Blissed out in Bali

Happy 10th anniversary to ManpanionTM and I!!!

We met on Friday July 31st 2015 at 8.02pm outside a local coffee shop – that just so happened to close at 8pm!  Cue strolling round the neighborhood instead before retiring to my roof deck to share a bottle of wine round the fire pit.  I think I took his hand to cross the road earlier in the evening (not sure who was helping who across the street) – and we haven’t let go for the last 10 yrs.  Don’t worry – am not going to get all mushy on you – but its not every day you get to celebrate a decade together.   Which means that its not every day you get the chance to win the “Happy Weeka/Montha/Yeara/Decadeaversary” contest – the rules of which are very simple.  Whoever says “Happy Weekaversary” (if its a Friday) first, wins!  If its the last day of the month, its Happy Monthaversary etc etc.  Clearly, the big prize bragging rights come from whoever wins on July 31st as that its both a Monthaversary AND a Yearaversary – but today, we had the added spice of our first ever Decadeaversary added into the mix too.  Needless to say, this had been on my mind for the last few days (not that I’m competitive or anything).  I did think about setting an alarm to make sure I was awake first – but that’s a little unsporting and one of the unwritten rules is that both parties need to be at least semi-conscious to give either a fair shake at remembering first.

Given ManpanionTMs propensity for sleeping, I usually am the first one awake anyway, so for me, its a waiting game until he is just awake enough that its fair.  Sometimes, though, I get distracted with making coffee in the morning or wasting time on my phone, such that he wakes up enough, realizes I’ve forgotten and then pounces!!  No such luck for him this time, though.  I’d woken up fairly early on the train and as soon as I heard his first sleepy squeakings, I got him!  HA!  Happy Monthaversary, Yearaversary and Decadeaversary, DARLING!!!  The Triple Crown!! (It wasn’t Weekaversary cos it was not a Friday).  Peak smugness UNLOCKED!

Anyway, that nonsense over, the rest of our actual anniversary day was fairly prosaic, as it was a transfer and travel day, starting on the Rattle Express in Singapore and finishing up at the Apurva Kempinski hotel in Bali.  In between those two points, a transfer from the train station to Singapore airport, a 5hr wait in the Singapore Airlines lounge, a 2.5hr flight to Bali airport and then an infinite wait to clear the immigration line.  As advised, I had applied for – and been granted – our Indonesia travel visas ahead of time, so that we wouldn’t have to do all that nonsense on arrival but instead proceed directly through the lovely, inviting and completely empty e-visa automatic gates.  All we needed to do was scan our passports (which were linked obvs to our issued visas) and walk on through.  Which, for me, worked perfectly – passport in, green light, open sesame.  For ManpanionTM – not so much.  Passport scanned, red light, no open gate.  Try again.  Same result.  By this point, I was through, on the other side of the gate, stranded – so I appealed to an immigration guy who was sitting in a nearby cube and tried to explain what happened.  He said “go queue up” – so that’s what ManpanionTM had to do.  I waited on The Other Side – in line of sight – while ManpanionTM shuffled slowly in the big line that took about 45 mins to reach an immigration agent.  He gave him his printed visa – and apparently the QR code that was on it was not in their system!  While we waited, I’d checked all the details I’d put into the application – and they were definitely correct – so it was clearly an error on their side, not ours.  In the end, it took a call from the immigration agent to his boss, plus another 30min wait until it was all sorted out and a new visa was issued.  What had taken me 30 seconds to clear eventually took ManpanionTM a solid hour and a half!!  We weren’t the only people this happened to – as I waited, I saw several couples and families go through the exact same thing as us where one person got stranded from the rest of their tribe.

Anyway, in the end, everything worked out fine – and, on the bright side, our bags were ready for us by the baggage carousel, so that was great.  I’d been in contact with our driver to let him know of the slight delay (I think this must happen quite a lot) and it was easy to find him when we finally got through, past customs (which required another online form to fill out) and into the arrivals area.  As we were only going to be in Bali for 2 nights, before our cruise with Aqua Blu, I’d picked a hotel that was reasonably close to the airport, within a 45min drive.  Bali traffic is notoriously terrible and, even though it was about 8pm by this point, the roads were still heaving!!   I’d been to Bali once before (tacked on to a work trip about 7yrs ago) but this was a first for ManpanionTM, so he was enjoying seeing some of the amazing Balinese sculptures and carvings that lined the road from the airport.

