Inflight fun!
But what followed was a never-ending wait at the immigration check point at Ngurah Rai international airport. 40 painful minutes and many oh yeah jokes and some 3-4 hat exchanges later, we were finally out. Not of the airport, only the immigration queue.
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| Akshay's holiday hat, our version of Bagwati |
The deal was now to wait for Latika, our flight was 20 mins late, so we thought we wouldn't have to wait for Latika for too long. Only to realise that Latika's flight was 40 mins late as well, so we ended up camping at the airport after collecting our baggage. Now 40 mins is not too long a time. Except that the flight has to land, and then Latika will need to go through immigration which is another 40 mins to an hour! So we ended up waiting leaving the airport only at 9 PM and our flight had landed at 6:20. Just imagine. First, we collected our baggage, then some of us went collecting pamphlets and coupons to use in Bali, then we removed left over packed salad and chips and then we were out of things to do and started photographing our so-called adventure at Ngurah Rai. Please see below :
(Our dharna at the Bali airport. A few more minutes and the cops would have questioned us for sure, because we literally looked like we are going to spend the night there)
After endless discussions about what to do and whether or not to go for the water sports or do the rice fields whole day biking tour etc etc, I got up to stretch. Only to be mocked at as "Sri Sri Nayana whatever" and they made me demonstrate a few poses, the interesting one being sitting crossed legged and lifting your body up and balancing your weight on your hands while swinging yourself back and forth. If I had stayed there for a little longer, they were planning on placing Akshay's hat upside down to collect coins from passersby by telling them that some major gyaani baba had descended from the himalayas. I'm sure we would have collected some spare change. But thankfully, we averted the disaster when Latika announced her arrival on the phone! We could now spot her in the immigration queue. When she neared, all of us stood in a line and did a slow-clap in her honour, until she hid her face !
And finally after what seemed like days we finally left the airport. We had called our manager at the villa to confirm the cars that had come to pick us up. And slowly the excitement was creeping back in, as we made our way towards the exit. The villa selection process was tedious because everything looked beautiful, but we finally settled on Renny's Villa Bima. I had forgotten that the villa has a pool, when Stuti mentioned it to me in the immigration queue, I wanted to jump! Widi, our villa manager was a sweetheart and like all Balinese people, away willing to help and always smiling. We exchanged some money at the airport and were all set to go! When we arrived at the villa in Seminyak after a 20 min ride, we were greeted by Widi at the front door. When he led us to the villa, I ran up and down and marveled at how beautiful it was. I had to control myself to not jump into the pool at the second! The second car arrived behind us and we were all
equally excited. A few Dos and Dont's by Widi and the villa was ours.
Our villa Bima!
A part of us wanted to spend all our time in the villa and the pool!
After running up and down the stairs and falling a couple of times, we decided to head out for dinner. We all very tired and very hungry, so didn't bother taking a shower or changing, just literally put our bags down and head out and sat the first place we saw: Soho's. Has to be one of the best decisions we've made food wise ! Their pork ribs were out of this world! A couple of drinks and loads of food onwards, we waited for the bill. And it was in lakhs. Of Indonesian rupiah, thankfully!
Aaahh our untanned relatively fair faces ! Who knew what we were getting into!
Someone must have cracked some useless joke for us to make these weird faces. I have a feeling it was 'Haseen dard'.
Hungry and eager to head out on Sunday night!
Has to be one of the best ribs I've had in Bali!
Not to miss Uttesh's extremely dainty drink, that he downed!
So yes, we ate worth 14 lakhs that night. Almost mastercard-ad type Priceless feeling we got.
All that food later, we were eager to rush back home and jump straight into the pool! And we did. Except that the pool was filled with water to the brim and i and many others, had to literally stand on their toes to keep our heads out of the water. We played a little ball and swam (just a bit), basically just lazed around in the pool. Akshay coined a new word for it : ladding. He used it in a sentence : 'we are ladding around like buffaloes'. Whatever that means. But word it is. Oh yeah! When it got too cold to laad (ladd?) in the water anymore, we got out and got ourselves a drink, started with Baileys shots. And now, the Prem Agan references were getting too much for Himakshi and Agam to bear, they hadn't watched the video. So how could we not introduce them to it. Spread the joy, they say. We were only doing that. So yea, we were quite mad. After the review, we decided to watch the movie itself. And 30 mins into it we were shocked! The movie was indeed pretty dumb. Everything that the reviewers had spoken about was covered in the first 30 mins, looks like even they couldn't go beyond that. Fortunately for our sanity, the laptop died and we were spared the horror.
