Bali Babymoon

So this post is only 2 weeks late, but I finally have time to blog about our Bali Babymoon/Early 4th Anniversary trip!

Strategic Airlines has a new non-stop flight from Townsville to Denpasar (Bali). They ran a special on the flights for $200/pp one way and Josh jumped on the deal. We were kind of worried since we hadn't heard of Strategic Airlines before, but after reading some good reviews we decided to book the flights. The flight was about 1/2 full on the way there, so we had plenty of leg room. :)


On the way there we watched Life As We Know It and The Social Network. I was happy because I hadn't seen either movie. (Bowen takes for-ev-er to get movies) On the flight and for the first time in my pregnancy, my feet swelled up! They looked like giant marshmallows. It was pretty funny. I was happy they returned to their normal size a few hours later.

We landed in Denpasar an hour before our scheduled arrival time (which was really cool), but that meant we had to wait awhile for our ride. It was quite muggy when we landed, but we only ended up waiting 20 minutes for our driver. It was crazy to see how many scooters and motorbikes there were on the ride from the airport to the hotel. I've never seen that many scooters in one place! Some scooters had as many as a family of 4 on them. It was like yellow cabs in NYC x 10. I loved their countdown to green on their stop lights. I think every country should have these:

On the way from the airport to the hotel we saw a Maccas (McDonald's) and a KFC. The Balinese people are cah-ra-zy drivers. I'm not sure why there are lanes on the roads because no one was driving in their own lane. There were wild dogs and chickens walking around everywhere. I thought our hotel would be on a quiet street in Nusa Dua, but I was wrong! Luckily the hotel was tucked back far enough from the road that the traffic didn't keep us up at night. We got yummy welcome drinks when we checked in that the front desk employee called "fruit fun." (I later found out it was fruit punch, but none of the hotel staff spoke English very well.) I didn't care what it was called, I just liked that I tasted like a sweet tart!

Our room was very cute and cozy. The bed had a mosquito net around it. I'd heard the mossies were pretty bad there, so I came prepared with my bottle of OFF! We took a quick walk around the hotel and then a nap before dinner. I woke up from my nap sweating, and we realized something was wrong with the air con. The front desk was great though and switched us to a much cooler room later that night.

One of my only complaints about the hotel was the food. It was an all inclusive hotel, so we felt that we needed to get our $s worth and eat at the hotel for most of our meals. Looking back, I wish we would have not stayed at the all inclusive and just went out to different restaurants.

Monday morning we woke up early, ate breakfast, and caught a cab into Kuta. I loved how cheap everything was in Bali. Our cab ride to Kuta, for example, was about 30 minutes and only cost $7! We spent all day exploring Kuta. Josh went by a SCUBA shop and got some info for a dive. We walked by a lot of shops and made our way to Kuta Beach. The 20 min walk to the beach was a bit stressful. Every 10 steps there was a shop worker trying to get us to come into their shop, or a lady asking if we wanted "manicure, pedicure, hair braid?" I was overwhelmed at first, then it was just funny how many times we said "no thank you."

We heard Kuta Beach was the hot spot where all the locals and Aussie surfers go. Kim warned us to be careful if we went swimming here because the current was so strong. We found this cute giant and mini turtle:

Josh had to get a Bintang - the Bali beer of choice. It was only $2 on the beach. We saw them later at a store for $1.35. Crazy!

After watching the surfers for a bit, we made our way across the street from the beach to find a place to eat. We didn't eat at Maccas, but I had to take a picture of this. I'd never heard of Maccas delivering!

We settled on Rosso Vivo for lunch and I'm so glad we did. Everything about it was great. The service was wonderful, they had a beautiful pool that Josh relaxed in while we waited for our food, they had a HUGE drink menu (that had lots of mocktails for me!), they had relaxing lounge chairs, the food was great, and it was cheap! About halfway through our lunch it started raining so we quickly moved to an inside table. Here's our outside table:

After lunch we did some bargain shopping on Poppies I and II. Josh talked a guy down from $1 million Rupiah (about $110US) to $170,000Rp ($19) for 2 tshirts and 2 board shorts. I was very impressed with Josh's bargaining abilities. :) Bali didn't have a lot of clothes for girls, so I mainly looked at kitchen/house stuff and purses. After a few hours of looking around we caught a cab back to the hotel. We saw this across the street from the hotel:

Apparently it's a new kind of spa treatment. You place your hands or feet in this tub full of tiny fish and they eat away a layer of skin. I was too grossed out to try it.

