Bali trip ( 8th-10th Dec 2007)

Before i begin on my short description of the Bali trip, i would like to announce that....

I have finally graduated! However, my results will only be out on the 27th of December and i am crossing my fingers=D

Thank God that i was promoted and my salary was adjusted twice.This year indeed is a blessed year with me graduating as a master student also.

Enough of the above deviation, i shall now get back to the aim of today's blog entry which is about the bali trip.
It all started well, at least i thought until i heard an annoucement that mentioned the GARUDA flight that i were about to board was CANCELLED. Oh my gosh...
To cut the story short, we managed to get business class seats BUT we could only reach Bali at 12 am.( which means we were only left with the 9th and 10th of Dec to tour around).This is the first time i get to have a taste of business class for free!

Upon reaching Bali, the first thought that came to me was phew, we are finally here!
Yes,Bali, here i come. The first wrong thing that we did was queuing in the wrong lane at the immigration( wasted 20 mins).

After passing through all the formalities, the person who was supposed to bring us to the hotel was MISSING!!Okies, we could not find our names on all the boards that were held high up.Furthermore, it was late at night - 11pm.
We got hold of the person after making some calls and finally reached the hotel.
It was indeed a nice hotel - with villa style. It was really nice and refreshing!

9th Dec
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We woke up early, had our breakfast and waited for our private tour guide to bring us to the 3 popular destinations in Bali.

Mas - handicrafs, silver jewelleries- bought bag and earrings =D
Ubud - old king palace( which i specially requested!) There was a cremation preparation on going at a community centre nearby.
Kintamani - volcanoes plus lots of local ppl surrounding us, heaping us with lots of souvenirs.( i nearly fainted- literally)
We also had our lunch there which costed about 60K rupiah per person( buffet style but not very nice food). After the lunch, we were again bombarded by hoards of locals trying to sell their handicrafts!
We managed to stop by a local handicraft village and shop!We bought quite a number of stuff there and there were even discounts offered to us!
Tanah Lot- buddha temple, ular suci and very nice seawaves plus sunset viewing which we did not get to do so.I managed to get a pack of postcards there.

After the tour above, we went to hard rock cafe for dinner and walk around the kuta city. We managed to hunt down a nice place for massage and places to do shopping the next day.
I got a HRC blouse from my partner=D Thanks!

10th of Dec
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Last day in Bali- We got up and strolled along the beach.Bali has really nice beaches with fine sand BUT the sight of dead fishes on the beach sent chills down my spinal cord.
Along the beach,i was bombarded by ladies asking me to do manicure , pedicure and braiding which i had to refuse as i do not do any of those=)

You all must be wondering why there was no mention of water sports as i was unable to do any of those...abit wasted.

We went for an hour of foot and full back massage for only 10 dollars per person.It was really worth it!
After that we checked out of the hotel and started our shopping spree.
My bargaining skills have improved tremendously after this trip!

We managed to drink and relax along the beach while sipping coconut drink which we had some hard time hunting for it.
It was REALLY HOT during the 3 days of our trip. I was sunburnt after walking under the sun for 1 hours plus only!

After all the shopping, we went back to the hotel to bathe before going to the airport to bade goodbye to Bali.

We were expecting things to end well but looks like this trip has taken alot of surprises on us.At the airport,each of us had to foot 150k rupiah for passenger service in cash! Luckily i still had 300k rupiah by my side.In the end, we had no money for dinner and had to visit the money exchanger counter.

Luckily this time, the flight was NOT cancelled and everything ended well with me still safe and sound here, typing this blog entry.

That's all for this year's blog. I shall be back with my more entries after my trip to cambodia and vietnam end of the year.

Wishing everyone a happy Xmas and new year!