DAY 4 20/12/2015

Today we woke up and went for our last breakfast at the Sofitel. Once again we were impressed with the great food and service. After this we went back to our room and packed everything. We called a porter who came very quickly and took all our bags to the concierge. We checked out at reception, and were now sad to leave the resort. Upon reflecting on our stay at the Sofitel Nusa Dua, we loved it, and would love to return.



Our driver met us out front and we began our drive up to the mountains, for our Barong dance. As we left on our tour early our driver made a stop to a Batik traditional weaving factory. We saw the step of weaving, to dying and cutting. It was impressive to see that all of the fabrics were hand made. With this excitement we went inside, but were quickly shocked at the high price. We looked around and ended up buying a few batik designed fans, which were reasonably priced.

At about 9:15am we arrived at our concert hall for the dance. This is a unique dance where the music comes from unique chimes that a group of men play. The music is really unique and suits the performance. This is a performance about a lion-like creature and the king of spirits. Its a story about good versus evil. It is about his battle with the evil queen Rangda. The show great and very unique and entertaining. Once again I recommend everyone see this show.

Once our concert was completed we made our way to Ubud to see the Monkey Forrest. We were lucky our driver took us to the back entry, that way we easily found parking close. Our driver went with us, and straight away we saw monkeys! There were old ones and even cute baby ones. We paid a few dollars to get some bananas so the monkeys could jump up on us. They quickly climbed up and were eating bananas on our heads! We then continued to walk through the forest and saw an impressive quick flowing river. The vistas that we saw were impressive, and we really enjoyed our time here. In the river there was a monkey who found a coconut, and he dived in the water to get it. This happened to cause a mini war over the coconut. We would've stayed but we had to go.

We then began our long driver to Kintamani, this is a large caldera formation with Mt Batur in the middle. This volcano hasn't erupted in some 15 years. Lucky on our day it was clear, and we had impressive vistas of the whole landscape. We were lucky to be eating our buffet lunch overlooking the mountain. We sat down and immediately noticed an extreme amount of flies. There was very little selection of food in the buffet, but they had freshly grilled pork skewers which made up for it. Their fresh fruit was good also.

As we finished lunch we began our journey to Ubud, with our first stop at the Unesco World Heritage listed Gunung Kawi. Our drivers warning of the amount of stairs to the temple ended up being right. After a while we finally made it to this very old temple carved into the rock face. It was interesting to learn that the temple was once lost under soil then was rediscovered. Our driver explained the Balinese Hindu religion the whole time, which was very informative.

Our next stop was the Goa Gajah or Elephant Cave. Which is where there is a temple built into the rock face. We learnt that this temple dates to very early times. We had learnt that each temple is very unique.

Our last stop was our new home, the Kayon Resort. We were met by porters and the front desk manager. We were shocked at how each of the porters carried our bags on their shoulders down stairs to our rooms. She took our photo at the resort sign before leading us to their restaurant for a welcome drink.
     

I'm not a very big mint fan so this plended mint drink wasn't really to our taste. We were then taken to our Kayon River Suite, where she explained the room and gave us our key and wifi password. My first comment was that this wasn't the same as the sofitel. It was a very different style of hotel, but it was comfortable.


         




For dinner we went to their restaurant, where I enjoyed their Pork Skewers in the midst of many mosquitos. I found the dessert to be not of good quality, especially when my Panna Cotta arrived half melted. But overall the quality of meals were very good. One comment I have make is the service, it is top notch, but it can tend to be intrusive, especially when circle your table like a pacing lion. We then retired to our room for the night.

DAY 3 19/12/2015

I have to stress again how well I slept, they have great mattresses and pillows. Our first stop was breakfast in the buffet at around 7:00am. I remember to take photos of what I had for breakfast. You are greeted by an attendant at the door, who takes you to a seat. Unfortunately theres only a very small section air-conditioned. They then take your coffee or tea order.
Daniel and I always git the cappuccino, which was always very good.

I got the continental and traditional breakfast 

Daniel got the asian breakfast

Freshly made Char Kway Teow

Dessert, Pain au Chcolate, Waffle, Pancake and Muffin

Fruit Salad

In our morning Daniel and I decided to go for a walk along the Nusa Dua foreshore. We were pretty much comparing the different resorts. All of which looked much older then the Sofitel. All of which looked much older than the Sofitel. This all made us happy with our decision to stay in the Sofitel. We also saw the impressive blow hole and a large monument. 

            

             

For lunch we decided to eat in the Zwee Chen, restaurant. Here they have european dishes along with traditional Balinese dishes. We thought it was a good idea to eat a good lunch before our tour that night. I chose the Balinese Pork Spare Rib which was in my terms, spectacularly good. Daniel ordered the Nasi Goreng which was average to him as in Sydney we know a good restaurant that had better. My mum got the fish and chips, which was great too. My dad got the Napolitano pasta, which was well cooked and tasty considering the chefs were Balinese. We thoroughly enjoyed the freshly cooked meal, but noticed no atmosphere as most of the dishes were going out in room service. We would have done the same but there were four of us and we wanted to eat together. We believed that the hotel wasn't at a high occupancy, that was the reason for this. We believe this was because it was wet season, which scares people off. 

At 3pm our guide arrived to pick us up, he was prompt and arrived 30 minutes early. Darsana (aka newman) was a great funny guide for our whole stay in Bali. Our first stop was the Uluwatu Temple. On the journey, our driver gave us a funny warning, he said that there were monkeys at this area that were "bad". I saw this as a joke, but he said they steal things from people and want you to give them food in exchange for them. So once we arrived we had to put on a sarong before we went down the walkway. We were immediately impressed with the view. There is a huge walkway on the cliffs of the peninsular, we went to the end of the walkway only to have a little surprise.

                 

As you can see there are monkeys on the edge of the walkway. We were scared and stayed well clear. But as these asians were taking photos, the monkey jumped on her and was trying to steal her hat! We died in laughter. One other person wasn't so lucky and had to give this monkey a candy bar. We realised these monkeys are very smart, but funny to look at. It was soo windy here, so photos were hard to take. We climbed up to the temple, and were just in awe at this 11th century temple. Visitors weren't allowed inside, so we looked from the edge. 

We finished seeing the temple area at about 5pm so we had one hour to wait till our traditional Kecak dance performance started. Our guide was nice enough to pick out great seats for us and waited with us till just before the performance started. The amphitheatre was perched right on the edge of the cliff, which was great for viewing the sunset. So the story goes like this a prince who's the heir and his wife and brother are expelled from the kingdom. Then the evil king and his prime minister try and steal the princes wife, they are successful. Then the prince and his brother along the monkeys go and recuse the princess. Whats amazing is how they sing, its all a group of men who chant an amazing song the whole time. The show finishes with a finale in fire when they try to burn the monkey king. Overall we loved the Kecak fire dance.

Our next stop was dinner on Jimbaran Bay. We arrived at this odd looking seafood store and were served our complimentary plate of grilled seafood. The lobster tasted really good, but the whole time we were scared about the healthiness of the food as their fish wasn't stored in ice. We then returned for an early night in the resort.