The last post in our Bali 2018 travelogue! Right after we landed in Singapore last weekend, three of us – the kids and myself – all fell sick with largely similar ailments: coughing and runny nose – and in my case, also persistent nausea that lasted for most of the following week. On the overall and barring this last bit of us falling sick on our return home, the 9 day trip to Bali went exceedingly well, all things considered. Sure, we spent quite a lot more than originally planned – largely on account that I underestimated the cost of hiring drivers to bring us out of our villa every day, and also the several cultural immersion and crafting workshops we signed up for to populate two days of our itinerary. But this was one trip where we’d worked out a comprehensive plan of activities and succeeded in adhering to it throughout the trip, with no sudden surprises or things that we didn’t expect.
Like our other post-trip retrospection posts, this one’s divided into segments:
Length of Stay: The first reaction among most persons around us – as in Singaporeans – when we said we’ll be in Bali for 9 days was “Wow – why so long?” 9 days is indeed a fairly long period to spend on this island, and Ling also thought so when we reflected on the trip while in the car on our way to Bali airport for our flight home. I reckon most South-East Asians wouldn’t really find the neighboring cultures particularly fascinating anymore, since Singapore itself is already such a melting pot of races and cultures. H’s favorite quip when one of our drivers – we had six throughout the trip – asked what we thought about Bali was that there’s a Bali-Thai in Singapore! This length of stay, even to a neighboring island to Singapore, was in view that it’s hard for us to feel like when we’re on vacation trips of anything less than a week. I could only take a week of leave from work this June, so we pretty much maximized our stay by leaving on a Saturday morning and returning late on a Sunday – 9 days.
Center of operations: like the 2008 Bali trip, we decided early on to stay in Ubud and make that our ‘base’ of operations for the entire trip. Sure, that meant a lot of driving around. But we kept our visitations down south to just Day 2, where we tried to do everything that interested us in the more crowded and southern part of the island on that one day so that we didn’t have to go back again soon. Even though Bali is a much larger island than Singapore – 5,780 km2 vs 721.5 km2 – most tourists gravitate towards South Bali – which include Kuta, Sanur and Nusa Dua – with most only coming to Ubud as day-trips. Like the 2008 trip too, we never got round to exploring most of the Northern, East or Western ends of the island – something I reckon we’ll do in our next trip to Bali.
Ubud: the regency central is a lot more developed than it was ten years ago, and there are now long lines of restaurants, shops and the like in the central boulevard where the city palace is. Traffic in the evening and night reflects that accordingly too, and will slow through a crawl. Things get much better right outside the central, and the more rural areas remain largely untouched by the tourist hordes. Restaurants in the central area also price themselves quite varyingly: a plate of Nasi Goreng can cost IDR80K at one restaurant and just two doors down IDR25K for pretty much the same thing albeit at a slightly less swanky-looking restaurant. Still slightly cheaper than typical Singapore mid-priced restaurant eats: we typically paid about SGD7-SGD8 per person for fairly simple fare before the government tax and service charge inclusions. Interestingly, we saw different restaurants charge varying rates for that: anywhere between 16% to 21%, and some restaurants waived it off altogether.
Internet and Data SIM cards: I can’t speak for other villas in Bali, but high-speed Internet seemed to be a standard inclusion in the villas and places of stay we checked out during our itinerary preparation before the trip. To be sure, the ‘high’-speeds you get on the island won’t touch the 1-2 Gbps plans you get in Singapore, but for our villa at least anyway, Internet speed was reasonably quick for web-browsing and photo uploads to Flickr and such. For mobile data, there are data SIM card vendors on your left as soon as you clear the departures exit. But their prices were absurd: IDR300K for the cheapest 10GB plans – way more data than I needed, and too much to pay even if I did.
You can do much better at street prices. The central rows in Ubud were lined with dozens of mobile accessory shops that sold data SIM cards – sometimes as many as five shops in a 200 meter stretch, and if you’re afraid you’ll still be scammed at these places, the supermarkets sell the same thing too. I finally settled for two 6GB cards for IDR75K each in Ubud central. I think the cards’ prices were still slightly marked up as I bought it at a street-shop, but it’s still a lot cheaper than the completely rip-off prices at the airport. The pair of cards took just over a day to get activated though. The airport vendors might be able to do it quicker if you’re up to paying their prices – but do ask if you need to.
