there only for us... haha, so true. It was really breathtaking.. I'd give anything to relive that night once more.
We were all a little off our rocket so we tried taking photos of the stars HAHAHAHA and here is our best shot! Enjoy -
We stayed up the entire night talking about life and all... got to catch the sunrise together :) Ok so we weren't exactly watching the sun RISE per se but we were there when it happened. Close enough.
A pretty magnificent sunrise.
"Tessa let's take a photo with the sunrise." HAHAHHAAHAHA!!! Clearly the work of alcohol.
Nahshon was nice enough to run a warm bubble bath for me after that!!! :)
It's been a long time since I had a bubble bath.. HAHA the only downside was that it had an open window so everyone could just peek in. Blah.
DAY 4: AIRPORT + HORISON HOTEL
Lennard pondering about life. Hahahaha.
It was time to check out of Alke Villas, because Ben, Carol & Lennard had to fly back to Singapore cos of their own commitments. Sigh. :( Their last meal in Bali was at Made's Warung!
About 30 seconds after I took these photos I got a call from NTU so I got so damn excited I couldn't eat anymore. What a waste of food. HAHAHA!!!
On the way to the airport! Sigh, I was pretty bummed when the 3 of them left :'( I was actually asking myself, shit! Why did I extend my trip?? Hahaha!! Anyways, Pat, Nahshon & I checked into Horison Hotel. It's located in Seminyak, which was much closer to the street shops and all.
Dinner at SeaSide Bali. I was really tired that day cause we didn't sleep the night before so the meal was pretty torturous. The spaghetti was nice though. (Got sick of Indonesian dishes hahaha)
DAY 5: KUTA BEACH + SKYGARDEN CLUB
OH....... UGLY STORM CLOUDS!!!!!!!!
The 3 of us got up real early in the morning to discover Kuta Beach. Nothing amazing - the sand was dirty although I admit the waves were pretty nice to look at. There were many Caucasians surfing!! Haha a lot of unofficial surf "guides" asked us if we wanted to learn how to surf - I think Nahshon was pretty keen but it was an outright no for me because I only know how to swim froggy style. The last thing I needed was to get swept under the waves.
We were pooped so we found a couple of plastic chairs... and the next thing we knew, a whole mob of women carrying plastic baskets on their heads were making their way towards us. Oh no...
Shit man, who needs to be Kate Middleton?? Just go to Kuta Beach, you'll get a feel of royalty.
Braided 5 strands of my hair!! Hahaha goodness... it cost a bomb.
They were really irritating me, trying to push scarves, bracelets and whatnot in my face. I had a urge to just walk off but the thing about Balinese people is that they are just so nice. TOO NICE. Nahshon didn't help much, he was just sitting there having a hell of a time laughing at my plight. Hahaha. Good experience, though. Ah, got forced to paint my toenails for a whopping $20, jeez, that's considered expensive in Bali. Why I say forced - she started grabbing my toes and painting them before I could do anything else. Haha.
Erm, I am getting quite lazy to type, but we headed to a mall after that (can't remember the name at this very moment) and had lunch at this famous "fast food restaurant".
Nahshon's meal.... and mine is below.
It's like very thin mee pok. Spicy, too. I loved it. Luckily, they have a recently opened outlet in Singapore according to Patrick.. gonna have to check it out soon!
Ah, Bali feels a little like Australia. There are surf shops every where, a few times I was convinced that I wasn't in Indonesia. Hahaha. Oh... but the haze and dust was a constant reminder that I actually was. Haha.
Went back to our hotel and the staff dressed us up in traditional Balinese costumes...
They kept asking Nahshon and I if we were on honeymoon, HAHAHAHA!!!! We were wearing like 5 layers man. Or ok, I was. I guess the guys costume is less fancy but Nahshon still looked like a RAJA!!!! (king) HAHAHAHA!!! We had SO MUCH fun!! The headpiece was so freaking heavy though. It's like we couldn't move or sit down. The biggest pain was trying to climb up the stairs...
Receptionist pretending to stab himself.. HAHA.
^ MOST STONED KING ON EARTH.
Well, after that the staff asked us, "What are you doing tonight?" "Nothing." "Come, come! Party with us tonight. 11pm. We drive you."
And that was that.
We headed to SkyGarden, which is a 5 storey high club. Located at Ground Zero, the area where the 2002 bombings happened. HOLY CRAP, we got an absolute shock when we stepped in. In SkyGarden, there are about 6 different clubs altogether... and every club has a different ambience b/c they play different kinds of music. You want reggae, head up to the rooftop! The mainstream clubbing songs were on the main dancefloor, though.
The dancers really did have stunning figures. Gosh..
Anyway the thing about clubs in Bali - the people are NICE. If you say excuse me, they actually make way for you, and on top of that they apologize for blocking your way. In Singapore, if you say excuse me, people will just turn to you and stare at you as though you just spoke Arabic. Bullshit!!!! Singaporeans, y'all need to learn to be nicer.... maybe clubbing would be more fun then.
