Lazy Trip to Bali

[exceladdict]

A short trip review of a quick break to Bali. I’m a little light on photos compared to what I usually like to share, but I hope to do justice to what was a fantastic break with one goal in mind: chill.

For the three weeks before we travelled, I had Day Trip to Bangor by Fiddler’s Dram stuck in my head (with Bangor changed to Bali, of course) – as some sort of ode to the late Eoin Cameron – and so was very excited to finally get there and underway.

Itinerary: PER-DPS-PER, JQ

Accommodation: A private villa North of Kuta, approximately 45 minutes north of DPS airport.

Booking Process:
On the advice of fellow AFF'ers (http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/your-questions/jq-air-asia-per-dps-79522.html), we decided to go the JQ route in picking flights ex PER to DPS. Other options considered were AirAsia X and Tiger, and the main swing votes were the Australian-registered aircraft and lounge access thanks to my soon-to-expire QF SG and a bunch of single use passes from recent QF co-branded CC applications.

We were flying with a group so ‘why fly direct when you can connect’ was not an option – but even then, PER to DPS via SYD on a non-redemption ticket might push my limits. The goal of the holiday was to relax; so we wanted to fly daytime flights to avoid upsetting sleep patterns.

Booking about a month out, we picked our desired days and surprise surprise, AirAsia was significantly ($~500 vs $~130) cheaper on our desired outbound flight (daytime) and marginally cheaper on the return (evening) flight. Luckily, we weren’t after SCs, squiggly lines, or Jetstar plane food so we went with the price match and I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was – the icing on the cake was not having to pay credit card fees on the booking (and triggering complimentary travel insurance on one credit card).

One of our friends found the villa which we were glad to pay for on a Bankwest World MC, to save any forex costs and trigger the insurance on that card too (I’ve found the lower excess on that card quite good, though luckily I haven't had to use it).

 

[exceladdict]

PER International Airport – T1
Being a Perthite I grew up thinking our international airport was huge (I didn’t leave the country until I was 17) but I’m very wary of long wait times. Wanting to maximise lounge time (read: well and truly fill up in the lounge to not get hungry), I wanted to arrive at the airport about 2.5 hours before our flight, and was very glad to see there was no one in line at the JQ counter – which felt very different to normal! I put it down to the middle-of-the-day-weekday departure.

One of our group was running a bit late but the ladies at the counter advised we would have no trouble four of us checking in and the last person on the ticket arriving separately, so that four of us were able to check in and head through. Interestingly our carry on bags were also weighed and tagged, something I can’t remember ever happening to me before but I suppose that is how the 7kg limit is enforced!

Straight through to immigration and security and the lines there were also very short. Nothing to claim at duty free so we were straight up and in to the Qantas International Business Lounge after a quick browse at Duty Free. (A quick side note – if you are in to spirits, perhaps purchase them in PER rather than DPS or Indonesia. Dark spirits, especially, seemed very heavily taxed in Bali).

PER QF Intl J Lounge
No issues with access, scanned our BPs with Mrs Excel and I through on QF SG and two complimentary passes for the first two guests. I checked to ensure I could enter and exit so I could meet someone else later, and the lounge attendant was ok with this.

We got right in to the standard QF lounge fare: soup, stew, and salad.

Menus:


The soup and stew:


The salad:


The stew tasted exactly how you’d expect given the look – far better than the onboard meal I chose not to pre-order for $15, and relatively filling. The soup was tasty, and I didn’t try the salad but Mrs Excel enjoyed a plate.
After about 20 minutes our final traveller cleared security, immigration etc so I met and brought him in to the lounge, though the attendant was on point and asked how he’d be entering (was secretly hoping we may have slipped him in). I had another complimentary pass, which I used, and the attendant asked “how many of those do you have”? A quick quip about signing up for too many credit cards and we were through.

We found a nice lounging area and enjoyed some toasted sandwiches and beverages before being good little travellers and leaving the lounge to be at the gate 40 minutes prior to departure. We think we got our money's worth for the one time passes (the table was cleared a few times).

