Washing Day!

We spent our first two nights back in Bali staying in a cheap Airbnb with a washing machine (which was a mission to find at 8.30pm at night – thankfully we had a lovely, patient Grab driver). The main objective? To get our two weeks’ worth of washing done in 36 hours. Fortunately it was a big house with plenty of metal banisters down the stairs and railings along the second floor, as well as a drying rack, so we had room to hang our 6 loads of washing from coat hangers all over the house!

TransStudio Mall

While we were passing time waiting for our washing to dry, we walked to the TransStudio mall down the road to get an early dinner. We haven’t really spent much time in shops at all (mainly street markets) on this trip, so all of us enjoyed looking around the air-conditioned, fancy shops and had a very yummy Japanese dinner…we unexpectedly passed three hours there.

The Bali Mandira

The next morning, we packed away all our clean washing in great excitement, as we prepared to meet up with our friends James, Jodie, Benjamin, and Jemma from Perth. It had been a few years since we last caught up with them in NZ, and we had booked into the same resort as them for 3 nights – the Bali Mandira at Legian Beach.

The first couple of days were a bit rainy, but that didn’t stop us getting out and about and having a great time. The Mandira supplied umbrellas which made life easy. We all made the most of the impressive breakfast buffet each morning, and that fed us until dinner time, with a snack in the middle of the afternoon.

There were plenty of options for eating and drinking out in Legian and we went to a few different places. The Fat Bowl restaurant next door to the Mandira was excellent value and we ended up eating there a few times. They also had different entertainment each evening.

The beach out the front also offered lots of entertainment options, including lots of local bars that were way cheaper than the resort, so we stopped there one afternoon to have a few Bintangs and a foot massage while the kids played on the beach.

We had the best time over the next few days, enjoying the swimming pool, eating out together, exploring the local area, getting massages, and having a great time catching up on each other’s lives. Our children were especially stoked to have Jemma and Benjamin to hang out with. After 3 nights there, we moved to an Airbnb villa nearby, and after one more night in the Mandira, James, Jodie, and their kids moved to another resort. We continued to hang out together for the next 7 days, and Jodie was an amazing tour organiser, including an incredible family day out at Waterbom Park, a trip to Uluwatu and a farewell dinner at Frankenstein’s.

WATERBOM BALI

A review by Leo

Waterbom Bali was a very fun experience and it is ranked best water park in Asia by TripAdvisor and #19 in the world by MrBeast (I trust MrBeast more tbh). And I am going to rank every slide I went on there. Let’s get started.

8 GREEN VIPERS

The only attraction that sucked was the green vipers. It was listed as extreme but was the slowest slide ever. I had to push myself to get down and it was awful. But it closed earlier than all the other slides, so I think it was under maintenance.

7 DOUBLE TWIST

A great slide but it is not the best. You stand in a tube and after it closes a trapdoor under your feet opens. The drop itself is really fun and the slide is really fast, but the main problem is the water. What happens is when you fall you get splashed which is good. But as you are wiping the water out of your eyes there is more water coming from the roof, resulting in you not being able to see for half the ride.

6 FAST AND FIERCE

A fun twin racer slide when you go down at a fast speed and race your friends… that’s it.

5 CONSTRICTOR

All the slides from here on are great and flawless starting with the constrictor. It is a really nice and kid friendly slide and is 250m long (about 820.21 ft which is also over half the height of the empire state building), which is pretty good value for money.

4 PYTHON

It was a hard choice between the constrictor and python, but I must choose the python for the creative idea. It is a big water slide for 2-4 people and is meant to mimic the idea of you going through a python’s stomach. It is a regular slide at the beginning but then you go into the dark. After a while there is a big drop into the light, and you go round a corner and have another drop. After that you exit the slide (it is a lot shorter than it sounds). Mum went on this with Jemma and Anna and screamed her head off because she was going backwards the whole time.

3 PIPELINE

A fast, claustrophobic slide that is transparent from the outside is what pipeline is (it is actually not that scary). You go down from a really big height and go through pipe-like slides. It is great and is better than how I just explained it.

2 SUPERBOWL

The superbowl is when you go down a slide with pretty rainbow light and a fun drop at the beginning. Then you go into a bowl and go around until you plummet backwards into a pool. It is very fun and a good spend of your time.

1 BOOMERANG!!!

Another slide with pretty lights when you turn around and then there is A MASSIVE DROP AND THEY TAKE YOUR PHOTO THEN YOU GO UP A WALL AND FLY BACKWARDS AT THE SAME TIME OF SCREAMING YOUR HEAD OFF YYYYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Ok it is safe to say this is the best slide especially since I went on it with my 120kg (about half the weight of a large motorcycle) dad who also got a fat wristband at the park.

Thank you for reading and here is a link to the website so you can read, see photos and watch videos of the rides.

https://www.waterbom-bali.com/rides

Kecak Fire Dance at Uluwatu

Jodie booked us in for a tour that transported us to Uluwatu with a guide for a look around the Hindu temple there before watching the Kecak Fire Dance at sunset.

The drive took about an hour or so to get there, and we stopped briefly along the way to view the enormous Patung Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue, which you can see from the airport every time you land at or depart from Bali.

