Family trip to Bali

WE HAVE ARRIVED IN BALI!

We’re here on a family trip with Allan, Ian, Nat & Tracey for a week of rest, relaxation & rejuvenation in a country we are yet to explore. We will be staying in Seminyak for a couple nights, heading over to Ubud for two nights then onto Legion before flying back home. I’m so excited!

Unfortunately we couldn’t get a direct flight from Sydney to Denpasar, so we had a split trip on the way here with a stopover in Brisbane. The flight honestly felt like it took forever, it didn’t help that we didn’t have TV screens on the back of our seats this time around, not sure why (especially since we flew with Virgin, jibbed!) but it definitely made the trip drag out longer than it needed too. I felt like our 12.5 hour flight to America went quicker than the 6.5 hours to Denpasar!

We arrived in Denpasar at roughly 9.30pm, left the plane via the stairs and waited on the tarmac for about 20 mins until a shuttle bus could pick us up and take us into the airport entrance. This was the last thing we wanted to do after a 6.5 hour flight that felt WAYY longer than it needed too and in hot & humid temps but we’re in Bali and that’s freaking exciting!

Once we were inside the airport, we quickly cleared customs (the guy stamped my passport, yay!), found Nat who was on a separate flight to us, collected our baggage then headed out to find our chauffeur driver.

Finding our chauffeur outside the airport was crazy! I kid you not, there were hundreds of Balinese staff with signs trying to pick up their designated people, to the point where Pete, Nat & myself had to split up and work different sections of the signage to find our name sign – it was absolute madness! The 3 of us ended up splitting up so we could search different sections of the crowd for our names, thankfully though Pete seemed to have a pretty good eye and found our name sign fairly quickly. As soon as we met up with our driver he grabbed Nat’s baggage to wheel to the car & these two other kind men (who we assumed were with our chauffeur) came along and grabbed both mine & Pete’s baggage. I felt like absolutely royalty until we got to our shuttle bus and I realised the two extra men wanted tips from us for carrying our baggage to the bus....Gah, I know all about these tricks and yet here we were falling for it straight off the plane.

As we arrived in Bali so late at night we weren’t able to get too much of a sense of what it was like, other than the fact that it was extremely humid & the roads were chaotic. It was absolute madness on the roads from the get go, there were so many scooters/mopeds & bicycles everywhere, horns beeping constantly, lanes marked in the roads that not many vehicles followed & seemingly no road rules (oh & seatbelts are optional). People were on the back of their scooters facebooking & texting whilst others had young children squished in between 2 adults on a tiny bike - It was crazy!

Once we arrived at the villa, said hello to Allan, Ian & Tracey we got given the grand tour & boy was our villa beautiful! We have the most amazing private pool right outside our bedroom windows & Pete & I were so lucky to be given the room that had the most incredible ensuite bathroom that was like a private rainforest retreat. It was absolutely stunning, so serine & so peaceful.

I can’t wait to spend the next few days here, experiencing a new culture & exploring a country we are yet to tick off the list. Eek!