I've been to Bali too

We arrived in Bali on Air Asia at about 5pm local time. Our friends who are with...

We arrived in Bali on Air Asia at about 5pm local time. Our friends who are with us, Andrew and James, had warned us about the porters at Bali airport so we were ready for them to try and grab our bags (and then you have to pay them to get them back), but they back off if you tell them no. Still it was a bit of a change from what we were used to. The next interesting bit was James having to bribe the customs guy to let him in with an extra bottle of wine … but apparently it’s the norm. Jules and I weren’t checked, I think they checked James bag seeing as it was from the duty free in Perth. We went through the rest of customs without a problem, Andrew had forewarned us about being American dollars for our visa. Then we left the terminal and went searching for a taxi. The place we are at currently is up in the hills a bit so we wanted a van rather than being in separate cars for an hour and a half. We finally found one and Andrew haggled us the ride for 400000rp (around $40). He was trying to get a bit lower but they wouldn’t budge. It turns out to be fair enough as it was a long taxi ride. We stopped at a Circle K on the way out and picked up some water and beers(all the essentials) and headed off. The taxi ride started ok with a long neck in hand and chatting chatting to the taxi driver about different things. Driving in Bali is freaking nuts, it’s only one step removed from chaos, but somehow it seems to work. Having said that there is no way I’d get on a scooter here unless I had a death wish. We got up into the hills as it got dark and the traffic thinned out, at least a bit. Half an hour later and it has started to become clear that we were lost. In the dark the intersections all looked pretty similar, our driver for out 3 times to ask directions, each time we got a little more worried, but we eventually got into the laneway we needed. We got to the end to be met by a security guard which was also a bit concerning until we realised that the hotel employed him (then I felt much better). We arrived at the hotel and went straight to dinner, as it was 8:00pm by now. Dinner was great, but we had a quick dinner and went to our room(s). The rooms are amazing, we have two rooms in a private compound and a private shared pool. The hotel we stayed in is called the Furama.

We are staying here until Wednesday so we have heard of time to explore the surrounding areas, Ubud has a few interesting things to check out so we will look into those, just not today, today is a lazy day. Breakfast this morning we went for a wander around the hotel, they seem to grow a lot of their own food, there is a massive paddock of just chilli plants.