We arrived at the Apurva just before 9pm – and WOW.  What an incredible place it was.  I had agonized over which hotel to choose in Bali (Four Seasons? Belmond? Ritz Carlton?) as it was Our Special Trip – but I chose the Apurva Kempinski for 3 reasons.  Firstly, it was reasonably close to the airport.  Second, the architecture looked amazing from the pictures and thirdly, it has Bali’s first (and only) underwater restaurant.  (It did also offer Pilates classes, but surprise, surprise, I didn’t make it to that!).  I’d booked us a category of room that came with Club Level access (you know we love a Douche Pass) and also a private pool overlooking the beach.  The hotel is built into the cliff (as far as I could tell) so the lobby/arrivals level is on the 17th floor and then you descend down to your room level, the club level and the beach etc.  That’s probably a rubbish description, so here’s the link for you to check out – their pictures are WAY better than any I took – and it really did look that impressive when we arrived!  (Especially as it was dark, so it was lit up in a very atmospheric way!) HERE  By the time we’d checked in and been shown around the hotel, it was 9pm, so we ordered some room service (pizza and fries!) and crashed out.  We also had lovely complimentary bottle of bubbles and a slice of chocolate cake waiting for us in our room, courtesy of our wonderful travel advisor Tisha, to wish us a happy anniversary – thanks, Tisha!!!  (if you are ever looking for someone to help you plan travel, deffo give her a shout – she’s awesome: https://neufvilletravel.com/)

The next day was our only full day at the hotel resort, so we got up reasonably early to go get breakfast from the Club Level lounge.  Dizzying array of choices, as per usual!   After brekkie, we had a wander around to explore – as it was only 8am, we had the place pretty much to ourselves and it looked just as impressive in the daylight as it had last night.  It was huge!  The hotel has over 400 rooms and suites, set into a cliffside and extensive grounds, extending all the way down to the (public) beach.  It really was the epitome of tropical Balinese paradise (ManpanionTM approved of my choice of hotel – “Five Carrots!”) and it was a bit of a shame we were here for such a short amount of time.  But c’est la vie – after our wander, we headed back up to the Club Level and camped out on a big lounger by the hydrotherapy pools.  After a relaxed morning, we wandered down to the beach side bistro for lunch (club sandwich!) before heading back to our room to dip in our (somewhat chilly) pool and have a nap.

Then it was time for one of the main reasons I’d booked this place – dinner at the Koral restaurant – the only underwater restaurant in Bali.  I’d been quite lucky to get a reservation (thanks to Tisha, our travel advisor) as you can imagine its a pretty popular spot.  You can actually see where it is from the surface as there is a large pool, the surface of which is covered with 4 big black tarps to prevent it overheating.   We descended into the restaurant – and wow!  So many fish swimming around you!!!  We had been even more lucky to secure a table in the “tunnel” part where the fish would glide and dart directly overhead, including several large manta rays (Loopy – I thought of you) and a couple of small sharks.  It was quite magical – and a very fitting location for our Anniversary Dinner proper.  And – in an unexpected twist – the food was actually very good too!!  We’d been expecting the cuisine to definitely be secondary to the fish viewing – but everything was delicious!!  Dining with the fishes certainly beats swimming with da fishes!  Towards the end of our visit, a diver got in the tank and then proceeded to “visit” each table for photos – they had some sneaky food in their hand which I saw them feed to the manta rays – which would explain why they were inundated with fish!

And on that high note, our time in Bali and the Kempinski drew to a close – a short but sweet visit and a lovely way to ease ourselves into the last portion of our trip.  Next up, a week on the Aqua Blu exploring the Indonesian archipelago of the Komodo Islands!!!