As these things go, the kids are a lot more excited about traveling than the parents are. Or at least, that’s true for Hannah who for the last week couldn’t stop talking about the upcoming trip to Bali, and Peter just repeats whatever he hears his elder sister says! The carrier we flew with out of Singapore to Bali was Scoot TR280. Putting aside that it’s a budget carrier, Scoot again had among the most favorable flight arrival timings that’d maximize our period of stay.
The outbound flight was uneventful: the plane was about 80% full, and both our rows across the aisle had empty window seats, which allowed the kids to peer out to soak in the sights while in the sky. The flight-time was about 2 hrs 25 minutes with minimal turbulence. Our first impressions of Bali airport was a ‘wow!’ – the international terminal at least looks nothing like what we remembered a decade ago. It was rustic back then. Today, it looks almost like a smaller version of Changi Airport, or at least in the arrivals section.
The initial plan was to pickup a couple of data SIM cards at Arrivals, but I gave up that idea after just one look at the prices they were asking: 300K IDR (about SGD30) for their cheapest plans. That’s way higher than street prices. Our driver was already waiting for us, so rather than explore the terminal to see if there were any other options, we hopped on for the long car-ride from the Ngurah Rai International Airport to our villa in Ubud – a journey of about 39.5km.
As luck would have it, our day of arrival was also the date for a fairly significant religious event in the province: which added an additional 30 minutes to the time it took to get to the villa. The frustration of our driver at the slow moving and almost immobile traffic showed: and he eventually got annoyed enough to essentially turn the vehicle around to find a different route to the villa.
By the time we arrived, our driver for the first four days – our old friend Dewa Marco – had already been waiting for quite a while at the villa. We dropped off the luggage quick, got a quick house orientation from Putu, our villa housekeeper – on account that she’d be heading out herself shortly – then we were off with Dewa Marco to look for grub at 1:15PM – about 45 minutes later than our initially planned start time.
There’s no shortage of eating places in Ubud of course, and we were pretty much OK with anything. So, the first foodie joint we checked out was Pundi-Pundi, a restaurant along a fairly busy stretch of road. Pricing was great – about SGD6-7 per person – and our items were prepared quickly enough. Bellies filled, we were finally ready to get to our first visits: Kemenuh Butterfly Park.
Continued in the next post!
Recent comments