Prem Agan, under the moonlit sky.
Eventually one by one, we all went and crashed. Or me, Simran, Himakshi and Agam did. The others hung around for sometime more. I had promised myself to wake up at 8 for yoga and was to wake up Agam for his run. Thankfully i did, and didnt snooze the alarm. But I didn't have the heart to knock on Agam's door so early in the morning But guess who was already up : Uttesh! Poor thing, he had to share a washroom with us on the first floor, and he couldn't figure out how the bathroom locked, so he had a very disturbed 30 mins in the shower. Akshay told us later that he sang at the top of his voice to let the girls (latika, simran and me) know that he is in lest we enter by mistake!
The couples ( Himakshi-Agam and Akshay-Stuti) had the two bedrooms downstairs and us poor single souls were upstairs. Uttesh got the 'kids room', while we got the other bigger room. I finished my practice, Agam woke up and went for a run. Akshay and Uttesh were up, Stuti woke up and we all had chai. Himakshi, Simran and Latika woke up, eventually. And we all started getting ready for breakfast. The plan was to head out to Seminyak beach and then check out Kuta beach. Everyone got ready and decided to head to Earth Cafe for breakfast.
Chai and the never ending wait for Latika to get ready ;)
Except that, it didn't turn out to be what everyone else expected, haha. Basically it was really healthy food and drinks. They had the worlds most amazing Banana milk shake, with cashew milk. omg. I can still taste it! Frankly, most of the other dishes turned out to be pretty decent, expect for Simran's. From the picture below, it does indeed look like she hasn't had a happier breakfast! In her own words : the high point of her trip was this breakfast. If I hadn't learnt to detect sarcasm from Akshay, I would've believed it also.
Simran and her garden salad. With a glass of orange, mango, pineapple juice. And a hidden bottle of Bintang beer. This picture is especially taken for Simran's mom.
Just look at the beauty that this menu is. I would've ordered only drinks. all drinks. All healthy drinks.
When we couldn't take the health in the place anymore, we all stepped out to go rent scooters. A few negotiations and we secured ourselves 4 scootys. We did a little bit of bikini shopping and then head out with our bodies smothered with sunscreen to Seminyak beach. Oh no, I forgot, Akshay believes in the Neanderthal age : where man (and woman) stepped out in the sun without any protection ( i mean in the form of sunscreen) and so is allergic (in his head) to all kinds of creams and lotions. Thankfully for him, he is blessed with skin that glows in the sun. Not.
The riding pairs were : Simran-Me, Uttesh- Latika, Himakshi-Agam, Stuti-Akshay. Oh what joy it was to ride in those scooters! We finally made it through Jalan Raya Seminyak to the beach and played random ball games : from monkey in the middle to regular football. Simran and her healthy breakfast seemed to have kicked in, because she was the best monkey in the game! For sure! Then everyone wanted to head into the water. Himalshi couldn't join us in the ocean because of an injured toe. And looking back, I think that was a very wise decision. The number of times i have twisted my foot and scratched my body and fallen down, it would've been painful to go into the water with a broken toe! So I sat with himakshi for a while guarding our bags while everyone else took a dip and we drank wine straight from the bottle. Agam joined us after a while and we shifted places and spread a mat in the middle of the beach. Everyone came out of the water and nursed their initial injuries, before heading back in. I eventually went into the ocean. The minute i stepped in, a wave came and slapped my in my face and I was flat, under water for about 30 seconds before I could find my feet and the balance to stand! Only to be knocked out in the next 2 minutes. A few falls like that and I got used to the waves. The boys had rented out a board for bodyboarding and it was a lot of fun. A little tricky to master and I don't I got it right in the few times that I tried it, but it was fun nonetheless. The only non-fun part was the amount of sand inside my swimsuit by the end of it. I must have been 3-4 kgs heavier. no kidding. There was sand all over. The coarse, pricking everywhere sand! Not fun. At all. We chilled around and got slapped by a hundred more waves, before finally stepping out and walking. The tides were rough on Monday and surfers weren't allowed to go out into the ocean, because it was so rough! Not like I know how to surf anyways, but the boys wanted to.
