i remember during one of the taxi rides we took during the trip, the driver, upon finding out that the 3 of us were single (and although we were already working, a lot of them thought we were students)said that we must come again to bali, and that the next trip be a honeymoon trip with our husbands.
it was a great trip, the 3 of us enjoyed it very much, and i vowed to definitely visit bali again.
8 years later (wow) .. i did.
and i did go with a husband! well, my husband. it's our 3rd year of marriage this year, and i consider any trip i take with him where it's just the 2 of us as our honeymoon (awww..!haha).
so we went there a couple of months ago. it was my second time there and it was hubby's first. interestingly though, aside bali, the only other place i've been to in indonesia is batam, while hubby has been to jakarta, bandung, the riau islands, and even lombok. but he said for some reason he was never intrigued about going to bali. i managed to persuade him finally and off we went.
we took malaysia airlines from jb to kl and then to denpasar.
the flight from kl to bali was quite bumpy as there was a lot of turbulence. i'm usually okay with turbulences other that the motion sickness, but in lieu of the terribly unfortunate plane tragedies that shook all of us last year, we were quite worried.. i think many people were too.
anyway, we arrived safely, ahamdulillah, and were in bali for 5 days and 4 nights. we stayed at the grand inna kuta hotel, right by the kuta beach.
we spent 2 days taking day tour trips to kintamani, celuk (got another silver ring to add to my collection), taman ayun, ubud, bedugul, and tanahlot. we tried out the organic bali coffees at 2 places, wedang sari and tegal sari. we tasted the famous luwak coffee, it tasted okay but not all that great. the one who was really excited was actually my husband and not because of the coffee. luwak or civet coffee is special in that it is made from coffee beans that have been eaten by a "musang" or civet, i think it's a type of wild-cat but i may be wrong. the beans go through the animal's digestive tract but they dont get digested, and so when the civet poops, the beans come out together in its droppings. these beans are then cleaned and roasted and grinded, and you get the luwak coffee.
anyway, so hubby wasnt all that excited about the coffee, but he actually fell in love with the luwak or musang itself.why?
because, for some reason, his nickname back in school was apparently musang! some of his school buddies still call him by that name to this day! but this is the first time he actually came real close face-to-face with the animal, and even got to pet the fella, and he was immediately smitten.
and now he's on a quest to finding one to keep as a pet.
oh dear.
back to the trip. this time around i got to see the barong dance. (i saw kecak dance on the last trip)
makan-wise we didnt have much problem. the fast food places are all halal in indonesia. there are a lot more halal warung and restaurants in kuta now i think, compared to the last time i was there. i actually remembered warung nikmat, the halal restaurant i went to on the last trip and went there again. they have actually expanded now and there is now a budget hotel just behind it. the food is still good.
other than that we were mostly out and about town, doing a lot of walking (20k steps per day accordig to the app on my smartphone!) that by the time we get back to the hotel we were too pooped (again with the word-haha) to do anything else. we planned to but didnt even get to swim in the 2 swimming pools that were at the hotel !
we bought a few souvenirs, t-shirts, fridge magnets, but also since we are both nuts about nuts (we love snacking on them) we bought a few different types of bali nuts (their names escape me now) that were really yummy.
the last 2 days of our trip though, hubby had a toothache. it was an old problem, he had seen a dentist and was advised to have the tooth extracted but he kept on postponing it. i have been bugging him to go and take care of it, but of course, he didnt because the pain wasnt always there. so of course, the pain came back while we were on holiday! in bali! no point nagging anymore. but because of the pain we decided to ditch the plan to try the seafood dinner in Jimbaran as some people had suggested to us, because he couldnt chew very well by then and would not be able to enjoy it anyway.
all in all it was a good trip. the flight back was thankfully smooth, and hubby was actually talking about possibly going there again, yay!
note: he went to the dentist a day after we got home and got the tooth taken care of too. hee.. ;)