The DJ was a really nice guy (yeah you can actually go up on the platform in Bali!!!) so we danced with him for a little while.. and I like him a lot because he played Years - Alesso AND!! AND!!!! THE ISLAND - PENDULUM. SHIT MAN!!! I totally went crazy because I've not heard ANY of those songs in SG before. Well, he's from Aussie so... hahaha, aiyah, it was a fantastic night.
My Balinese boyfriend Comang. HAHAHAHA. He told me he loved me and that he was going to tattoo my name across his chest. How flattering. He was being serious, though, about the "I love you, Tessa." part... it's so strange because the people there DO BELIEVE in love at first sight. He was telling us about his ex girlfriends and all and they got into relationships after like a day of getting to know each other. Such an innocent perspective on love... gosh. Whatever floats their boats.
DAY 6: NAUGHTY NURI'S + KU DE TA
Sunrise in the morning! There's like a sewer below our hotel so... but the sky was a pretty pastel pink! :)
We woke up like, really really late and headed to Naughty Nuri's - well known for their tantalizing pork ribs.
Aw man... looking at the photo makes me real sad cause I can't get them over here :'(
Anyway the rest of the day was pretty blah blah boring and I'm getting really lazy to type as you all can probably tell but we headed to Ku De Ta around 5.30pm to catch the sunset. I wasn't very thrilled to go there but Patrick told me it was a sight I couldn't miss out on.
True enough...
(That's the DJ in the middle... playing really chill music.)
The security at Ku De Ta is real tight, we had to go through a bag check twice, and there are so many guards at every single exit. Honestly though I think the KDT in Singapore has a pretty sweet location, Bali's one was the real deal.
Ku De Ta has a BRILLIANT ambience. I think it was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We just sat there watching the sunset in silence because no words could describe what we saw... I felt as though I was so free, that there were so many possibilities and opportunities awaiting me out there in the world. I guess that's what beautiful sceneries do to you sometimes... they help you realize that your personal problems are not so big in the grand scheme of things :)
Anyway, we headed back to the hotel and Patrick knocked out soon enough. Nahshon & I stayed up the whole night just flipping through channels.. HAHAHA we were watching 4 different shows at one time. I don't even know how that was possible but we did it. HAHAHA!!!!
DAY 7: KUTA + SINGAPORE
Got up really early so we could get our asses to Kuta to do some last minute shopping. We barely shopped at all during the trip haha.
This is SkyGarden in the morning -
Hehe Nahshon decided to get a tattoo done!
We were bored to death in the tattoo parlor.. hahaha. Eventually when they were ready to do it for him, Pat and I went to this guitar shop down the road to check out their ukuleles.
I decided to get two! Hahaha. One rasta designed one for the fun of it, just to serve as a memory of my time in Bali... and a tiny ukulele which I can barely play one because my fingers are too big!
I had fun talking with the locals there.. haha, this guitar store used to be a mattress store (they have mattress on one wall of the shop for sale) and they used to sit outside to play the guitar/uke. Funnily enough, people would walk past and ask if they were for sale! In the end they decided to turn it into a mattress AND guitar store. HAHAHA!!! How cute.
Had our last meal in Bali at a cheap restaurant b/c all of us were pretty broke.. eh..
Spicy mee goreng!!!
We left for the airport REALLY LATE (yes, mum if you're reading this, I lied when I said I was alr at the airport!) and we were convinced we wouldn't make it hahahaha but thankfully everything about Indo is never being on time so we fit right in.
Our boarding pass was a RECEIPT!!!! HAHAHA!!! HOW TERRIBLE!!!!! Had a good laugh with the counter staff at the Tiger Airways booth too.
Look at this queue just to enter the boarding gate... HAHA. I'm so lazy to elaborate but our flight was scheduled to leave Denpasar at 6:55pm that day, we only boarded the plane at 7.45pm.
We just slept throughout the flight... woke up with a neck ache. Tiger is probably the most shit budget airlines out there HAHA everybody please fly by Jetstar.
ABSOLUTELY THRILLED TO BE BACK HOME!!!
... NOT!!
I felt so sad when I stepped out of that plane (ok, NO, who am I kidding I couldn't wait to get out of it) but you know what I mean!! I didn't feel homesick during my trip at all (except for a few drunk moments) and Bali was just pure awesome. Had so much fun with my crazy, spontaneous pals and I'd do it all over again.
Bali was a really good experience for me, because like I said I learnt so much more about myself. I sorta learnt how to make peace with myself during my trip and now I'm back in Singapore, as a much better person :) Remember this photo I posted awhile back?
It was exactly what we did - and it turned out to be one of the best times I've had in my life thus far. Try it out someday!
Anyway... I suppose no one can stay in paradise forever... reality awaits!!
❀ Goodbye Bali! Till we meet again! ❀