All hell breaks loose when two spoilt brats, best friends for 3 years, hardcore travelers get married and head towards one of India’s favorite honeymoon destinations.
It was around 9 in the morning when we landed in Denpasar International airport after hot and happening Cruise in Singapore. Despite spending 3 days and 2 nights in Singapore, fresh air of Bali made me feel like this is just the beginning of our honeymoon. We were so happy that we forgot to indulge in our mandatory couple fight for a while.
Bali is super friendly to tourists. Starting from smooth immigration process till the end of our trip, it felt like each and every one in Bali is well trained in tourism. Our visa on arrival on Indian passport was absolutely free unlike our expectation that it is going to cost a bit. Policies keep on changing so you better check it for the updated one when you plan to Visit Bali. But anyways, Indonesia is one of the places where Indians feel like millionaire on a temporary basis and thus, any expected expense would not bother you much. When we traveled on June this year, the currency conversion was something around 1 INR = 196. 891 IDR.
Drinks gave us mini heart attack :P
No no! Please don’t take it literally. It was not the drinks but the cost of drinks which gave us mini heart attack. It so happened that while I was busy planning to go to the nearby washroom to groom myself up to cover up the disaster done to my beautiful face due to a few hours of flight, my smart husband decided to opt for smarter option. I noticed him walking towards the duty free liquor shop. We were too excited to see the label with pretty decent amount stuck against our favorite bottles. With briskness, I lifted two bottles and placed inside our shopping bag. While standing in the cash counter Que, I noticed a weird look of one of the salesmen. My exaggerated curious mind tried to study his looks and concluded that he is giving us a very discriminatory look something like, “what are these poor couple doing here in this expensive shop!” I alerted my husband. As expected, my husband didn’t bother to care much about my wild thoughts. Finally, in the counter the secret of that weird looks was unveiled. The price attached to the bottle was not even a miniature part of the total price. Liquor is subjected to 200 to 300% tax in Bali! The one which we lifted had 300% tax to it. But obvious, we could dare to lift only one bottle and got busy in appreciating ourselves for carrying extra bottle from Singapore airport.
We opted for two different resort/villa in two different places
While in Nusa Dua
We didn’t want to miss out on different types of excitement provided by different locations of this enchanted Island. Thus, we split our seven days and six nights stay and stayed in two different parts of Bali.
From the airport, our first destination was Melia Bali- The garden Villas resort in Nusa Dua. Melia Bali is a luxurious humongous beachfront resort and spa with stunning ambiance for every kind of tourist ranging from family, couple or groups. It is situated in Southern part of Bali around 14 kilometers from the airport. It has numerous restaurants with different kinds of international cuisines including a beachfront restaurant where most of the activities are organized. It was so welcoming and refreshing environment that we decided to not go out on the first day and instead explore the Resort and its nearby places. Our evening ended beautifully with amazing dinner in the beachfront restaurant of the Resort and a few glasses of cocktails relished lazily listening to relaxing sound of waves while seated on the huge couch beside the tranquil beach.
Hide and seek with the Monkeys and the beautiful sunset in Uluwatu
Next day in the morning we headed towards Uluwatu Temple, one of the famous tourist spots in Bali. It was a mesmerizing view to see a beautiful piece of sea Temple on the edge of a Rock which is around 70 meters high projecting into the Sea. We reached perfectly on the onset of Sunset and became one of the fortunate ones to experience the heavenly sunset view in this place.
While most of the tourists were busy enjoying the mesmerizing view, there were a few extremely naughty but cute and funny creatures which scared the hell out of people around. I know it was rude from my side but I couldn’t control by sudden giggle when I saw a monkey snatching shades from a girl a few meters away from us. We were really thankful to our conscious cab driver who warned us beforehand not to carry anything with us except the Camera and the selfie stick. Thankfully, Monkeys in Uluwatu are not very fond of Cameras and anything related to cameras like selfie stick unlike other fancy items Shades, water bottles, eatables etc.
Hogging Sea food in Jimbaran
After our stint of hide and seek with the monkeys as the nightfall started to begin we headed towards Jimbaran to hog some sea food which we heard a lot about. Jimbaran is full of Shacks with amazing sea food and also a few of them organize different activities.