 

[exceladdict]

JQ106 PER-DPS A320 13D

The line to board moved relatively quickly and we connected via airbridge. We stumped up the $29 per person to get row 13, which by my reading of seatguru is probably the second best row on the JQ A320 other than row 1 seats A/B/C.

Seated in an exit row we surprisingly had no problems finding overhead storage for our bags – not sure whether it’s the one-item-or-extra-charge policy, but it was pleasant. The legroom was good, unfortunately my photo turned out atrociously out of focus so I’ll share one from the flight back.

With no IFE, we didn’t have any form of flight tracker which I considered unfortunate as I like to watch the little plane make its way on the map and observe the flight path.

The flight itself was smooth and uneventful, however due to heavy rain our landing was delayed because they were inspecting the runway (I very well may have misheard the pilot). The landing felt particularly fast, and we taxi’d and disembarked relatively quickly.

 

[exceladdict]

DPS Arrivals/Transfer
We waited for what seemed to be a very long time for our luggage and I regretted not retaining the orange “oneworld priority” tags I’d collected on a recent trip (though given the hit rate of them making a difference, I’m not sure it would have made a difference anyway). After they came through, we were unsure whether to go in the ‘declare’ or ‘not declare’ line as we were bringing in some packets of biscuits – we went through ‘not declare’, asked the lady and then were waived through anyway.

After moving through we went via DFS but noticed many beverages were quite expensive, so some of our party picked up some things but we continued on to an ATM, where a lady with QR F tags on her hand luggage attempted to push in front of our group. We were glad to demonstrate the etiquette of queueing to her.

ATM fun fact: the ‘suggested withdrawl’, which in this case was 1M IDR (about $100), we initially misunderstood as the maximum withdrawl. I had read about the ATMs having low maximum limits so one of our party withdrew multiple times before we realised we could manually type in 2.5m and withdraw that way (this particular ATM had 100k notes).

We then found our driver and after a crazy few minutes exiting the multi level parking structure (I can’t believe how many cars can fit in to so little a space we were on the busy road from DPS to our Villa. Traffic was particularly atrocious and the journey cost us 300k.

 

[exceladdict]

Villa Accommodation
I don’t think I’ve ever had a more relaxing six nights. The villa we stayed at was absolutely wonderful. On arrival, the villa manager greeted us with a fresh juice, and we were treated to a short tour before dinner (nasi goreng). By this point it was about 8.30pm and we were starving (but more about the food later).

The villa was beautiful, I couldn’t believe the sheer size of the place for what we were paying (around $120aud/person/night). I understand this is at the upper end of the price spectrum, but as we booked quite late we were very happy to go with the first nice one we found and have no regrets for the cost. I took some photos the next day.

The villa is accessed by a narrow private driveway (very glad I wasn’t expected to drive):


It had a lovely entrance:


On entering, the kitchen area is on the left, and you walk around a pond towards the main sitting/dining area:


The flowers and plants around the place were lovely:


Many little decorative intricacies made me feel a bit cultural:

 

[exceladdict]

Next to the entrance pond/water feature, there’s an entertainment room behind these doors – but we kept them closed for the air con relaxation factor in that room:


The entertainment room had a Nintendo 64 and Mrs Excel enjoyed reminiscing in some childhood games, finishing pokemon snap (despite it being in German) and making a decent dent in a playthrough of Banjo Kazooie.

The main area in between the bedrooms was fantastic for hanging out, reading books, and is where we had most of our meals, too. Click the photo to view in 360 on flickr.



Part B to be posted soon!

 

[mmchow]

The villa looked very nice. Heading to Bali later the year so will keep an eye out on the relaxing things to do there.
Waiting for the next instalment.

 

[exceladdict]

Bedroom

I’ve never slept in a four poster before – and was glad to try one out:


Ultimately it wasn’t the ideal weather for having a separate layer of insulation in all directions around your bed, so we didn’t use the curtains for long – but it was nice to experience.

