ThePassportPrincess

I thought I’d put in here an old entry that I wrote on my past blog about my trip to Bali in 2014 🙂 I apologize I’ve very lazy with my writing on this blog as I think I rushed it and probably wrote the word ‘like’ too many times!
EDIT: I write about riding elephants in Bali. PLEASE DO NOT do this. This was 8 years ago when I was young and un-educated about animal welfare. All of the elephant venues in Bali offer elephant rides, which involve cruel training and expose the animals to stressful situations. It doesn’t matter how ‘nice and green’ the ‘Sanctuary’ they’re living in looks. Interacting with the animals is one of the country’s major tourism draws but over the years less and less tourists are doing this as they’ve come to realize it’s not all as nice as it seems. In order to make elephants submit to elephant rides and other human interactions, they are taken from their mothers when babies and forced through a horrific training process known as ‘the crush’. It involves extreme physical restraints, inflicting severe pain and withholding food and water. By the time tourists come to ride an elephant, it may look at peace, but this is because its spirit has been broken. The bullhook, used permanently, reminds the animal of human dominance.

 June 2014

Our first day in Bali!

After getting off the plane after a 6 hour flight we were very keen to just get through customs and straight to our hotel.

However once we got off the plane and the bus took us to the airport terminal we saw the line for quarantine and man was it long! There must have been at least 600 people lining up! At least there was wi-fi at the airport so me and Nathan just stood in line after paying for our visa’s and looked on Facebook etc.

There was this lady behind me with her husband and 2 kids who tried to push in front of us so I stepped in front of her (who does she think she is, everyone’s lining up for the same thing) and she gave me the meanest look! She honestly looked like she wanted to slap me. She said something to her husband in their language and the whole time we were lining up they were glaring at me. I could feel their eyes piercing into the back of my head

I was waiting for her to yell at me or something so I could yell at her back but she ended up joining a different queue.

Once we got through, our shuttle was waiting for us to take us to our hotel. We got flowers at the airport and our shuttle driver gave us water to drink on the way.
Our hotel was wonderful from the very beginning! I did a bit of research about Bliss surfer Hotel before we booked and i’d heard great things about it so I was very happy with our choice. We stayed there for 6 nights in Legian for around $400 for the both of us so it was well worth the money.

When we arrived they carried our bags for us, gave us a welcome drink, and took us to our room. I was very impressed with how neat and clean our room was. The service from all the staff was excellent as well (always saying hello when we walked by etc) and they were very accommodating.

When we’d finished unpacking a few things we thought we’d go out and explore the main strip of Legian for a bit. It was only about a 8 minute walk around the corner from our hotel which was good but man the roads in Bali are way worse than Thailand I think. Awful awful awful! So many cracks and parts that don’t have any footpath or just massive holes in the sidewalk that you’d fall into if you weren’t looking. After a few days me and Nathan begun taking taxi’s back to our hotel just so we wouldn’t have to walk back down the dimly lit roads to our hotel.

Markets in Bali are all very much the same. Selling lots of Bintang singlets (the local beer) lots of fake watches and Nike shoes along with every store selling converse shoes and ray bans sunglasses along with little nick knacks like bottle openers and mini surfboards etc.

We didn’t buy anything on the first day though. If you ever go to Bali you’ll be.ripped off on the first day because they’ll double the price of something to sell you and you won’t know any different so just straight out buy it.

I think t-shirts are around $50,000 RPH ($5 NZD) and bags are like $150,000 – $20,000 if you can get it down to that price!

So after being harassed walking down JL Legian we came across a little restaurant that we decided to eat from (there’s heaps of them it’s just finding one that’s good!) I ordered some Chicken Enchilada type thing and Nathan ordered a steak. It was pretty average but edible and I can’t really complain because we only paid probably NZD $15 for our whole meal including drinks. We were really knackered from our flight by this stage so we went straight back to Bliss Surfer Hotel and got ready for bed. We hadn’t slept in 24 hours so I was asleep so quick!!