After drying ourselves for a bit, we decided to go check out Kuta beach after getting food someplace in Seminyak! We stopped at a Greek restaurant : Mykonos and ate like we hadnt seen food for two days. Considering we had had such healthy food in Earth Cafe, everyone wanted to go all out and get some vacation type food on the table. The food was awesome. Really really good ! We had our fill of tzatziki and lamb chops and pita bread and were ready to collapse in our chairs.
We stuffed our faces at Mykonos and then couldn't get up from the table. And also semi-decided that our next vacation will be in Greece.
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And finally the sunset.
We decided to ride back to the villa and change and freshen up and then drive back to Kuta for the party scene. Supposedly Kuta comes alive at night and is known as Bali's party destination. Himakshi and Agam left to do some shopping and the rest of us head home. Simran desperately wanted a up of good coffee so we stopped enroute at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for a quick take away and rode! Latika was my rider now. I sent a silent prayer up :) Just kidding. I had immense confidence in her after seeing her ride her scooty in the 10th standard, so I knew I was in safe hands. After reaching the villa, we jumped into the pool and laaded. Simran floated, I tried to float, Latika swam, the boys did their own things and Stutu accompanied in the laading. We decided against going to Kuta, for several reasons : we were tired, and it was quite a ride, plus if we drank we couldn't ride back. So we decided to get ready and go to some lively place in seminyak itself. The boys did some trick to makes waves in the swimming pool and nodded appreciatively at their invention. And we started getting out to go get ready for dinner. Except that there was no water in the bathrooms. There was a problem with the water pump.We called widi and he rushed, but the repair would take time, we managed to freshen up with the little water there was and dressed up to go to potato head!
The windows at potato head.
Ze buoys!
We discovered our very own Bruno Mars at Zappaz!
What a good decision to head back to Zappaz. The music was a lot livelier, the crowd was nicer, the band was awesome and the drinks were really good. A little food and loads of gin and tonics, whiskey and LITs later, we were dancing all over the place. The lead singer for the band seemed to like group (cough cough Simran) and we were puled onto the stage a couple of times. Akshay and I had plans to go sing a song for the crowd but after we saw how absolutely awesome the band was, i didn't raise the subject again! We danced to Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Happy! The boys did a little bit of Bhangra and we swirled and swirled and swirled ! After a good good night, we head back home and chilled in the common room for a bit with baileys and whiskey and called it a night, we had a loooooong day ahead of us and Latu had had one too many LITs ! Sneaky little thing these LITs ;)
Oh the water was still not back. Widi tried repairing the pump but didn't find the right spare part and promised to be back at 6 AM the next morning to fix it! And so with the promise of water and another glorious day we drifted into sleep. What a lovely vacation this was turning out to be !
After endless discussions about what to do and whether or not to go for the water sports or do the rice fields whole day biking tour etc etc, I got up to stretch. Only to be mocked at as "Sri Sri Nayana whatever" and they made me demonstrate a few poses, the interesting one being sitting crossed legged and lifting your body up and balancing your weight on your hands while swinging yourself back and forth. If I had stayed there for a little longer, they were planning on placing Akshay's hat upside down to collect coins from passersby by telling them that some major gyaani baba had descended from the himalayas. I'm sure we would have collected some spare change. But thankfully, we averted the disaster when Latika announced her arrival on the phone! We could now spot her in the immigration queue. When she neared, all of us stood in a line and did a slow-clap in her honour, until she hid her face !
And finally after what seemed like days we finally left the airport. We had called our manager at the villa to confirm the cars that had come to pick us up. And slowly the excitement was creeping back in, as we made our way towards the exit. The villa selection process was tedious because everything looked beautiful, but we finally settled on Renny's Villa Bima. I had forgotten that the villa has a pool, when Stuti mentioned it to me in the immigration queue, I wanted to jump! Widi, our villa manager was a sweetheart and like all Balinese people, away willing to help and always smiling. We exchanged some money at the airport and were all set to go! When we arrived at the villa in Seminyak after a 20 min ride, we were greeted by Widi at the front door. When he led us to the villa, I ran up and down and marveled at how beautiful it was. I had to control myself to not jump into the pool at the second! The second car arrived behind us and we were all
equally excited. A few Dos and Dont's by Widi and the villa was ours.
Our villa Bima!
How does one get over this view!
Akshay modelling his sexy legs.