Balinese drivers and Grab: There is a bit of Tripadvisor discussion about the use of online driver and cab booking facilities in Bali, and especially Ubud. Candidly speaking, the fees to engage a local driver for short trips around Ubud is atrocious: we had to pay IDR80K/SGD8 each time just to get out of our villa to the central – a short 5 minute trip without traffic. Some travelers on Tripadvisor have noted that there are strong taxi cartels operating in Ubud who are bullying drivers into rejecting services like Grab, and then charge whatever they wish. Numerous restaurants and hotels also had signs forbidding Ubud drop-offs and pick-ups, though how the cartels will know that you’re being dropped off by a private driver from Grab is anyone’s guess.
On Day 7 evening, our normal driver wasn’t available, so we decided to find our own transportation back. The various taxi touts lining along
First try: driver accepted, confirmed through message exchanges that he’s on the way, then somehow magically picked us up while we were still waiting (we suspected he simply drove past us), then promptly confirmed completion and collected payment – while we were still waiting at the pick-up point. I immediately contacted Grab, and after a brief investigation, was refunded the payment a few days later. I also in-turn one-star this unscrupulous driver.
Second try: the same driver accepted, and promptly cancelled when he saw who had made the booking.
Third try: a different driver accepted, then also promptly cancelled barely a minute later.
By this point, I was getting really annoyed. Fortunately, the driver who was initially unavailable was able to get one of his friends to help out – so we got picked up and returned to our villa after that without further incident.
Temples and Tourist Traps: Bali is well-known for its many temples and religious monuments, but our itinerary was extremely light on such this time round. This was a combination of two considerations: our kids are too young to appreciate the importance of religion among the Balinese, we knew these places would be crowded and suspected that places like Tirta Empul, Tanah Lot and also Ulun Banu Bratan – beautiful as they are – would be a lot more touristy today than they were ten years ago. As Gusti, our driver on the last third of the stay mused, the tourist demographic has changed significantly: there are huge swathes of tourists from China today with significant spending power. Thankfully, most of these hordes stayed clear away from Ubud. We saw numerous small groups here and there, but most of the visitor foot traffic I observed in Ubud were Westerners who were less obsessed with vanity posing for their Instagram accounts as Asians routinely are, as Dewa Marco quipped. Still, we had to grit our teeth for the couple of very crowded temples we had to stop by: invariably only because we were in the vicinity and also had nothing else better to do: and went in and got out as quickly as we could each time.
Currency Movement: Vacations also tend to be more expensive over-time because of inevitable inflation and ever-increasing costs of living. By and large on account too that many more places in Bali charge admission fees today than in 2008, I reckoned we paid much more admission and transfer fees wise this Bali trip than the last one. For example, an airport transfer to Ubud cost IDR200K in 2008 compared to IDR400K today. What helped significantly was that the exchange rate is also a lot more favorable for SGD against IDR today. I don’t have detailed records of our itinerary and expenditure from our vacations ten years ago – I only started keeping those meticulous vacation spreadsheets from five years ago. However, I do know our daily driver’s fees: Dewa Marco charged IDR450K in 2008 compared to IDR550K in 2018: but because of exchange rates, it’s also SGD68 then compared to SGD53 today.
Workshops and Immersions: one mission we had for the kids this trip was that we didn’t want them to just consume scenery, food, and the usual children playgrounds this trip. So, we lined up a number of age-appropriate workshops and immersion programmes for H and P to take part in. Of the four we included in to the itinerary, the Paint-A-Pot was marvelous fun for the kids in a safe, quiet environment – and the ceramic pieces will look a lot better after the burnt-in process at the factory – as was also the Balinese cooking class, as our host went out of her way to make sure that everyone was engaged in the process. The Taro Village trip was informative especially for Ling, but I reckon the kids’ main takeaway were the two extremely cute dogs the family had haha.
Our expenses outlay was, ballpark, like this:
Flight (Scoot): SGD1,588
Accommodation @ Ananditha Villa: SGD1,188
Pre-Trip Booking: Bali Quad Adventure: SGD436
Pre-Trip Booking: Breakfast with Orang Utans @ Bali Zoo: SGD205
Pre-Trip Booking: Waterbom Bali: SGD141
Four workshops/Cultural Immersions: SGD557
Dining: IDR4.4million/SGD427
Admissions: IDR2.6million/SGD255
Transportation: IDR3.1million/SGD298
We spent quite a bit than originally intended, and could saved quite a bit if we’d camped for better air fares, dropped the silver artesan workshop and also the Bali Zoo breakfast.
That’s a wrap for our Bali 2018 trip. My next trip will be in a few months time, to Hong Kong but it’ll be a work trip. And we’re still deciding where to do for our December vacation, but we’re strongly leaning towards Taiwan. More to write about soon!
Recent comments