There was a sitting area in the room:


The bathroom featured a sunken bath:


Private Massage Table:


And double vanity:

 

[exceladdict]

Villa Dining
Our villa had an arrangement where we put down a deposit towards food (50k per person), and the villa staff would go and purchase groceries (with a 20% surcharge) and then prepare the meals for us. We chose from quite a comprehensive menu including (but not limited to) nasi and mi goreng, a couple of Balinese specialities which were my personal favourites (spicy fried noodles and vegetables), and western food like club sandwiches, burgers and pasta. The food was very well prepared and we only ended up eating out twice, and while at the villa the only double up we had were the club sandwiches which were particularly tasty.

Breakfast was a choice of either American (omelette or eggs your way, with bacon, toast and pastries) or Balinese (fried noodles/rice) and both came with an entrée of fruit and fresh fruit juice. We got used to the Balinese copi (coffee) and while there was an espresso machine there, the house didn’t stock ground coffee to use it. The only option at the local market was illy espresso at 200k ($20) for a 200gm tin, so we adjusted to copi for the week.

On the second last night, we decided to do something different and cook dinner for the staff that had been serving us all week. We did some lamb, a spicy bean and snowpeas dish I know, mash potato, and had ice creams afterwards. We enjoyed it so much that we decided we’d invite them all to lunch the following day – and we ordered a suckling pig (cooked off site) for us all to share:


This (ordering a whole cooked pig) isn’t normally my type of thing but it was an out of the ordinary experience!

By the end of the week we had gone over the food budget by about $3M, meaning in total the meals were around $150 AUD pp (which I think is decent for 6 breakfasts, 4 lunches including a suckling pig, and 6 dinners).

 

[exceladdict]

Out and about / shopping / accom / ATMs / Telecommunications
We only left the villa a handful of times for a few activities, including:

Shopping: Mrs Excel and one of our companions wanted to get some tailored businesswear, and we found a good tailor for this on Legian st. The only other thing I bought was a power adaptor, argued from 300k down to 40k (lesson learned: carry small notes if haggling, some operators will be very slow to give you your change back and try to re-haggle after previously agreeing to a price)

Eating Out: We ate out at Mama’s German Restaurant one day we were shopping, had a decent chicken kiev (unfortunately parmis weren’t available that day). We also ate at DE BASILICO Kitchen and Bar, next to Starbucks on Legian St. My rib was a bit tough, but everyone else enjoyed their meals:


We also went down to Starbucks near the Canggu Club a couple of times for an iced beverage, and to make me feel like I’d achieved something for the day, before returning to a book by the pool. Sidenote: the Canggu club looked pretty good if you wanted to partake in any activities (we didn't).

Money and ATMs: We needed cash for drivers, taxis, the food deposit at the accom, and the few purchases we had. ATMs were everywhere and the only one I was hit with a surcharge from was a PermataBank atm inside a convenience store, where I was slugged 30k ($3). We mainly used mandiri ATMs otherwise and used our Citibank Plus Visa Debit card to get pretty close to the wholesale exchange rate with no fees.
All airport locations and the local pepito market accepted credit card (chip) but most locations swiped your card in their checkout system, after using the eftpos machine, seemingly to tag the transactions together. My mental fraud radar started beeping but I'm quite confident in most Australian banks' willingness to reverse transactions if something bad happens, and I haven't noticed any suspicious transactions (yet).

Sim Cards: We picked up telkomsel sim cards from the pepito market for $1, bought $15 recharges from a convenience store, and got someone on the street to punch the micro sims down to nano sims for our phone – however, we found that the reception only worked on 4g, not 3g (on 3g we had signal but no data). This wasn’t a huge issue because we only wanted to use it to kill time when in taxis, and for if we got lost – but we were a fair bit out from kuta so the 4g did not work at our accommodation. We couldn’t quite figure it out, and I didn’t put much effort in to trying to get it to work – I have a feeling we bought “4G Only” data or something. But either way, $15 is very affordable for mobile internet while out and about.

