Beautiful Bali...Again

This is our second visit to Bali. Decided to do this after the Angkor Wat trip to rest and relax. This time round we stayed at the Jimbaran region.

We booked a villa with a private pool with this villa called The Jimbaran villa - http://www.thejimbaranbalivilla.com/. The villa was much smaller than I thought it would be and the pool is also very small but nonetheless, its pretty private. It also has this open concept shower area. I think the 2 or 3 bedroom units will have a bigger pool.

We were told that the beach is 5 mins away if you cut across the hotel intercontinental which is directly opposite us. But we were told that we can't do that as the security might not allow us in. So its a pretty long walk to the beach. We had seafood dinner at this place which is recommended by people on the internet. We had a kg of fish, half a kg of tiger prawns, half a kg of squid and they will throw in stir fried veg and rice. We also ordered 2 beers. The total cost is only about S$31.50. Cheap right and the food is nice.

Breakfast was served in our villa every morning so we had to make our orders the previous day. We started the next day only in the late morning and got a free shuttle service to the beach from the villa. It was terribly hot and we walked to the four seasons resort which is not very far from where we dropped off at the beach.

After which we had lunch at one of the seafood restaurants along the beach. We decided to have local fare instead of seafood and ordered nasi goreng and mie goreng. After lunch, we took a dip at the pool in our villa and I spent the afternoon reading by the pool.

We started the next day early as we booked ourselves on a one day tour around Bali. Started the day at 8.30am and our first stop was at a batik making place, the person explained how they actually make the batik etc. Ended up buying 2 batik shirts for my dad and my FIL. It's not cheap...each shirt costs S$40+.

Next stop we went to a silver and gold making place and you can see the people soldering the silver onto the jewellery and I ended up buying a silver frangipani flower ring for USD29. At this rate, I can feel I'm going broke soon.Haha. We went to an art place in Ubud and you can see the painter doing a traditional balinese painting in just black colour on the canvas.The place housed a lot of paintings and some paintings can go up to several thousands USD.

After which, we went to a place where they grow and sell coffee.We sampled their coffee and teas and even had the famous luwak coffee which we need to pay extra for. Its USD100 for 100g only. We saw the luwak cat who eat the coffee beans and then poo them out again so we can enjoy the famous luwak coffee. But seriously, the coffee does taste better.

We went to this volcano called Mount Kintamani where there is this lovely lake next to the volcano. We had a buffet lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the volcano. Nice. While on our way to Tanah Lot, we also passed by this lovely rice terraces. I was actually looking forward to Tanah Lot after hearing reviews of how beautiful the place is but when I reached there, I couldn't really find anything to be wowed about.

We decided to make our way to Uluwatu temple which is like 1.5hours away to see the sunset. But it rained heavily when we reached there so we had to give it a miss. On the way back, I wanted to eat Babi Guling and the guide stopped at a local restaurant and we had babi guling and beers and spent the time chatting. Our guide is really chatty and has a lot of friends around the world.

After a hard day of sightseeing, we booked ourselves some spa treatment the next day. I booked a 5.5 hours spa treatment consisting of body scrub, massage, facial, yogurt wrap, milk bath, hair cream treatment and mani and pedi.It only costs USD48. Had a really good time at the spa and the place even do complimentary pickup and dropoff.
We told the driver to drop off at the beach area for dinner and the driver dropped us off at the Kedonganan beach which we have no idea where it is but there are seafood restaurants there as well. It's dark and we didn't know where we were so we decided to just eat there and get the driver to bring us back to the villa thereafter. The seafood dinner which consists of fish, king prawns and mussels with complimentary veg, rice, welcome drinks costs nearly S$90. Wow, the next day we were talking to our driver where we had dinner and he told us that that is the expensive seafood area. But the person at the restaurant told us if we go back next time with a large group, he will come up with a special package for us. The other thing is that most restaurants in this beach has a stage for balinese performances where you can even go up and take a photo with thereafter.

Before leaving for the airport the next day, we had lunch at a local roadside eating place and had their traditional meals which is something like our local veg + rice. Then we did some sourvenir shopping before checking in at the airport. And that is the end of our holidays. Time to go back to reality.