Bali: The Isle of Gods Day 5 & 6

22 – 23^rd March 2010

Brian has feedback to me that for my holiday postings, it is tiring to read it on a day-by-day posting as the initial part will be interesting whereas leaving those days at the end of the holiday dry and boring... Well, its kinda hard to leave out the details in those days as the blog is supposed to be about the LTs and thus to live out the motto of the blog, it got to contain those LTs. OK OK, I will try to shorten my last two days of my Bali trip so hopefully this doesn’t get monotonous.

Most of us (Saved for a few) woke up late for breakfast but none of us felt that there is any need for apologies thanks to the chatting till the wee hours and the oh-so-comfortable bed. We left for a day of blissful massage and spa at Murano Spa for the whole family and I have to repeat myself again, IT IS SUPER CHEAP!!! How cheap??? A 3.5 hours service including Balinese oil massage, body scrub (Choice of Green tea, Milk, Javanese Lulur, Boreh), hot flower bath with fresh ginger tea and a twin combo choice of pedicure, manicure, scalp massage, foot massage or facial wash and all these for a mere IDR290,000 or approximately S$45! Do not miss this for the moon! I know there are many other famous places like “Jari Menari” and “Body Works” but I chose Murano Spa as it is not as crowded as those two, reasonable price, non-religious massage as and most importantly there are both masseurs and masseuses (Jari Menari only has masseurs). Geez, I guess I have gone overboard in recommending the place and that made me sounds just like their agent… Haha!

Staircase to the second level of Murano Spa

One of the Spa room

My initial plan is to head to Uluwatu to catch the sunset and again, it was never meant to be so I guess I would have to make it a point to come back to Bali again simply because I have yet to take Uluwatu in the dusk… add Pura Ulun Danu Bratan into the list. Instead, the whole family head back to Ayana Resort and explore their facilities and all.

Beautiful Frangi Pani at the Lobby

Girl power!

Wish you get married here? Wish I did... but then again,
its the person that you marry that matters aye? ;-)

The beautiful infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean

The jetty where you can have a all-lobster
candlelight dinner for two, which will cost
US$199++ per pax

My mother is not able to walk very well after an accident that happened about 20 years ago during one of our church outing to Bukit Besi. Two vans set out from Chukai to Bukit Besi, which is approximately 2 hours away. One of the vans ferried the sisters while the other the brothers. As there are more sisters than brothers, my sister has to go with the van ferrying the brothers instead. To cut the story short, the van ferrying the sisters overturned but thank God no one saw the Lord’s face that day although one of the sisters, D was flung out of the van into the palm oil plantation and landed head first onto the sharp edge of the palm tree’s bark. There is a visible big crack on her head and the rest is too gross to put down in words but thank God that she had a quick recovery and is a happy mother now. As for my mum, she injured her hips and has been limping for the pass 20 odd years and as years catch up with her, the injury aggravated due to osteoarthritis. As such, I leave the rest of the gang with my mum and obtained a wheel chair from the resort to wheel chair her instead to explore the facilities and all. I have to say that the resort is very wheel chair friendly unlike most part of the European tourist area say Venice and Rome, which are totally NOT wheel chair friendly at all. Kudos to Ayana Resort!

Once we are done exploring, we went to the club level again for the Hors D’oeuvres and I have to say that I am disappointed this time round with the food as the quality is not as good as during the Ritz Carlton era. The Japanese food quality is totally unacceptable for such a high-end resort as the sushi rice is not properly made and the sashimi slices are dry and old. Hopefully the resort will do something about this. Anyway, the day ended with something very enviable although avant-garde for me. There is a wedding banquet held in the resort and golly, it is totally extravagant! They have the usual stuffs but thrown in plenty of shows to entertain the guests such as Balinese dance, song item, traditional Balinese orchestra and all. What sets it a notch higher than the rest is this, nearing the end of the banquet, the hosts treated the guests to a 15 minutes orchestrated fireworks display and don’t get me wrong when I say fireworks display for it is not just some ordinary fireworks display but one that would equal those seen during the New Year Countdown. Those living in Singapore, yes, the fireworks display are as good as those!

I’ll have to say that the fireworks display ends our day well and happy times indeed are meant to be short so that we would be able to savor every little bit of it so that down the road, we could reminisce this moment. Bali seemed like a dream and as we board our flight back to Singapore the next day, I told my wife I have the feeling that I have just arrived now so why am I leaving so soon? I will surely miss the great service with a smile in Bali, their wonderful cuisine and most of all the blue sky… you just don’t get sky like those anywhere!

That’s all for my Bali trip for now. Hope you enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed documenting them down. For info, I have already booked my next Bali flight tickets as this post goes online! There are plenty of areas in Bali that I have yet to cover so Bali, see you again in April 2011!

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