BACKGROUND:Steve and I live in Mt Maunganui in New Zealand, are in our mid-30's with two children (5 and 2). We have enjoyed travelling overseas regularly for the past eight years including numerous trips with the children. This year being our 15th wedding anniversary, we decided to take leave of absence from our parenting roles and take a weeklong breakaway in BALI. We have enjoyed our two previous trips to Bali b.c. (before children!) in 1993 and 1994, but felt there was still much more to see and do in this "Island of the Gods". FLIGHTS:We flew Garuda from Auckland via Brisbane in both directions. As a semi-nervous flier I had serious doubts about our decision to go with Garuda. But I am happy to say that we are alive and well, and these happened to be the best flights we have ever experienced. The plane was a newish Airbus 330 which had heaps of legroom, the toilets worked all of the time, the staff were constantly bringing food or drinks around - not on a trolley blocking the aisles, but on trays. It departed half an hour late going from Auckland but made it up on the Brisbane-Bali leg and was at least a third empty, leaving heaps of seats to stretch out on and sleep. We will definitely fly with them again. HOTEL:This time we stayed at the Santika Beach Resort in Tuban for 7 nights. This hotel is between the Dynasty and Ramada Bintang Resorts on Jalan Kartika and has absolute beach frontage. It is a fairly large resort but split into sections which have their own pools, so it appears smaller than it really is. We loved the location, being only 10 minutes walk to Matahari's and the Kuta Art Market in one direction and 5 minutes walk along the beach to the Pantai restaurant in the other direction (see below). 
An email to the hotel a couple of weeks before our trip requesting room 321 as recommended by a Bali Travel Forum member served us well. Our room was perfectly situated on the ground floor right beside the beautiful swimming pool. The room itself was large and split-level, with a huge king size bed on the upper and table and chairs on the lower, plenty of wardrobe/shelf space, good side bathroom and very, very quiet. The housekeepers changed our towels twice a day and turned the bed down at night (leaving a small flower decoration on the pillow) which was a lovely touch. For only NZ$142 per night, I thought this hotel was excellent value for money and we would stay there again. MONEY CHANGING:We used the Kodak shops along Jl Kartika (next to the Dynasty) and had absolutely no trouble there. We took some USD which I had from previous holidays, but mostly NZD$100 bills. The rate for the US was around 11350 rupiah and the NZD at 4700 rupiah for the entire week (there appeared to be no difference in the exchange rate for different NZ denominations and/or quality as there is for the USD and AUD). I noticed that the rate had increased to near 4900 rupiah on our last day. When we did inadvertently run out of money one day and used another moneychanger, I was very cautious and stopped him trying to count the money after I had finished checking it. He got rather stroppy at this which makes we wonder what his intentions were?? I later spoke to an elderly Aussie man who had been ripped off by a moneychanger in the same way.
The Kodak shops are open 9:30am till 9:30pm - not good if you have no local currency and want an early start on your first day. If, like us, you change too much money and have a lot of rupiah left at the end of your holiday, don't panic, you can change the excess back to AUD or USD at the airport. The rate is less of course, but we only lost $5 in $100. They don’t have NZD tho'. WHAT DID WE DO???Well, thanks to the Bali Travel Forum and the many hours I spent reading and making notes from this website and many others, we had a basic idea of what we wanted to do, where the recommended restaurants were and what things should cost. This proved to be extremely beneficial as Bali can be a bit daunting to the uninitiated (even for folks like us who have travelled there before). We planned to do a lot of things which would be more difficult if the kids were with us, as this trip is a oncer... Day 2 - SHOPPING TILL WE DROPPED! On our first day after breakfast we took a light blue taxi to Sanur and headed to Tootsies in the Sindhu Beach market. I had read about them being a fixed price store and this was an excellent starting point to get an idea of the price of t-shirts etc. We wrote all the prices down in a notebook and took this with us on our other shopping expeditions. This actually stopped us getting seriously ripped off on a number of occasions! We then headed to Matahari's in Denpasar, again by light blue taxi. Oh my gosh! I was in heaven. Such a selection and for such little cost - particularly kids clothes and shoes. We bought up large and staggered outside to find yet another light blue taxi back to the hotel exhausted. The next day we spent time around the Kuta Art market - bartering with my notebook in hand - and Jl Legian with all its surfie shops, Kuta Kids and knick-knacks. All in all we had a great spend up and filled our empty suitcases easily. I only regret not buying more! Day 4 - WHITE WATER RAFTING This was the one thing we REALLY wanted to do. We chose to go with Bali Adventure Tours on the Ayung River near Ubud and booked our trip at their office opposite Matahari’s in Kuta. As our time was so limited, we decided to combine some time in Ubud with our rafting adventure. Our newly-found friends Barbara and Ron (also from Mt Maunganui and in Bali at the same time) joined up with us on this day and we travelled up to Ubud where we spent the morning. We had just over three hours to nosey around and decided that this is definitely somewhere we would like to spend some more time.