Tuesday morning Josh left at 7am for his diving trip. I spent the day relaxing, reading, sleeping, and journaling. I really needed a day like that! Josh got back to the hotel that evening and told me all about his dive. He said the 1.5 hour drive to the dive site was way too long. He said they drove through some rough places, so he was glad I stayed at the hotel. The dive company he went with was called Scuba Duba Doo - how cute is that? His first dive was at Tulamben, a wreck dive of a 400ft US Army transport vessel. Josh said they got to explore a lot of the ship and he really enjoyed it. His second dive was at a coral garden. He saw lots of fish and he said the coral was beautiful.

Wednesday was our spa day. I had been looking forward to this for weeks! I heard from our friends Scott & Alex how good the spas were in Bali. After lots of research online, we went with Sekar Jegat in Nusa Dua. They were so great! It was definitely worth the $ we paid. (it was $175 total for a couple for 4 hours of treatment) Included in our package was transportation from our hotel to the spa. We received ginger tea and a consultation when we arrived. We were then lead to our open air room:

I would have to say the next part of our spa day was one of the most awkward moments in my life. We were given these TINY see-through black "hairnet jocks" to put on and nothing else. Ahhh! For a conservative person like me, this was most embarrassing and even more so with my husband in the room. Josh and I cracked up laughing to the point of tears after we were in our "outfits." The two massage ladies came in, and I had to do everything in my power to keep from bursting out laughing. We were taken over to 2 chairs and the ladies washed our feet. Then we moved back to the massage table and had a 75 minute massage. Then, they poured this milky creamy stuff on us and let it sit for 15 minutes. They came back in the room and rubbed the now hardened milky mixture off. They did this again with us lying on our backs. Then we were washed down and got to soak in the flower bath. The flower bath was so pretty! I'm going to have to put flower petals in my bath at home sometime. After the bath, we were given robes to put on. (hallelujah!) We went out into the salon area and the ladies washed our hair. Then they massaged this creamy milk stuff into our scalp and that was my favorite part of the day. I love getting my head massaged, washed, scratched, brushed....all of the above. It felt amazing! The ladies followed the hair cream bath with a neck and shoulder massage. The last treatment of the morning was a pedi for me and a mani for Josh. Josh's lady tried to talk him to getting clear nail polish - haha. After our wonderful morning, they lead us up to the restaurant and we had a very nice lunch! If I could do-over any day from our trip, it would be this one. We were so relaxed after our spa day, we spent the rest of the day on the beach outside our hotel.

That night the hotel had a Balinese dancing show. The music was really loud and annoying, but the dancing was pretty!

Thursday morning our tour guide for the day, Barman (a cab driver who also does day tours of the island), picked us up at 8am. He agreed to drive us around for the day (10 hours) for $40! I had a map prepared of all the places I wanted to go on the island. He filled up with gas ($0.45/litre which he said was very expensive) and we were on our way. Our first stop was ata Batik processing place in a little village called Batubulan. Barman said that each village is known for something. Some are known for Batik (a type of clothes), some for wood carving, some for stone statues, some for silver making, and so on. The Batik processing was interesting to watch. They use hot wax to make designs on the material and it's beautiful! Our next stop was in the next village where we saw silver making. After that we stopped at my favorite of the day, the Ubud Monkey Forest. It was so beautiful and the monkeys were so cute! Here's Josh standing in the middle of the monkey forest.

Josh and a Balinese macaques:

The babies were adorable!

The monkeys were so used to people feeding them bananas. They would look at us like "aren't you going to feed me?" We didn't buy any bananas from the front entrance, but probably should have. We saw monkeys climbing up tourists to grab bananas out of their hands.

