Bali

beautiful lanterns n front

Hilton Bali does it right! They are not just a hotel, but a destination all on its own. First, when you enter the grounds and drive up to the entrance they have many (manmade) waterfalls, ponds, fountains, a fake “heavenly gate” and outstanding décor like these wooden lanterns.

Gilton entrance with gates of heaven

Hilton Bali entrance

The entire decor says “Bali” and that is true throughout the grounds (which are HUGE). The open air lobby sits at the top, on the street level and the resort extends downwards towards the ocean with stairs, more fountains, and gardens plus an infinity pool at the end. Throughout the resort there are ancient looking carved stone stairways that could have come straight out of a Laura Croft, tomb raider movie.

view from lobby to ocean

biew of lobby and garden

Rasied walkway to tower tooms

To the right is a raised enclosed pathway that leads above the grounds to the “Cliff Tower” where most of the guests stay. The lobby level is the same as the 15th floor and the building goes down the cliff from there to the 1st floor where the beach, pools, waterslides, restaurants, etc are.

Between cliff and hotel

The beach area is more modern but still breathtaking. They even have a mini beach pool with sand! Every morning workers clean up the line of sand to prevent it from going all over the pool. They also had beautiful semi-private lagoons running in front of the rooms

view beach and sand pool

View from 15th floor The pool has actual sand in it and on the fake beach

view of beach and pool s;ide

Monkey on side of road

On check-in they warned of monkeys that will steal anything left on the balconies (WTF? Even on the 7th floor as they are excellent climbers). So I should not leave anything on the balcony, which I forgot as I left my workout clothes drying out there a few days. Luckily the monkeys can smell and stayed well clear of them. I didn’t see any monkeys the first few days, but then encountered some on the road. They were running across the road to scavenge from a food booth, fighting over discarded wrappers and water bottles. They were cute and seemed scared of me at first, but as I resumed my run, I went too close to one and he went full horror film, hissing and making a BIG scary face showing his fangs!

Monkeys scavneging for little

The next day I decided to use the gym instead since running outside involved hot weather and dodging cars since the sidewalks are pretty awful. They are actually building very nice sidewalks directly on top of the old ones (see pics).

buklding new sidewalk on top of old one

The workout room was almost empty. There was one other person when I arrived but she left after 5-10 minutes. I got going on the treadmill and enjoyed a beautiful view including a waterfall. During my cool down some monkeys wandered onto the scene and I went outside where I got some good pictures of them including the small one mid-leap!

Monkey outside the gym

Monkwy mid leap above waterfall area

Monkeys above the gym building

As a diamond member I get free breakfast and the spread was massive. I usually went with noodles and rice with a hot entrée which varied each day. The scrambled eggs and pork bacon were also extremely good. They also had a nice salad bar, many bread options, sweet options, and of course the expresso machines (two of them) for all the coffee people. Their fruit was not very good compared to California, but they also had a variety of drinkable yogurts, a dragonfruit smoothie, and cheeses.

hot food area (hash browns, tomato, sausage

milk and cereal options

hot entrees

In front is the bread area and behind on the right is the fruit, yogurt, smoothie, cheese area

This was either a noodle or soup station

The ever popular coffee machine...so popular they have two

sweet stuff

egg station

breakfast day 1

breakfast day 2

Breakfast day 3

breakfast ourside day 4

Another nice diamond perk was the cocktails and canapes they are providing since the diamond lounge is closed. This gave me two drinks from a menu, along with a plate of four tasty canapes. I only made it there twice, but watching the sunset with nice mocktails and chicken skewers or mini street tacos was quite nice.

Complementary mocktails and canapes during sunset

They have red dragonflies here too, here's one by my patio

Hilton upgraded me from the cheapest most basic room to the highest single room suites. My lagoon access suite has a patio with steps going into the lagoon (pool), which is not the main pool with all the people in it, but a semi-private one with access only from the lagoon rooms so we were pretty much the only ones in it. It also has a thin walkway around the sides so you can walk from your patio to the beach area. There’s nothing better than sitting on your private lanai playing poker online with friends back home!

poker by the pool

My room is on the bottom left

Nice view from the toilet!