Pura Luhur Uluwatu

The temple Pura Luhur at Uluwatu is impressive, set into the clifftop overlooking the ocean. It is surrounded by beautiful plantings and trees, and there are macaque monkeys everywhere. We were warned by our guide that these monkeys can be quite aggressive, so we needed to put away any loose items like hats and sunglasses that might tempt them to approach us. I was wearing my glasses, so just held onto them tightly as we walked through the temple, where monkeys are most prevalent.

True to form, as we approached the top steps, a monkey snatched a woman’s spectacles off her face! A nearby security guard quickly threw the monkey food and was able to recover them, however the next hapless victim was not so fortunate, and he lost his expensive looking sunglasses to a monkey who managed to hold onto them when food was thrown, catching it in its free hand before leaping away into a tree overhanging the cliff. Needless to say, the kids were somewhat rattled by this behaviour and were keen to scurry around the temple as quickly as possible to get away from the monkeys!

Later, when I took Anna to the toilet, a young women who had obviously not been warned about the monkeys leaned in to say hello to one, as if it was a cute puppy…she got a rather big fright when it leapt towards her baring it’s teeth and screeching at her…not very friendly at all!

When we were reflecting on the food technique used to extract stolen items from the monkeys later in the day, we thought that it is probably perpetuating the aggressive thievery, since the monkeys are smart enough to know that this will earn them food. A better technique, and our guide agreed, would be to have a more abundant supply of food on offer all the time, so that the monkeys wouldn’t need to steal in order to get more food.

Kecak Fire Dance

At 5.30pm, we made our way across the clifftop to the amphitheater where we would view the sunset and the Kacak Fire Dance. After about half an hour, the performance started, and it was pretty different to anything our kids had ever seen before.

Instead of music or gamelan playing, which is a popular accompaniment to performances in Indonesia, the Kecak fire dance is accompanied by a choir of all male voices. They chant the word ‘Kecak’ over and over at different pitches and tones as the story unfolds. I won’t go into the story, but you’re given a programme that explains it all, so I was able to narrate it to the kids as the dance unfolded.

At the end of the performance, we made our way back to the cars that would take us to our accommodation. We had expected some traffic on the way back, but nothing like the two hours it took to get home! Our driver kindly stopped for bread on the way back so we could make cheese on toast for a very late supper when we got back.

Our Villa

We had booked a villa in Seminyak for 6 nights, as it was half the price of a resort and had a swimming pool and kitchen, making for a very comfortable stay.

It was an Indonesian joglo style house, with an open living area and closed off bedrooms and bathrooms. The living area had electric blinds that could be lowered at night or in bad weather.

We enjoyed having downtime here, and James, Jodie, Jemma and Bennie joined us there for dinner after a relaxing afternoon together.

The kids enjoyed playing the games we had brought with us, and we found that Banangrams was a particularly popular one and helped entertain the kids when we were out for dinner as well.

The Bali Green School

On our last full day in Bali, I took Leo and Anna to visit the Green School in Bali for a tour that I had booked a few weeks earlier, after my friend Emma reminded me about it.

The tour was led by a Balinese Year 12 student, a delightful young man who was confident, well-spoken, and brimming with enthusiasm for his educational experience there. He reminded me of the amazing Class 12 students I teach every year, especially when he began talking about his Year 12 project.

The curriculum has many similarities to the Steiner curriculum, with a focus on three main aspects to the learning: the proficiencies of numeracy, literacy, languages and science; the experiential aspect of living and breathing the school values of respect for others, for the land and for self; and the thematic aspect of large scale, intrinsically motivated projects in Year 5, Year 8 and Year 12. Students are encouraged to dream big and attempt projects that can contribute positively to the world and their local communities.

There is a diverse, international student body at the Green School, with students from all over the world attending as well as local, Balinese students, whose scholarships are funded by the international students’ fees. This is so that the graduates not only make a difference around the globe, but will also remain in Bali to make a difference in their own communities.

When we were all standing on the Millennium bridge, a community project built by students, staff, and parents, we were all instructed to collectively jump on the count of 3. The bridge barely registered our presence. This was impressive considering that it was built entirely out of bamboo, like all the structures throughout the school.

Just as we finished the tour, a couple and their young daughter approached us, saying they were also from NZ. They asked me where in NZ I taught, and I said the Steiner School in Wellington. They laughed at the coincidence because their daughter attends Michael Park Steiner School in Auckland. We all agreed that the Green School philosophy shares many similarities with Steiner education.

Our lovely driver who’d offered to wait while we did the tour took us back to our villa. He was such a nice guy and entertained the kids by playing ‘guess the song’ on the way home from his extensive anime song collection…Leo was most impressed!

Farewell Dinner at Frankenstein’s

Jodie had booked us all into the Frankenstein’s Laboratory Bar for our last dinner in Bali. This place was awesome for kids (and adults!), with incredible, ghoulish face painting available and a couple of entertaining shows.

The first performance was based on Disney villains, and the second one had the theme of Ghostbusters. In between these two acts, the characters did karaoke with the children, which was very popular.

It was sad to say goodbye to our lovely mates, as we’d enjoyed every minute of their company over the 10 days they were in Bali. We have made so many awesome memories to look back on in years to come. It was brilliant to see our kids getting along so well…we look forward to our paths crossing again in Wellington or Perth.

Farewell Indonesia

The next morning, we packed our bags ready for our last trip to I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport. We got there with plenty of time to check in for our flight to Bangkok.

And with a wink from the three of us not wearing sunglasses, we farewelled beautiful Bali and the hot Indonesian sunshine, and boarded our plane, ready for our next adventure in Thailand.