After running up and down the stairs and falling a couple of times, we decided to head out for dinner. We all very tired and very hungry, so didn't bother taking a shower or changing, just literally put our bags down and head out and sat the first place we saw: Soho's. Has to be one of the best decisions we've made food wise ! Their pork ribs were out of this world! A couple of drinks and loads of food onwards, we waited for the bill. And it was in lakhs. Of Indonesian rupiah, thankfully!
Aaahh our untanned relatively fair faces ! Who knew what we were getting into!
Has to be one of the best ribs I've had in Bali!
Not to miss Uttesh's extremely dainty drink, that he downed!
So yes, we ate worth 14 lakhs that night. Almost mastercard-ad type Priceless feeling we got.
All that food later, we were eager to rush back home and jump straight into the pool! And we did. Except that the pool was filled with water to the brim and i and many others, had to literally stand on their toes to keep our heads out of the water. We played a little ball and swam (just a bit), basically just lazed around in the pool. Akshay coined a new word for it : ladding. He used it in a sentence : 'we are ladding around like buffaloes'. Whatever that means. But word it is. Oh yeah! When it got too cold to laad (ladd?) in the water anymore, we got out and got ourselves a drink, started with Baileys shots. And now, the Prem Agan references were getting too much for Himakshi and Agam to bear, they hadn't watched the video. So how could we not introduce them to it. Spread the joy, they say. We were only doing that. So yea, we were quite mad. After the review, we decided to watch the movie itself. And 30 mins into it we were shocked! The movie was indeed pretty dumb. Everything that the reviewers had spoken about was covered in the first 30 mins, looks like even they couldn't go beyond that. Fortunately for our sanity, the laptop died and we were spared the horror.
Prem Agan, under the moonlit sky.
Eventually one by one, we all went and crashed. Or me, Simran, Himakshi and Agam did. The others hung around for sometime more. I had promised myself to wake up at 8 for yoga and was to wake up Agam for his run. Thankfully i did, and didnt snooze the alarm. But I didn't have the heart to knock on Agam's door so early in the morning But guess who was already up : Uttesh! Poor thing, he had to share a washroom with us on the first floor, and he couldn't figure out how the bathroom locked, so he had a very disturbed 30 mins in the shower. Akshay told us later that he sang at the top of his voice to let the girls (latika, simran and me) know that he is in lest we enter by mistake!
Me doing yoga in one corner. it was so nice and quiet in the mornings! I was all ready for the day!
Chai and the never ending wait for Latika to get ready ;)
Except that, it didn't turn out to be what everyone else expected, haha. Basically it was really healthy food and drinks. They had the worlds most amazing Banana milk shake, with cashew milk. omg. I can still taste it! Frankly, most of the other dishes turned out to be pretty decent, expect for Simran's. From the picture below, it does indeed look like she hasn't had a happier breakfast! In her own words : the high point of her trip was this breakfast. If I hadn't learnt to detect sarcasm from Akshay, I would've believed it also.
When we couldn't take the health in the place anymore, we all stepped out to go rent scooters. A few negotiations and we secured ourselves 4 scootys. We did a little bit of bikini shopping and then head out with our bodies smothered with sunscreen to Seminyak beach. Oh no, I forgot, Akshay believes in the Neanderthal age : where man (and woman) stepped out in the sun without any protection ( i mean in the form of sunscreen) and so is allergic (in his head) to all kinds of creams and lotions. Thankfully for him, he is blessed with skin that glows in the sun. Not.
The riding pairs were : Simran-Me, Uttesh- Latika, Himakshi-Agam, Stuti-Akshay. Oh what joy it was to ride in those scooters! We finally made it through Jalan Raya Seminyak to the beach and played random ball games : from monkey in the middle to regular football. Simran and her healthy breakfast seemed to have kicked in, because she was the best monkey in the game! For sure! Then everyone wanted to head into the water. Himalshi couldn't join us in the ocean because of an injured toe. And looking back, I think that was a very wise decision. The number of times i have twisted my foot and scratched my body and fallen down, it would've been painful to go into the water with a broken toe! So I sat with himakshi for a while guarding our bags while everyone else took a dip and we drank wine straight from the bottle. Agam joined us after a while and we shifted places and spread a mat in the middle of the beach. Everyone came out of the water and nursed their initial injuries, before heading back in. I eventually went into the ocean. The minute i stepped in, a wave came and slapped my in my face and I was flat, under water for about 30 seconds before I could find my feet and the balance to stand! Only to be knocked out in the next 2 minutes. A few falls like that and I got used to the waves. The boys had rented out a board for bodyboarding and it was a lot of fun. A little tricky to master and I don't I got it right in the few times that I tried it, but it was fun nonetheless. The only non-fun part was the amount of sand inside my swimsuit by the end of it. I must have been 3-4 kgs heavier. no kidding. There was sand all over. The coarse, pricking everywhere sand! Not fun. At all. We chilled around and got slapped by a hundred more waves, before finally stepping out and walking. The tides were rough on Monday and surfers weren't allowed to go out into the ocean, because it was so rough! Not like I know how to surf anyways, but the boys wanted to.
