Time to calm the nerves and look forward to Bali.

17.2.16
After our eventful drive with Nancy the rest of the journey was pretty normal.
Our 7.10 am flight to KL took just 45 minutes, then we had a Mc Muffin while waiting for our KL to Bali flight. Our bags went transit so nothing to do but relax and wait.

Have to say so far Air Asia have been excellent with no delays.
We like the pop music they play while waiting to take off and again on landing, all current chart stuff rather than the usual piped music on other planes!

Landed in Bali at 1.25 pm as promised, saw some beautiful little tropical islands and stunning scenery as we got close to landing.
Just 45 minutes later we were in the transfer car booked online with Suntransfer.

Our first impressions of Bali were how green and lush it is, and not a high rise block in sight.
The journey to Ubud where we’re staying took almost an hour and a half with plenty to look at.
As we got nearer Ubud there were so many places selling stone statues, literally thousands of Buddha’s, goddesses etc, all different stone colours and sizes.

Our driver was asking about our plans and we have his number in case we want him to take us for a 5 hour day for approx £25. He’s also willing to drive us to the other side of the island when we go to stay there. He starts from near the airport, so seems crazy but he says its no problem.

We arrived at Villa Mandi. It’s like a little tiny village of houses with a small pool and little statues in beautiful grounds.

Its a fair way from town and they offer 3 free transfers a day, 10 am, midday and 4 pm.
It was 3.50 pm so we dumped our cases and got the minibus to town with a young couple from Chile.
They’ve been here a few days and explained that they usually arrange a return journey time and pay 50000 rupiah ti get back ( £2.50) They said we will love Ubud and we’re feeling very excited although very tired.

The minibus dropped us in town. It does look fascinating, temples everywhere, not the brightly coloured ones like Malaysia, but more like the ones we’ve seen in Vietnam and Cambodia, natural stone and slate colours and hundreds of little shops, bars and restaurants.

We were starving and couldn’t get our heads around the currency,
19000 to £1, everything looked very expensive!
We found a little place where we had sweet and sour chicken, rice, prawn noodles and drinks for about the same price as we’ve been paying in Penang.

After a brief walk we decided to use one of the many men waving taxi signs, which were same price as the accommodation transfer, after a little bit of haggling.
We waited on the corner while the guy went to get his car, an old estate of some sort.
He dropped us back and gave us his number in case we want a whole day out with him anytime.

Where we’re staying is lovely, the pool and the grounds are really nice.

It was great to be able to unpack our cases, we’ve even got a little airer so we did some laundry and got the last of the Penang Pong Jetty out of our clothes and fell asleep by 9pm.

As I was dozing I had concerns that monkeys would come and steal our clothes but was way too tired to bring them inside.