30 Before 30: Our long trip! Bali!

June 8, 2013 – Yogykarta to Bali

Our flight to Bali was at 6:25 am so we were up really early (again). The flight was smooth and we arrived in Bali around 9am without issue. We grabbed a taxi to our hotel, the Le Meridien Bali Jimbaran.

The Le Meridien had their soft opening in December 2012 and their grand opening just a month earlier. I had actually read about the hotel opening almost a year ago in some sort of travel magazine and always wanted to stay there. Also, because of travelling last summer for work, Taylor has Platinum status at Starwood, which means that if they have availability, we get an automatic upgrade in room, so we were excited to see what that would entail.

We got the promised upgrade and the room was amazing. It was suite sized with a large walk-in closet and a bathroom with a free-standing tub and separate toilet closet. The king bed sat in the middle of a big room with a kidney-shaped couch on the other side and a large desk and our own coffee maker.

But the BEST feature of our room was actually the balcony, which gave us direct access via a ladder to the hotel’s lagoon (pool). The pool was beautiful, surrounded by the hotel and with a large swim-up bar with a waterfall just across from our room.

Lagoon Access!

View of the swim-up bar from our room

We dropped off laundry and headed out in search of a dive shop, for which we had the completely wrong address, so instead of finding it, we ended up having beers and gelato at a beachside bar in Sanur and heading back. We got back to the hotel for a drip in the pool and not long after, our friends JP and Lydia arrived.

The beach in Sanur

We went for dinner in Seminyak, an upscale area of restaurants and bars.  We ate at a nice little vegetarian restaurant with really good food and cold beers. After dinner, we headed to the bar across the street, which was also named JP. I had a cosmo, Lydia had a pina colada, and the boys had some drink with Arak, an Indonesian spirit. We listened to the expat Jazz band for a while before deciding to call it a night.

June 9, 2013 – Bali

Taylor spent our first two days in Bali diving in the morning. He left at 7am, and I got up around 9 to have breakfast with JP and Lydia.

JP with his dive instructor

We spent the morning hanging around the pool and exploring around the hotel. The only problem with our hotel was that due to the seafood restaurants for which Jimbaran bay is known, the hotel is not directly on the beach.

Lydia and I hanging at the pool

Taylor got back at around 1pm and we spent the afternoon in the pool.  While we were at the pool, my friend Lydia went to the bathroom and her boyfriend JP turned to me.  "I have a surprise for Lydia tonight" he said.  Of course I asked him what it was and he said it as the surprise.  Of course I immediately knew he was going to propose!! AH!! I couldn't hold it in I had to jump and splash around a bit before I settled down and ask him what the plan was.

He arranged with the hotel to pretend they were giving him a tour of the facilities.  While onthe tour, they took them to the penthouse room where they had arranged an intimate table setting and a private dinner.  JP proposed at the dinner and Lydia said YES!  We came upstairs to join them an hour or so later to toast the newly engaged couple!

Cheers to engagement, they look so happy!

JP even arranged fireworks! (kidding, he didn't, but they happened to have some)

After celebrating the engagement, we headed to a nearby restaurant since Taylor and I hadn't eaten yet. After a delicious dinner, we headed to bed.

June 10, 2013 – Bali

Taylor dove again this day and I again got breakfast with JP and Lydia and just relaxed by the pool. I hadn’t been feeling too well for the previous couple of days, so I really laid around. JP had been in touch with some friends from Business School who were staying at the hotel right next door to us, so in the afternoon we decided to head over to their hotel, which they said had an amazing pool and beach access. At 5pm, we all cleaned up and caught a cab to the Uluwatu Temple to see their nightly fire dance that happens at sunset.

The waves off the Uluwatu cliffs

Our friend Muriel, who is getting married in Indonesia in a week (that’s one of the reasons we came) said that this was a must-see and she didn’t lie!  We arrived a little late to the fire dance, so we had to sit in the very front of the crowd on the ground.  The crowd was arranged in a circle and in the middle (sitting directly in front of us) was a group of about 70 shirtless Indonesian men, chanting the beat for the dance. They make up what you might call the chorus in an American production.

The dance was really cool. Basically there are 6-7 characters, all in elaborate costumes with bright colors, gold accents, masks, you name it. The three female characters were extremely beautiful, and the male characters included several really fat guys with scary masks and one monkey character. They were actually acting out scenes form the Ramayana story, an ancient Muslim (?) story. The dance was great, and the characters interacted with the crowd, which made it fun. The lighting also made for beautiful photos.

Toward the end of the show, one scene entails the characters tying up the monkey character and lighting a ring of fire around him. They bring out a bunch of dried coconut fur and put it in a circle and light it on fire. It lights rapidly and encircles the monkey. He eventually “breaks free” and starts kicking the flaming material around toward the outside of the circle. Some of it came really close to my leg, but it goes out really quickly and didn’t burn.

Taylor dancing with one of the characters

The monkey in a ring of fire!

After the show, we got a taxi back to our hotel and then went on to Kuta, the main party area of Bali, to meet Taylor’s cousin Sven and his family for dinner. Sven manages a hotel called Bounty Hotel, which is basically a party location for Australian tourists. The hotel has a really good restaurant where I had Nasi Campur, which is basically an assortment of Indonesian dishes arranged around a cone of rice. It was HUGE!  And delicious. We all had meals, appetizers and drinks and Sven wouldn’t let us pay for any of it. It was so generous.

My meal, Nasi Campur (a little of everything!)

Taylor's cousin Sven, his wife Natalie, and his youngest daughter

After dinner, we walked to the main road in Kuta, Jalan Legian. I wanted to see the memorial to the Bali Bombings that happened in 2002. We saw the memorial and looked around for a place to get a drink in Air Conditioning, but finding none, headed home.

The memorial to the 200+ victims of the Bali Bombings on October 2, 2012

When we got back to the hotel, Taylor and I went for a quick swim in the lagoon (it’s 24-hours access for lagoon-access rooms) before heading to bed.

June 11, 2013 – Bali

More of the same today! Breakfast at the hotel (but this time Taylor was able to join because he was no longer diving (in fact, he is now Open-water dive certified!) followed by hours on end at the pool!  

A view of the building our room was in

Later, we all decided to go walk on the beach and possibly get a drink. We ended up down the beach near the Four Seasons Hotel. The Four Seasons is super fancy in Bali. It’s all villas and has a beautiful infinity pool on the beach. They also have a really cool bar right on the beach with $17 cocktails. Except were were there during happy hour, when it’s buy one get one free, so we decided to do it.

Drinks at the Four Seasons

We spent probably two hours drinking mojitos, margaritas, and some ginger-infused drink before we got hungry and headed out in search of an Italian restaurant we had heard about.  After being incorrectly told it was 300 meters away (more like 3,000!), we hopped a cab to PepeNero.  The restaurant was really beautiful, perched on a hill with views of what looked like a city in the distance but was really the airport.

After dinner, we headed back to our hotel where we grabbed gelato before heading to bed early.

June 12, 2013 – Bali to Lombok

Since it was our last day in Bali, I got up earlier (8am) and spent time by the lagoon on our balcony drinking cappuccino and catching up on some work before taking a pre-breakfast swim. We decided to head back over to the Intercontinental where our friends were staying for a swim before leaving.

Saying "see you later" to Bali

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