After drying ourselves for a bit, we decided to go check out Kuta beach after getting food someplace in Seminyak! We stopped at a Greek restaurant : Mykonos and ate like we hadnt seen food for two days. Considering we had had such healthy food in Earth Cafe, everyone wanted to go all out and get some vacation type food on the table. The food was awesome. Really really good ! We had our fill of tzatziki and lamb chops and pita bread and were ready to collapse in our chairs.
We stuffed our faces at Mykonos and then couldn't get up from the table. And also semi-decided that our next vacation will be in Greece.
We got on our scooters and were ready to drive to Kuta beach. A 5KM ride felt way longer in the maddening traffic. We crossed so many pretty little boutiques, but couldn't stop! When we reached the beach, the parking guys tells us that we will soon be fined if the pillion rider doesn't wear a helmet. And here we were merrily riding on our scootys. They were called Scoopy's actually! And they had a weird lock, that needed opening using the back of the keys. Only once that lock was open could you insert the key to start the engine. Very twisted and I don't see the point of it. It caused us a lot of trouble later, but for now Himakshi was our saviour and would help Simran and me out with our lock! Kuta beach was a lot nicer than Seminyak. For starters there wasn't as much sand, the waves were still as strong though! Agam joined a couple of boys for a game of beach tennis and Simran and Latika indulged in a bit of sand fight. Very sophisticated. And then there was also a vendor selling us "Ass cream" ......aka....ice cream. The rest of us spread out Uttesh's bedsheet/beachmat and my yoga mat and lay down on the beach and did silly things like this:
Yes, too much Greek food and exposure to sun makes you go gaga after a while.
We wanted to catch the sunset at Kuta beach. Latika, Stuti and me went into the water one last time and Akshay even took some nice pics of ours, that I don't have and will update the blog as soon as I do.
My Rider!
We set out to potato head on Widi's recommendation. And when we reached there, we realised we weren't looking for a fancy place and wanted something more rustic than a chic lounge feel. But since we had driven all teh way (well note really it was 1.2 KM) to Potato Head, we figured we'd might as well check it out. And we are glad we did. Got some funky window pictures below :) The place turned out to be a beach-side lounge, but too propah for out tastes that night. So we decided to drive back to a couple of live music places that we had crossed on our way to potato head.
Expect that when Simran tried unlocking her sccopy, the key wasn't fitting inside. Everyone in the group and the guards at potato head tried their hand at it. And when even our subject expert Himakshi couldn't solve it, we decided to leave the scooty there and have the shop guys collect it the next day. Simran and I waited at the potato head entrance while the other dropped the girls at Zappaz, this awesome awesome bar and came back for us.
What a good decision to head back to Zappaz. The music was a lot livelier, the crowd was nicer, the band was awesome and the drinks were really good. A little food and loads of gin and tonics, whiskey and LITs later, we were dancing all over the place. The lead singer for the band seemed to like group (cough cough Simran) and we were puled onto the stage a couple of times. Akshay and I had plans to go sing a song for the crowd but after we saw how absolutely awesome the band was, i didn't raise the subject again! We danced to Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Happy! The boys did a little bit of Bhangra and we swirled and swirled and swirled ! After a good good night, we head back home and chilled in the common room for a bit with baileys and whiskey and called it a night, we had a loooooong day ahead of us and Latu had had one too many LITs ! Sneaky little thing these LITs ;)
Oh the water was still not back. Widi tried repairing the pump but didn't find the right spare part and promised to be back at 6 AM the next morning to fix it! And so with the promise of water and another glorious day we drifted into sleep. What a lovely vacation this was turning out to be !
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