Our driver then took us to the Bali Adventure Tours pickup point in Ubud. We had a blast to say the least. Barbara decided to give the rafting a miss, but Ron (who is hitting 60) was the daredevil himself! We had a blast! This was the best day out ever! The river wasn't deep nor did we run aground, so I would say it was "just right". Our guide was extremely friendly, yet professional and spoke good English. The river seemed reasonably clean, but after reading reports on the web about raw sewerage, I wasn't game enough to have a swim - just a paddle. Steve and Ron jumped right on in and suffered no ill effects. The steps at the end were another experience tho’ – constant harassment from hawkers all the way up the 200 or so steps to the top. We were treated to a nice buffet lunch afterwards, which is included in the tour. Day 5 – MORE SHOPPING and THE FAMILY ARRIVES More shopping this morning before my sister Sue and her family arrive from Christchurch, NZ. We are looking forward to seeing what their first impressions of Bali are. This is their first visit and they haven’t experienced anything like this before. My niece (13) and nephew (11) will no doubt go home with more of an education that one can get in a classroom and I am really pleased they decided to bring them here. They arrive late afternoon and checked into their hotel, the Bali Rani, which is only a few hundred metres up the road towards Kuta. They are pleased to finally be here and are chomping at the bit to get going! Day 6 – TANJUNG BENOA, NUSA DUA and ULU WATU After a quick whip around the Kuta Art market with Sue and Co we grabbed a driver off the street and take a tour down to the Tanjung Benoa peninsula to see the fishing boats, etc and check out a couple of potential hotels for future visits. Nothing really takes our fancy, so it’s off to Nusa Dua to show the others our hotel from previous trips – the Melia Bali. It has changed a little in seven years – most noticeably the bougainvilla is no longer in abundance. Perhaps it is the wrong time of year. We still get a nice feeling from this hotel and vow to return one day.
We continue onto the Ulu Watu temple to catch the sunset. Unfortunately the sunset was not that spectacular due to clouds just on the horizon, but it was well worth the drive. The cliffs are amazing and the monkeys really interesting to watch. We were very wary and removed all our jewelry and took no food. Sue grabbed a huge stick to ward off them off in case they made a grab for her specs! They took the hint and stayed well away from her, giving her the occasional hiss to advise her of their indignation. I certainly wouldn't encourage the wee beasties to come close as we did notice a small child feeding one and although he didn't get hurt, the kiddie got a big fright when another monkey barged in from nowhere to steal the food. We also witnessed a young American guy lose his bulging wallet to the monkeys – imagine explaining that to your insurance company! Day 7 - BALI BIRD and REPILE PARKS Decided to check these out with Sue and Co and again, had an excellent time. We were initially concerned about how were going to get to and from the parks, but it was very easy to negotiate with a driver from outside the hotel. This cost Rp80,000 for approx 5 hours which was plenty of time to see both parks and kept it simple. At the Bird Park, we held the macaws and other birds and loved the rainforest aviary with its abundance of exotic birds which come up very close to feed. They also had a couple of Komodo dragons, which was unique. The Reptile Park, which is only a couple of metres away across a drive, would have been disappointing had it not been for the handling area. As we don't have any snakes in New Zealand, they hold a bit of a fascination for us, but unfortunately these guys were all asleep and hiding amongst vegetation in their dark enclosures. They did have one eight metre giant boa which was certainly impressive - but she was asleep too. The handling area however was an incredible experience. Here they had quite a few lizards of varying species wandering around freely (more like sunbathing freely) in a grassy area where you were able to hold and become "up close and personal" with the reptile of your choice.
All in all it was a great day out. Day 8 - MASSAGE ON THE BEACH: This morning on the way back from breakfast I decided to give the beach massage a go. This was an unusual, but wonderful experience. I had one lady giving me a massage, another doing my nails and another giving me a pedicure (ahh bliss...). When other sellers realised I was simply going to ignore them, they went away and gave me no trouble. Another wander around the shops doing our last minute tasks. Both of us have had enough of shopping by now and looking back, it might have been wiser to just hang out by the pool all day. Never mind, we managed to spend more money and bring more junk home in the cases. Said our goodbyes to Sue and Co and headed to the airport later in the afternoon. We were looking forward to getting home to the kids by now and only had to survive the overnight flight home. Goodbye Bali! WHERE WE ATE:
All up we were very impressed with the above restaurants and their really cheap prices. None of us had any Bali Belly symptoms (thank goodness). I don't know whether this was because we were super careful about washing our hands (I took a bottle of waterless handwash with disinfectant which we always used before eating), or that we avoided salads, ice and seafood, but we had suffered from this on both our previous trips here and we were very keen to avoid it this time around. TAILOR:I took a pair of favourite shorts and 3/4 pants to have copied. Found Eni's the tailor by accident one day and remembered he was recommended by Filo on the BTF. Had two of both copied successfully for NZ$120 - very good quality, however a small alteration was required to make them fit perfectly, so allow an extra day before leaving Bali in case this happens.
TIPS I WISH TO SHARE:
WOULD WE GO AGAIN?Absolutely! I don't consider Bali to be a "Paradise", but we had a lot of fun. It is very different to home, the food is delicious, the people mostly friendly and the weather fabulous. What else can one want from a holiday?? Home Page l Photo Page l Email Nzers
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