Chillin' in Bali - Part I

We're back in Paris now and are in great risk of getting the vacation blues, so I'm posting this which I'd drafted out while we still in Bali and added the pics from our trip. Here's hoping it keeps our spirits up long enough to to make it to the weekend!

****


So we landed in Bali.

After a somewhat frustrating two hours getting past customs at the airport (very slooooooooow lines to get your passport stamped) we finally walked out of the air conditioned airport and out into the warm Balinese evening night.

Our first stop was Nusa Dua in the south eastern tip of the island. This is an exclusive resort beach town lined with five star hotel after five star hotel. Under ordinary circumstances, Hubby and I would have never even thought of setting foot in a place like this, we tend to stay away from anything with the word resort in it when we travel. But we'd been feeling so exhausted back in Paris when we were planning this trip that we decided we'd do something we'd never done before: start out our vacations with three days of doing absolutely nothing but lounge by a pool or lay flat on our backs on a warm sandy beach before hitting the road... and from what we could see of Nusa Dua, it seemed like a great place to do just that.

All I can say is thank God for TripAdvisor and Hubby's knack at finding great deals on the internet, because thanks to this, we were able to book a room in the amazing Laguna Resort Hotel in which rooms typically run in the hundreds of dollars per night price range, but for which Hubby was able to get us a room for the price of an Ibis standard hotel room in Paris.

So picture us parking our sorry, tired-out, white-as-an-aspirin butts along the side of this:

Yeah, you get it. We were in absolute paradise. I'd never been to a high class hotel before and at first I have to say I felt a little guilty. When I was growing up my parents never took us to beach resort towns, and in the very rare times they did (like that time we went to Padre Island in Texas, remember mom?), we never ever stayed in hotels (let alone resort hotels)... it was always a tent or the camper vans for us. Even now, when Hubby and I travel, we usually tend to pick our accommodations in terms of where they are situated on the map instead of the size of their pool.

So staying in a place like this felt a little strange for me at first. It just seemed so... so..... so too much! This place had not only one pool, it had 8! Plus the beach. It had an amazing state-of-the-art fitness center with the fanciest machines I've ever seen, 5 restaurants so we almost never ate at the same place, spa facilities, hundreds of beach beds (so you always, always found one free) and endless other perks. I have to admit, after my initial hesitation I quickly got used to the place, especially the free towels thing. Hands down, the best thing for me was the small hut in the middle of the complex where you could just go and pick up a clean towel whenever you needed one, meaning you never had to think about taking one with you be it to the beach or to the pool. So you could just lounge around in your bathing suit all day long and dip in the pool or the beach whenever you felt like it without having to walk around with your towel under your arm all day long or run back to your room to hang it once it was wet. Now that's luxury people!! (am I a snob or what?)


In case you're wondering, we did step out of the hotel in those three days..... once.

We went down to Uluwatu to visit the amazing Pura Luhur temple, perched high up on a cliff and crawling with monkeys and tourists (I preferred the monkeys).

While we were there, we took in a Kecak dance, which even though we had no idea what was in store for us when we bought the tickets, it turned out to be one of the most amazing shows we'd ever seen. About 50 dancers perform a sort of trance chant while dancers dressed in amazing costumes perform an episode from the Ramayana (the hindu epic story) with the gorgeous sunset over the sea as a backdrop. One word: UhMazing!!

By the time we were ready to leave the Laguna Beach Resort, we'd gotten our mojo back; we felt relaxed, rested and ready to hit the road - even our sickly Parisian pale skin had turned a somewhat nicer (though still a bit embarrassing) shade of pink.

Next stop on our itinerary: the inland village of Ubud.

Fned.