This was our introduction to Bali at midnight on September 9 this year.  We had had a flight delay in Brisbane because of damage to our plane and consequently we were an hour late leaving while Virgin seconded one of their domestic planes and towed it from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.  There is no in flight entertainment on domestic planes however Brenton and I had our laptops in our hand luggage and both had movies on them.  yaaaay!  I must say that Virgin were fantastic in that they sent someone from management who came around to groups of people in the terminal who were waiting and explained exactly what was going on.

Then we arrived in Kuta.  OMG was this a cultural shock to the system.  I had booked the hotel myself through Wotif.com because Flight Centre were unable to get this particular hotel through their wholesaler.  I had booked a Superior room but when we arrived, there was no Superior room available and we were put into a family room that according to management there was a much better room.  When we walked in the door it was a two room suite and it looked clean and respectable.  I didn't look in the bathroom until after the porter had left.  When I did I was really shocked at how dilapidated and filthy it was.  I swore on the spot that I was NOT getting into that shower over bath whilst I was still breathing  lol.  Considering that it was about 1am at this stage I was not in the frame of mind to march downstairs (2 floors) and ask to be moved.  We were buggered.


We just had a quick wash and went to bed.  At 3am I was woken by blood curdling screams and yelling and people running around.  I'm not one to panic so I got out of bed and snuck a look through the curtains.  In the courtyard below were half a dozen people laughing, drinking, screaming and chasing each other around the gardens.  I was tired and cranky by this point and not being one to walk away I went out onto our balcony and yelled down at them and asked them to consider other people.  I could have saved my breath for what it was worth.  They yelled and carried on and stomped up and down the stair for another hour.

The next day I complained to reception about the noise and apparently I wasn't the only one and the people concerned were spoken to.  I later found out that the troublemakers were Javanese rowdies who were in Bali for Ramadan or something (I didn't quite get what ceremony it was).  This carry on and noise went on the entire time we were there (5 nights) but fortunately we were moved the next day into the room that we had booked.  Let me tell you, I'd said enough about the bathroom of the first room so that they must have scrubbed the next one to within an inch of the grout lol.  Here is a picture from the balcony of the right room.

This was a lovely pool.  The roof on the right is that of the swim up bar and the roof on the left is the open air restaurant leading to the reception desk.  The only small complaint that I had of our correct room was that it backed onto a very busy and noisy street.  We soon got used to a continuous buzz of the millions of motor scooters that went past 24/7.