The end of October marked the conclusion of school’s first quarter for Lydia. With that came Fall Break – a whole week off of school!
We decided to take our first trip south of the equator to the island of Bali in Indonesia. While there are major resorts along the beach in a place called Nusa Dua that are favorite destinations of tourists, we decided to go off the beaten path a bit. We stayed in a villa outside of Ubud, an art village that many people we know have said they enjoyed visiting.
Of course, not going to a hotel or resort with a recognized name or a brand to protect, you never know what you’re going to get. However, we have become big fans and users of TripAdvisor.com. It has reviews and commentary from ordinary people about their travel experiences, which has helped us with selecting hotels, things to do, and guide services.
Using TripAdvisor takes some of the risk out of going somewhere more remote…but believe me, when you’re bouncing up and down in an old SUV in a rice field in the middle of rural Indonesia, while watching flocks of chickens cross a path that passes to locals as a street, there are moments of trepidation (and thoughts of “why didn’t we decide to stay at the Shangri-La?”).
Luck was once again on our side. After a 90 minute drive from the airport through several dozen small villages, we arrived at Villa Agung Khalia…a small slice of paradise in the rice fields.
We decided to take our first trip south of the equator to the island of Bali in Indonesia. While there are major resorts along the beach in a place called Nusa Dua that are favorite destinations of tourists, we decided to go off the beaten path a bit. We stayed in a villa outside of Ubud, an art village that many people we know have said they enjoyed visiting.
Of course, not going to a hotel or resort with a recognized name or a brand to protect, you never know what you’re going to get. However, we have become big fans and users of TripAdvisor.com. It has reviews and commentary from ordinary people about their travel experiences, which has helped us with selecting hotels, things to do, and guide services.
Using TripAdvisor takes some of the risk out of going somewhere more remote…but believe me, when you’re bouncing up and down in an old SUV in a rice field in the middle of rural Indonesia, while watching flocks of chickens cross a path that passes to locals as a street, there are moments of trepidation (and thoughts of “why didn’t we decide to stay at the Shangri-La?”).
Luck was once again on our side. After a 90 minute drive from the airport through several dozen small villages, we arrived at Villa Agung Khalia…a small slice of paradise in the rice fields.
Entry to Villa Agung Khalia:
Grounds:
Entry to the courtyard of our suite:
Courtyard with small private pool:
Looking into our suite:
A kitten at the villa befriended us on arrival. Dave couldn’t believe we named the cat within about 30 seconds of meeting it (Weaver, since it continually weaved in and out of our legs). Weaver got a lot of attention when we were around!
It was fun having a vacation cat!
In the mornings, breakfast was made to order and served in an open air room that overlooked the fields.
The food was delicious and each of us quickly found a favorite…and ordered pretty much the same thing all week long. Dave favored the banana pancakes.
I thought the Indonesian breakfast was fantastic. The things on the right side of the plate are called tempeh, which was delicious. Unfortunately, I'll probably never have it again as it's a complicated fermented soybean concoction (really, it tastes better than it sounds!).
Lydia ate lots of cheesy eggs and bacon (no pic needed!). Definitely not things any of us would eat for breakfast daily at home!
The villa would serve other meals if you put an order in first thing in the morning – they needed to time to have their staff go to town, pick up the groceries, and prepare the meal! I’m sure it would have been fresh and delicious, but we never made it back for lunch or dinner…guess we’ll have to do that next time.
By staying at a small place we had a chance to get to know the staff and learned a lot about Balinese culture. A woman named Dawe (Dah-way) helped us each day. She worked hard as the waitress, cook, laundry doer, and cleaning service. But she was, without fail, cheerful each day and said that she had a very, very good job.
The rest of the staff helped us get where we needed to go and made a concerted effort to make sure we were enjoying our stay. Here Lydia and I are with the guys who drove us around:
We especially like Guru, the guy to the far left, who told us all about the fascinating Balinese caste system.
It was so nice at Villa Agung Khalia that there was some temptation to spend all of our vacation there. But, after a morning by the pool we headed out to see what Ubud had to offer…
[I should mention that one downside of staying in a secluded, rural place in Bali is that internet access is sketchy and international newspapers aren't delivered to your door each day. Only when Dave got an email through his Blackberry with the subject line "are you okay?" did we realize just how disconnected we were from the world. We flipped on CNN and saw the headline "tsunami, earthquake, and volcano eruption strike Indonesia." Yikes. Needless to say, we took some time to send out messages to family letting them know we weren't anywhere close to the natural disasters!]
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