Activities
While there we had a couple of massages (the villa arranged for masseuses to come to the villa) and one of our group had two ‘four hand’ massages (basically two people massaging you at once) for only $35. Bargain.

We went horseriding one day through an operator owned by an Australian, the horses were healthy and seemed well looked after (although one of us got one not so well trained). Luckily it wasn’t me – a placid horse for an amateur rider.

One of our crew went to a nearby boxing/mma-style fitness place for a one hour workout session (while we went down to the starbucks). He seemed to really enjoy it but it was quite exhausting considering the humidity.

The final - and perhaps most important - activitiy was chilling out, reading and relaxing. Finished a book I'd been wanting to read for a while and made a dent in an audiobook too. This was facilitated by the beautiful pool, an inflatable donut, and the adjacent tiki huts with fans (click on photo for 360 view on flickr):

 

[exceladdict]

DPS
After six nights in Bali we were sad to go. It was 300k for a trip back to the airport, and was a much faster trip back (around 2.30pm > 3pm). We went through first security and then checked in. We had some more rude tourists here – some people abandoning their trolleys not just in the line, but exactly in the middle of the walkway so as to block it.

Some people outside the JQ check in were “strongly encouraging” security wrapping of bags, in such a way that made me quite uncomfortable – surprised that the airlines would be happy with people so close to the check in desks.
Customs, etc were uneventful (how you want it to be, really) and we sampled some hand cream on the way through to the departure area. I had a looked at the lounges and couldn’t figure out which was the veloce one (I wanted to try arguing the lounge access from Australian credit cards thing) but quickly threw in the towel on that.

We got a few bites to eat and then had to rush to the gate.

Unfortunately on re-boarding we had the wonderful experience of having our bags searched once again – this time for water bottles. I’d conveniently forgotten that this was a thing and had just loaded up on two cans of soft drink and three bottles of water. I felt the lady snatching them out of my bag was a little ruder than necessary – I understand it’s an Australian government requirement, but it was unfortunate to have to dump unopened items so late in the game.

 

[exceladdict]

JQ107 DPS-PER A320 13A
On boarding, we were told that the two people in 13DE had been moved as they didn’t comply with exit row policy. The friendly FA (who we instantly recognised from our flight over) kindly moved our friend from 13C to D, meaning both 13B and E were empty and so Mrs Excel, myself, and our friend all had a buffer seat adjacent. On top of the exit row legroom, it really didn’t feel like JQ!


The seatbelts were padded:


As we taxi’d down the runway I saw a fair few unfamiliar tails, before two familiar ones:


It was quite nice looking out over the south of the island, flying towards the sunset:


I was seated in front of two kids and their grandmother, so whipped out my ipad pre-loaded with the last few episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 3. Unfortunately however, they finished before the flight did so I was lucky enough to overhear quite a lot of their game of ‘cheat’ – and Mrs Excel reported that the hour and a half before that consisted mainly of the children asking for bottles of water and being refused on the basis of them being $4. Case in point: noise cancelling headphones remain a must. Hearing a child continuously (and incorrectly) call ‘cheat’ and being forced to pick up cards, was not the most conducive audio backdrop to trying to read a book!

As a sidenote - I was able to avoid the $4 water charge by simply going to the back of the plane and asking nicely for a cup, and was given two.

A tired-sounding captain or co-pilot reported that our route back to Perth was via KTA and that we were looking slightly ahead of schedule, due to arrive at 9.45am.

It was a pretty full flight back, with the back row empty but otherwise a fairly good load. All in all the flight was quite smooth, with a couple of bumpy bits but not enough to cause the seatbelt light to turn on.

We approached PER from the north, with a relatively smooth touch down for a small plane. We landed a little early at 9.48, and disembarked after a short ish taxi.

Altogether a wonderful week, a great standard of relaxation at the villa and would definitely consider doing it again.

 

[Daver6]

Great report. I'd never really considered the whole villa thing but that looks like it will change.