Mandatory Bali sight-seeing
After our peaceful stay in Nusa Dua for 3 days we headed towards Canggu and Seminyak on the 4th day. We had a private Villa booked in Canggu, D’wina Villa. But before our check-in in the new Villa we decided to go for a full day trip covering various places. We started early in the morning hoping to cover as many places as possible. Our final goal was to cover Mount Batur and Kintamani before the sunset. Our trip started with a visit to a cultural place to enjoy traditional Barong dance and a short visit to a beautiful local Temple. Our cab driver told us that Bali is so obsessed with Temple that each and every household has their own private temple apart from the main house.
Our day was pretty long and eventful but surprisingly not tiring at all. We guessed it was due to extremely refreshing fresh air as we moved towards the countryside of Bali. On the way we had an awesome lunch in a highway restaurant which served authentic Balinese cuisine. After the lunch we managed to cover lot of places including Silver factory, Ubud, Tegallalang Rice Terrace, butterfly garden, Mount Batur and Kintamani.
Nightmare locating our new Villa
While the entire day turned out to be quiet eventful, evening was almost a nightmare when we headed towards our new Villa in Canggu. Even though the cabbies were very helpful and claimed to be born and brought up in Bali, they literally struggled to find out D’Wina Villa. Technology too failed to help us. The route showed in the Google map led us to some deserted rice field. We started freaking out as it started growing darker and darker. To add to the tension, the Cab drivers subtly hinted that sometimes this kind of deceit happens where people pre-book their hotels paying lots of money to find no hotel in the given address. After desperate struggle for almost an hour we could finally locate our precious Villa in some corner. But, for the first time we felt that “all well doesn’t end well!” It was very late in the night around 11 pm and Villa didn't have food arrangement. To top the customer dissatisfaction meter, they didn’t even keep anything which could be termed as dinner raw material in our private kitchen which we could have cooked and eaten. Villa looked haunted without any inhabitant. Boring looking receptionist in the counter struggled to order food from the locality as most of the food outlets were closed at that time. Finally, around 12:30 AM some fast food kind of food was managed by her which was like a huge relief to our growling tummies.
Living like a localite in Seminyak and Kuta
Cool breeze and warm sunlight in the morning topsy turvied our mood from the previous night. We hurriedly got ready and took a quick stroll of the neighborhood. The place didn’t look haunted anymore unlike the previous night. Bike renting was pretty easy affair in this place with numerous outlets to rent out bikes and our rest of the days in Bali were well spent with cute little maroon colored Bike.
Seminyak and Kuta are crazy places with lots of cool tourists and nice places to hang out. We solely dedicated our rest of the days in Bali to bike riding, party hopping, eating and shopping in and around Seminyak and Kuta, while ending our days’ craziness with nice relaxing Spa.
In the second last day we visited Potato head beach club which deserves a special mention. Potato head beach club is one of the best beach clubs in Bali which can be saved for a special occasion. Cocktails here are good and it has a great ambiance. It is bit difficult to get seat. We were told to wait for 45 minutes but we walked around and hijacked a newly cleared table almost shamelessly without even consulting a waiter. It was fun :)
Kuta, around 10 kilometers from Seminyak is a great shopping hub if you want to bring back some nice colorful Bali souvenirs. There are also very good hotels/resorts to stay in Kuta. One of my friends had recommended The Lokha Legion Hotel in Kuta where she had put up while she was in Bali.
What we missed and definitely would try to do when we visit Bali again
• Island visit: we didn’t want to dilute our recent Cruise experience in Singapore and thus, opted this out from our itinerary. Some of our friends had recommended Gili islands and Nusa lembonghan which are said to be quiet popular. Mostly, you get to experience a rough ride to the islands and then Jeep Safari inside the island.
• Tanah lot Temple: We definitely wanted to visit this pretty Temple but time constraint didn’t allow us to visit
• Water sports: My husband was keen on doing snorkeling which none of us got a chance to do before. But I am hydrophobic and thus, didn’t dare to get inside the water. We had our share of fight for this because I can’t help it and my husband wouldn’t go without me. Other water sports like rafting, parasailing are pretty much regular activities which we already had done and thus, we finally decided to opt out of water sports in Bali.
• Elephant Safari park: I am scared of Elephant ride and my husband was not very keen. So opted out of this too.
• Goa Gajah: Archaeological site. Both me and my husband don’t understand archaeological, historical things and thus, find them bit boring. But for history lovers apparently this place is pretty unique and worth a visit.