Career Break Central

Feb 6-10

On our last morning in Amed, I went for a couple of dives on the USAT Liberty, an American ship that had been sunk in WWII, and it turned out to be the best diving of the trip thus far. I had my own divemaster, Yoman, a local who knew the waters well. The ship had turned into a coral reef and the colourful hard and soft corals and the multitudes of tropical fish were breathtaking. On my second dive, we were able to swim right inside the hull of the ship, which was a little bit eerie but very interesting. After my dives, we continued around the coast to Padangbai, a tiny village on the south coast which is gaining popularity for its secluded white sand beaches.
At dinner that night, Claude had a hankering for a Bloody Mary and asked the waitress if they had tomato juice. After conferring with her supervisor, she proclaimed that they did. Claude then asked if they could mix a shot of vodka with a glass of tomato juice and ice for him. She wrinkled her nose in distaste and, once again, went to get her supervisor who came over to our table and smilingly informed us that, of course they could prepare his drink for him – and would he like sugar in it? He smiled back, said he would prefer it without sugar and she bustled off to make his drink. A few minutes later our waitress returned triumphantly with Claude’s drink, a Bloody Mary shake, complete with fresh tomatoes blended with ice in a blender and a strawberry garnish. I burst out laughing as Claude took a tentative sip and screwed up his face and ordered a beer. The supervisor came running over, wanting to know what was wrong with the drink and Claude said, “Nothing, you followed my directions perfectly – we just don’t usually make it in a blender at home.” That was the last time he ordered a Bloody Mary when it wasn’t on the menu.

We spent our first night there at Padangbai Beach Homestay where we had an outdoor bathroom with its own garden (not uncommon in Bali). In the middle of the night, I tried to fill up the bucket used to flush the toilet and, when I tried to turn the tap off, it spun uselessly in my hand and eventually came right off. Thank goodness it was an outdoor bathroom because I had to dump the bucket in the garden twice before Claude was able to come to my rescue and shut the damn thing off. The next day we moved to Kayu Bali homestay where our indoor plumbing worked just fine. We lazed on the beach there for a few days before heading back to Seminyak, which is a quieter version of Kuta further north up the beach. We found a nice hotel called the Sarinande Beach Hotel which had comfortable rooms, a decent restaurant and a lovely pool. We soon discovered that the place’s only drawbacks were that it was full of Dutch retirees and the mothballs they used to deodorize the rooms made it smell like an old folks’ home. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against the Dutch or retirees, it’s just that we didn’t have a lot in common, we felt like we had to keep a really tight rein on the kids and everyone went to bed by 9PM.

As a treat for the kids, we decided to take them somewhere where they could really cut loose and have fun, so we took them to WaterBom, Bali’s only waterpark. At $70Cdn for the whole family, it was just about the priciest thing to do in Bali, but it was worth it because the kids had a blast. It was a very modern, safe facility with lots to do for young and old with two large pools and about 12 waterslides of varying heights and risk levels. The best part was that there were no line-ups and we were able to enjoy the park to its max. The kids started on the kiddy slides and quickly graduated to the more exciting tube rides and, finally, were fearlessly racing each other down the parallel racetrack slides. There were two sphincter-clenching slides aptly named “Splashdown” and “Boomerang” that neither kid was willing to attempt until very late in the day. “Boomerang” consisted of a normal twisting slide done in a double tube that ended with a hair-raising drop that then catapulted the tube up the other side before dropping the riders backward into the pool at the bottom.

After watching many people survive the Boomerang, Alexa decided that she wanted to try and, after her first time, couldn’t get enough of it (Simon wasn’t interested). Then she decided it was time to try “Smashdown” which was an almost vertical wedgie-inducing slide that started about 4 storeys up and created a sensation that I’m sure is comparable to space shuttle re-entry. The last thing you hear as you launch yourself down the slide is the lifeguard saying, “Make sure you keep your legs crossed!” Alexa made me go first just to make sure it was safe and then, while I was still extracting my bathing suit from my butt, raced me all the way to the top to have a go at it herself. Once she made it to the top, however, she made the mistake of looking down and started to have second thoughts. While she was waffling, a group of about twelve tattooed Aussie frat boys came pounding up the stairs and I said to her, “You’d better go now, sweetie. It’s now or never!” She decided to let them go ahead of her but they started encouraging her to go and ended up chanting, “Go, Alexa, Go!” The only girl with them said that if Alexa went then she would, too. With the spotlight firmly on her, Alexa beamed at her admirers and confidently launched herself down the slide. When we saw the same group later at the Boomerang, they asked me if she was Evil Knevil’s granddaughter. “Yeah,” said the girl, “Thanks to her, I had to do Smashdown!” All in all, it was a great day that boded well for our future trekking plans since the kids managed to climb the equivalent of the Empire State Building in one day with nary a complaint.

Our trip to Bali was now winding down and we only had a few more days left in Bali. When I was planning our trip, I used the BaliBlog on the Bootsnall website to do a lot of my research. BaliBlog’s author and one of the founders of Bootsnall, Nick O’Neill, is a British expat who moved to Bali a few years back and married a lovely Indonesian lady named Ika. I got in touch with him via email before we arrived and he gave me some great info and suggested we meet when we arrived. We had purchased our airline tickets to Singapore on the internet and I needed an address to ship them to so I asked Nick if we could use him as our contact person in Bali. He generously agreed and held onto our tickets for us until we could get together. For various reasons, we weren’t able to connect until a few days before we left when we finally got together for lunch at a one of Nick’s favourite local eateries. Nick brought along his wife, Ika, and his 2 year old son, Jevon, whom Alexa adored, and we had a great lunch while talking travel. Nick said he loved to meet Boots members and even took photos and posted an entry about our lunch on his BaliBlog. It was a great way to end our visit to Bali and I can see why so many people come to Bali, get ensnared by its charms and can’t seem to leave. It’s a place we will definitely revisit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 10:47 pm and is filed under South East Asia, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.