Not everything has to mean something: 28th - 30th April 2016: Bali Trip

A couple of months ago I entered a lucky draw of sorts via the Hotel Quickly app and unexpectedly won a complimentary 3D2N trip to Bali, inclusive of airfare and hotel. I was really excited because I had never won such a big prize before and welcomed the idea of a "free" holiday, indeed we spent very little on the trip itself. Although the entire trip was barely more than a day because we arrived in the evening and then left early in the morning, we made the most of it and had a lovely time:

Met my qt in the train.

Crazy dude built a fort.

Lunch at Fish & Co first!

Then we went shopping at duty free and monkeyed around a little.

Finally time to go!

Well behaved French boy who sat in front of me, he was very adept at entertaining himself.

Of course Sam slept through most of the flight so I was left to my own devices, thankfully I brought a book along!

The line at customs was horrific. We waited about 1.5 hours, kids were running amok. These two in particular were extremely cute!

Our villa was in Ubud, one of the further cities from the airport. To make matters worse, our villa itself was not in the central area. It was very remote and far into the area of the paddy fields, so it took us about 3 hours to get there by car. Luckily I had the foresight to book a car beforehand because getting a taxi would've been a nightmare. We finally arrived at the place past 9pm, starving.

I immediately regretted telling Sam not to buy any food or drinks at duty free because the food in Indonesia was bound to be cheap, I figured we could stock up on snacks and cup noodles at the convenience store and eat street food which would be cheap and yummy. I was not wrong. However, since our villa was so remote, there was nothing of that kind near us. We had no choice but to order room service.

Pork Ribs with fries and salad. It had quite an Asian taste to it but wasn't too bad.

Sam had some kind of mixed Indonesian fried rice, it was pretty flavourful as well. The chicken wings pictured in the initial picture was completely tasteless.

Woke up to this the next morning! We were at the highest level which had a lovely view but... came with 5 flights of thick stairs haha.

Went down to check out the villa in daylight as well as for our complimentary breakfast. See? Right smack in the middle of a paddy field.

Super hungry and ready to eat!

We were delighted to see western options but... the food was very very disappointing. It was the first time we had ever eaten bacon, ham, and even sausages which were completely tasteless. The texture was right but for some reason there was no flavour at all. The only thing that was nice was the french toast!

Our lovely room :3

Private pool right outside.

Lounge area facing outside.

Giant sloth came in to lounge.

It was really nice and quiet. This villa was so removed from the hustle and bustle, it was really more of a retreat/yoga/meditation kind of place.

Crazy dude started attacking me out of nowhere.

With a towel swan...

Which had kind of unravelled to look like a scary towel eel.

Pool time!

I would love to have a pool at my disposal, especially in this horrible heat we've been suffering in lately.

I wanted to take a cute picture but this dude insisted on waving at his imaginary fans.

Then he forced me to look down at imaginary snails.

Don't know what he's trying to do here.

This was by far the best shot lol, just had to bear with his nonsense.

Had to order room service again because no taxis came in or out of the villa so we didn't have any opportunity to buy supplies. There was a shuttle buggy from the villa going out to the town but only at 11am and 4pm everyday. Because we had a massage appointment at 5pm, we thought it would be silly to go out at 11am, back to the villa to relax, and then out again at 4pm, so we stayed in. (The buggy set off and pick up timings are really a burden) This was some kind of chicken with mushroom cream sauce, a single prawn and a potato patty. All three items tasted fine but were nothing special. Also kind of weird and cheap to serve a single prawn haha.

So we stayed in and slothed around the entire day.

Before finally getting ready to go out!

View from the ground floor, our place was the highest roof in sight.

Waiting for the buggy!

As you can vaguely see from this screenshot, we were in a very much rural part of town. Kind of strange to see a huge luxury villa in the midst of paddy fields and old buildings, I don't know if it's kind of sad really :S

Finally in the city! We were caught in a terrible jam.

The massage place had kindly arranged for a car to pick us up at the city centre because I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to find out way around.

Went to quickly get some supplies from the convenience store!

There were dogs EVERYWHERE. When we were in the buggy, I spotted a couple of puppies just tottering by themselves out there, my heart :')

Our massage parlour was near a huge field too.

Quite a nice open concept! We had a 1.5 hour massage and scrub.

Followed by a "relaxing bath with exotic flowers" with watermelon slices. It was quite lovely. We also did a rather subpar facial there which I have hilarious photographs of but will not post to save embarrassment. We also did a little bit of shopping for snacks at a huge supermarket near the massage place and then convinced a taxi driver to take us back allllllll the way to our villa. He actually got lost a couple of times and we had no idea if he was going to right way because all the roads and fields looked the same to us, more so in the dark. Thankfully, I had kept the villa's concierge number and after a quick phone call, he was back on the right track!

Went to redeem our complimentary "romantic dinner for two" which was so shitty I have no words. Here was my steak in mushroom sauce and potatoes. The steak was cooked medium rare but the meat itself was so tough and a torture to bite. The mushroom sauce was the exact same creamy one that was with my chicken in the afternoon and the taste did not complement the meat well at all. The potatoes were just.. boiled LOL. It was a total joke.

Sam's Indonesian option looked a lot better but he said it was so salty he had a hard time finishing it all. Maybe they overcompensated on the salt here since all our food from breakfast had no taste lol.

We had a beautiful jacuzzi in the toilet and a lovely rain shower at the back as well. There was also a tv in the toilet so we had a bubble bath! There weren't many good channels to enjoy while doing this but it was fun! The jacuzzi had different lights and it was adorable with the bubbles! After this we retired to bed again to lounge, watched movies on his Kindle and... ate snacks which were so welcomed after the shitty dinner.

Woke up bright and early (6am!!!) for breakfast and to enjoy the place one last time.

Slept on the cab ride all the way to the airport!

Such a short trip but I was so glad to be able to get away for a while with my qt <3

We arrived back in Singapore in the early afternoon and had some lunch at the airport. The trip was great but it felt so short lived that we briefly considered looking for cheap tickets to fly off again on the same day, but of course that didn't work out. We both went home separately to unpack and rest before meeting Kanika and Sharan in the evening!