We cooked up the plan to meet up with Matt’s family in Bali in Chris and Ney’s hot tub back in February. At the time, the thought of meeting up in Bali seemed very distant. After all, it was winter – cold, wet and dark. We were right in the middle of selling the house, pausing work, planning the trip… There was A Lot going on.
And then all of a sudden, here we were boarding a flight in Bangkok having boxed the bikes back up again and nearly completely recovered from a spicy Thai blend of very sweaty cycling mixed with rooftop bar hangovers. Suffice to say we were excited to reunite and relax in tropical paradise.
We had somehow timed our flights to perfection – we landed five minutes apart and despite the longest immigration queues ever (followed by customs queues – our bikes definitely attracted a bit of interest from the officials) we really enjoyed big hugs and smiles when we spotted each other in arrivals.
The smiles have continued ever since with an action packed fortnight offset by lots of chilling in our beautiful villa near Jimbaran Beach on the south of the island.
I’m not going to bore you all with a day by day account (mainly because I can’t remember what happened on what day, potentially due to consumption of a fair few NBBs – Ney’s Bali Booze). Instead, here are some highlights:
Watery fun
Bali isn’t short of beaches, and with our own pool, and a bigger (25m) pool in the resort we’ve done plenty of swimming, wave jumping, bodyboarding and even some surfing (Chris and the kids). Caleb was crowned Champion of Champions in the Cope Swimming Gala (apologies to anyone else wanting to use the big pool that day) and despite my best attempts to get totalled by every wave, I managed to catch some totally radical surf on my (body) board. It’s been good to change-up cycling for swimming, reminding both of us how much we like it (especially in these surroundings!)
A highlight for the Copes was a visit to WaterBom – the island’s premier water park. I am personally much more of a fan of swimming and even body boarding. Walking up several flights of stairs to climb into a capsule and be slid and then spat out seconds later having feared for your life is not really my bag. But everyone else made the most of the 15 extremo slides from opening time until closing. Yes, this included Pete and Clare who despite being grandparents are also totally rad. (Don’t worry, my entrance fee wasn’t completely wasted as I did go on a few of them after much cajoling). No photos – everyone was too busy on the slides for posing!
Temples
The majority of the population of Bali are Hindu, unlike the rest of Indonesia. As such, the architecture is dominated by incredibly ornate temples and shrines which pop up everywhere. We’ve visited a few (sorry Caleb) including:
Our visit to Ulu Watu temple was at sunset, prime monkey time. No sticks provided here but luckily we managed to keep hold of all of our belongings (unlike some other visitors):
Ney had organised us tickets for a ‘Kecak’ performance at Ulu Watu – a traditional Balinese dance performance which was a weird but wonderful mix of chanting, fire, costume, dance and even some comedy. It’s really stuck in all of our heads, mainly due to the chanting (which was continuous through the whole one hour performance) being a bit of an ear worm.
Takatakatakatakataka Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo. Matt has terrorised Caleb with it ever since.
Markets, rice terraces and Insta pics
Bali is a prime destination for anyone interested in taking beautiful pics in breathtaking settings and we found ourselves at the motherload when we visited a venue bringing together cultural heritage, delicious coffee, manicured rice terraces, a pool and … swings.
Esme couldn’t resist joining in and hired a dress and enjoyed having pics taken from all angles of her swinging above the terraces looking every inch the Insta-Influencer. Beautiful!
There are plenty of shopping opportunities in Bali with hard haggling being the way to do business. A few bargains have been had as well as just enjoying the atmosphere in the historic centre of Bali in Ubud.
Birthday Girl
As it happened (or maybe we planned it this way) – our trip has coincided with Clare’s birthday (there’s no need for me to share her age, suffice to say she is a very youthful mother-in-law!)
We enjoyed celebrating all day long including a beautiful long beach walk, temple visit, cocktails at lunch, fizz with dinner, homemade pasta dinner and a cake (well done Ney and the kids for pulling off actual baking with limited facilities).
A real highlight of the day was visiting the Bali Turtle Conservation Centre where for a small donation we all (briefly) adopted a baby turtle which we released into the sea. A magic experience, if slightly stressful as some of them were master escape artists and were attempting multiple bids for freedom.
Cycling and traffic
It feels wrong to write another post where cycling isn’t even mentioned. So all I’ll say on the matter is that Matt has been out a couple of times, and with his wits about him (and Chris on my bike on one of the occasions) has managed to avoid getting squashed by the crazy traffic here (or eaten by the doggos – yes they’re here too!)
I’ve enjoyed a break, vindicated by looking at the traffic from the inside of a taxi/minibus on a few occasions – when we’ve all wondered how anyone ever gets anywhere here – it is traffic jam after traffic jam, particularly in the south of the island.
Of course the traffic is a symptom of the volume of tourists here and the challenge of the infrastructure just not keeping up with tourism growth. We are of course part of that problem which for all of us has been a topic of conversation and reflection on numerous occasions.
Food and drink
I might have already mentioned cocktails, fizz and cake but this has just been the tip of the iceberg in terms of delicious food and drink consumed.
One highlight has been breakfast every morning. Some of us have made our way through the menu including Nasi/Mie Goreng (traditional Indonesian rice/noodles), french toast, pancakes and omelettes. Others (Pete) have stuck with ‘Eggs any style’, scrambled with bacon, tomato, hash brown and toast every (single) morning.
The fruit here is plentiful and delicious which has made for a great snack (and cocktail adornment).
Dinners have included a Balinese seafood feast on Jimbaran Beach, steak, lots of Nasi/Mie Goreng, burgers, Balinese duck etc etc etc.
A highlight was mine, Matt’s, Chris’ and Ney’s mutual birthday presents to each other – Sunday (bottomless) brunch at the Intercontinental Hotel restaurant. It was an incredible meal and with the wine flowing whilst looking out to the beach with fantastic company – it was a real real treat and something to remember.
So what next?
With a couple of days to go before our onwards flight we’ve started feeling sad about goodbyes but excited about getting back on the bikes and seeing somewhere completely new – South Korea!
We’ll see you all there 🙂
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