Day 2

I woke up with the itchiest leg!! I must have been bitten the night before or something because I had two massive lumps on my left leg that I just couldn’t stop scratching. Usually whenever I go on a trip I pack everything from sunscreen to anti-histamines but after many time of not using the stuff I bring in the first place I decided not to on this trip to Bali. Once we’d gotten up and showered we headed downstairs for our buffet breakfast at the hotel. At first we loaded up our plates because there was so much to choose from but by the end of our trip we were having cereal and very plain breakfasts because our tummies didn’t quite like the change in breakfast choice.

There was everything from fruit salad to pancakes to omelettes and fried rice with sausages and noodles. It was quite a selection we had every day!  Once we’d finished up our breakfast we took a taxi to Kuta Square. (About a 5 minute drive away without traffic for NZD $1.50) we explored the shops, i bought a couple of watches, some massage oils and little souvenirs, Nathan got some sunglasses from a Kuta market stall which he nearly ended up paying $190 for!! He got confused with the money but thank god he quickly realized he was handing over too much money and only paid NZD$20 for 4 pairs. Phew! They were really cheeky there though. I bought a pair of sunglasses but he wouldn’t give them to me until i looked at his ‘mates’ dresses and tops from the stall next door to his. Id paid for them and everything and the guy kept telling me that this or that dress would suit me and to try this dress on and I was so beautiful blah blah. I was so not in the mood! Me and Nathan were sweating getting used to the heat and I just wanted to leave! The previous guy I bought the sunglasses off though had a go at his mate I think and he ended up handing over my purchase when He could see i’d defiantly had enough. We took a taxi to Legian Beach and lay in the sun for the rest of the afternoon.

I basically just sweated my face off trying not to get burnt and Nathan battled the waves in the massive surf Legian beach had. Honestly I was too scared to go in very far because the swell was huge!  When we’d had enough of the beach we walked a little bit back to Legian and looked at some more markets on the way then ended up just getting a taxi back to Discovery Mall because it was so hot. The heat in Bali I think I can handle a lot more than my trip to Thailand. I was either expecting it to be hot and got used to it a lot quicker or Thailand is just way more humid.

When we got to Discovery mall we had an ice-cream from Cold stone Ice-cream (which I loveee) and Nathan had a thick shake. They honestly make the yummiest ice-creams.

We had a look around all the shops as well but I didn’t really buy anything. There was heaps of cheap stuff but not as cheap as what you can get on the streets. we thought we’d go back the next day and have a proper look before we went to the Water park across the road from Discovery Mall the next day. I wasn’t super hungry so I kinda skipped on the dinner and Nathan had Burger King. Haha really branching out on the local cuisine on our second day weren’t we!

 

Once we’d finished at the bird park we headed off with our driver to the Monkey Forest. I was expecting some monkeys in a forest behind some cages or something. But nope, there was literally hundreds of monkeys in a forest roaming around stealing everyone’s bananas they purchased. (Note to anyone who goes here, don’t even bother purchasing bananas. The guides give you food to feed them anyways and you get to see them be fed before you leave)The monkeys are so cute!

So we fed some monkeys, did a walk up to a temple and took some pictures. I really wanted this one monkey to come near me and sit on me so I pretended I had some food and he came over and when he realized I was full of shit he started attacking me. He pulled at my bracelets and actually like hit me and tried to pull my dress until Nathan told him off haha.

 

While I was looking at this abandoned house, I heard my name be called out and I realized my old flat mate from Auckland, Ashley was doing the walk as well! Small world isn’t it.

 

 

Bliss!

 

After feeding and riding the elephants we went and had a buffet dinner at The Elephant Park. The dinner was alright (nothing to rave about unfortunately) .
It was another ‘Bali buffet’ which tends to always be on the menu when you’re doing a tour. They did have a lovely vegetarian Lasagna which I think I took two helpings of.

The three Gili Islands, From left, Gili Trawangen, Gili Meno & Gili Air. The big Island is Lombok (Where planes fly into and heaps of people live)