Our First Time In Bali – Ubud
- Kelly McKenna
- Aug 20, 2017
- 2 min read
A bit of a spoiler on this one – neither of us did get rabies, malaria or dengue fever, but we did have a wonderful time. Bali is truly stunning.
I’m not sure where the idea of visiting Bali originally came from, but it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made and we felt very pampered which lined us up nicely for the next step on our adventure – less luxurious month living in a van. We visited during Bali’s “wet” season and after a few initial huffs and puffs from Sir Grumpalot who thought we wouldn’t be able to do anything, we would both absolutely recommend it to anyone.
After what felt like decades of research online, we finally decided on this itinerary:
5 nights in Ubud (First 3 nights in a hotel to gently break us in and then 2 nights in our own beautiful private villa)
3 nights in Sanur
3 nights on Gili Air
2 nights in Canggu
Looking back it was a fairly intense shuffle around the island and I’m not sure we would have done as much moving around if we were to do it again, but we have no regrets. For some Aussies, especially those in Western Australia, Bali is seen as the Southern Hemispheres answer to Magaluf. It’s loud, lairy and attracts a lot of “schoolies” (teens who are celebrating graduation from high school). Bali gains this reputation predominantly from the town of Kuta, so we decided to stay as far away from Kuta as we could…
Ubud
After landing at Denpasar Airport, our first stop was The Alena Resort in Ubud which was about an hours drive (terrifying) once we finally located our driver. We arrived to about 100 men all waving hotel signs and after wondering through arrivals completely baffled for about ten minutes, we resorted to putting a tannoy out for him (I’m happy to report we weren’t the only stranded tourists doing this, they actually have pretty much a dedicated desk for it.)
Ubud is an amazing area of Bali and extremely peaceful and quiet. The Alena Resort was absolutely outstanding and expensive for Bali, but exceptionally well priced by Western standards. We stayed there for 3 nights and from the moment we arrived nothing was too much trouble. You would expect that level of service from a top resort, of course, but we received a beautiful welcome everywhere we went. Balinese people are very hospitable.
After an evening relaxing and a lazy morning, we set out to explore the town and it was here that our first disaster struck… the pavement in the town is very basic and we arrived just as the heavens opened (of course with no rain jackets, because we are honestly hopeless at travelling). Poor Rich lost his footing and fell straight onto his back winding himself. He has only recently recovered from the trauma, six months later. At the time, after some friendly locals helped him up, we headed into the nearest pub and had a Bintang beer each before heading on with the adventure. It seemed to help.
Other highlights of our time at The Alena included the beautiful Monkey Forest, which I was extremely apprehensive about visiting, our Balinese cultural night and our morning “walk” through the rice fields, but I shall talk about them in another post.
After three wonderful nights, it was time to head on to our next adventure. We were collected by the owner of our next accommodation and driven (still terrifying) to the Ubud Paradise Villa. The villa was sensational, with its own private pool and a semi-open bathroom, which was definitely a new experience for us, especially sharing the space with tonnes of cute geckos – Rich decided to name them all ‘Gary’.
On our final day in Ubud, our host took us on a guided tour for about 3 hours before the afternoon rains came in. We went to two beautiful temples and a sensational waterfall. We joked about how we’d “found ourselves” on our “gap yah”, but there is something so serene about Ubud that it was actually partially true…
I was intending on just writing a small post about Bali, but I’ve yapped on plenty already and we’ve only just finished in Ubud so I will write some other shorter posts about the other locations at a later date.
Comments