After the monkey forest we walked around the Ubud Art Markets:

There were so many shops! They all started looking the same, so we only stayed an hour. Our next stop was the Tegalalang Rice Terrace. It was breathtaking. It was so green!

After a quick stop and a few pictures, we went to Tampak Siring, a temple build around a spring. There were several bathing spots and lots of pretty stone carvings.

During our day tour we saw lots of these:

No, it's not bottled wee, it's petrol! I cheated and knew this ahead of time, thanks to Kim. I had to get a picture of it though - it looks so gross! Kim said you just pull off the side of the road, leave some $, and fill up your scooter with this stuff.

Our next stop was the Batur Volcano and lake. It was beautiful! We stopped at this restaurant, but didn't eat here. We just went down to their platform to view the volcano and lake.

Our last stop was at a cocoa/coffee making place. We got to sample different kinds of tea and hot chocolate. Here's Josh and Barman at our table:

The drive back to the hotel was nice - lots of beautiful scenery and heaps of rice fields. We made a quick stop at the Galleria and walked around to stretch our legs. It was a long day, but so much fun! We ate at the Chinese restaurant, Chopstick, that was attached to our hotel. It was the best meal we had at our hotel. We went to bed super early that night.

Friday morning we got an email from Leila asking if we were alright. She'd heard about a volcano erupting in Indonesia that was blowing ash over Bali. She said lots of flights were being cancelled. Sure enough, I went to the Strategic Airlines sight and our flight for Saturday was cancelled! That's all the info I had at that time, so I was a little worried about how much longer we were going to stay in Bali. I emailed work, the pet resort where Wrigley was staying, and told the front desk what was going on. Later that day we found out our flight was changed to Monday.

Friday Josh was feeling a bit under the weather. We took a shuttle from our hotel to the Bali Collection. - a set of nice shops in Nusa Dua. Josh slept on a bench while I explored all the shops. We layed out by the pool and on the beach the rest of the day.

Saturday we looked at other hotels in Bali online to see if we should switch for the extra 2 nights we had to stay. We ended up deciding to stay at our hotel to make things easier. Josh got the front desk to give us the rate that was advertised on Expedia, so that saved us some money. We took the shuttle back to the Bali Collection and had lunch there. The rest of the day we relaxed (again) by the pool and on the beach. The theme of our trip was "relax". Can you tell?

Sunday we took a cab into Kuta again. We did more shopping and went back to the beach to watch the surfers.

We ate lunch at the Hard Rock and enjoyed Root Beer floats. It had been ages since we had one of those! We headed back to the hotel where we found out there was a cyclone headed towards Bowen that night. We were happy to be missing the cyclone, but were worried about Wrigley.

We didn't let it ruin our day though and went back to the pool for some reading/relaxing. :)

Monday morning we went to the airport and waiting in a loooooooooooong line to check in. I was worried we were going to be stuck in Bali for longer. I didn't think all of the people in front of us would fit on the plane. We didn't know that we would have to pay $30 to leave the country and we had barely any money left. Josh had to leave me to go find an ATM. Luckly we were at the airport in enough time. We got to board the plane first (I guess I am looking super pregnant these days!) which was cool. I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, so the 4.5 hour plane ride wasn't fun. It was a completley full flight and the girls sitting behind us had a really bad cough and b.o. Yuck. Once we landed in Townsville it took forever to get through customs. We didn't end up getting through customs until 5:30pm (our plane landed at 4:30pm) and that was when the pet resort was closing. I called the pet place to let them know what was going on and the lady was not very nice. She ended up waiting for us, thank goodness since we lived 2.5 hours away from Townsville.

I spoke with Jus from Head Office when we landed to let her know Josh and I were back in Australia. She said our practice in Bowen was on Sunrise that morning because of the cyclone. (Sunrise is like Good Morning America) We also found out a second cylone, Yasi was headed our way and it was WAY bigger than Anthony that just went through Bowen. Not the news you want to hear after just getting home.

Overall it was a great trip. Josh and I like to go on a trip every year for our anniversary, but since I won't be able to fly in April, Bali will be our 4th anniversary trip.