Hilton room

Dinner first night

I jogged into town the first day to check things out. There was a good food place my Grab driver had pointed out. The first day I was not motivated enough to dodge traffic walking all the way back into town for dinner. Instead I found a place just 100 yards down the road in the opposite direction that got good reviews and got some chicken, veggies, and rice for 24,000 rupees ($1.75).

Dinner from across the street and up the road a bit

Dinner place with all the food options in the window

Eating the rambutan that is like a lychee

The second day I just had canapes for dinner, along with some of this beautiful fruit plate that Hilton gave me. Unfortunately, I tried the grapes and apples first which were terrible. As a friend pointed out, those are not native to the area. The tropical fruits should be better. Two I had never seen before, the pink prickly one and the brown one. Google lens helped me identify them as snakefruit and rambutan and I was able to find videos on how to eat them. They were delicious! I snagged some brie from breakfast which went well with the dragonfruit, and bananas are always good.

eating the snakefruit that tasted like a good apple

Fruit plate from Hillton

My fresh clean laundry

The next day was laundry day. I kinda forgot about it until 4:15 and then had to scramble to remember which laundry place I liked. I called to make sure they were open and they were closing at 5:00! No time to walk there, but I stuffed my clothes into my backpack and got a Grab motorbike. Bonus, it was only 55 cents for the trip. As a side note, the minimum charge for Grab is $1 so for really cheap rides like this it is better to tip in the app than to give cash. The tips all go to the driver either way. Neat and Clean was a little hard to find if you are not looking for it. Luckily my driver knew where it was and also knew it is run by the hotel next to it since no one was there when we pulled up. The cost was cheap, 10k rupees per kg. My clothes totaled 2.6kg so about $2 or $3 with tip. I picked them up the next day and they are all folded beautifully, packaged up in plastic, and smelled good!

Signs on the street for Neat and CLean

laundry plaee

After that I wandered by some currency exchange places but they were all closed after 5. One had a sign out front that said 13.75 rupees/USD which is a horrible exchange rate so I decided to just use ATMs. Many major hotels have ATMs outside on the street. Hilton had one and a guard kept an eye on things so I felt safe late that night stopping by. Unfortunately, the limit was 1,250,000 (about $88) but I pulled that amount out twice. Also unfortunately, this machine dispenses only 50k notes so I had 50 bills at the end which is a lot to carry especially if I have to multiply that by 5 since the outer islands I am headed to don’t have credit card machines (or at least not the rustic accomodations I chose since the alternative was $300/night). On the plus side NO ATMs in Bali including the airport charge ATM fees. That is so cool. Even their ATMs have excellent hospitality!

After dropping off my laundry, on the way to get dinner, I got lured in by someone offering massages. The place was called Lovers Massage, but it was not “that” kind of massage place. It was a regular massage and very good. My massuese Desi was excellent! She pinches my toes pretty hard which hurts a little when she pulls them to stretch them out, but maybe that’s her way of waking me up so I stop snoring. I neglected to get a picture of her so I’ll have to add that in later after I return to Bali.

Lovers massage don't let the name fool you

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img=https://photos.travellerspoint.com/1058575/ae25bb80-b75e-11ec-985a-93cf983ad085.jpg caption=Dinner at rice chicken place]

Dinner was at the place my driver recommended. When I walked up two women were tossing/catching coconuts and storing them. It looked like fun (see video but I couldn't edit it so a rough start and end). I asked for rice and pork but they only had chicken, and they asked if I wanted spicy or not spicy. Obviously I said not spicy, but again their idea of not spicy required me to seek milk products so I could put out the fire in my mouth. Luckily some place on Bali makes gelato ice cream bars and they sell them here. I got the caramel one and loved it! The next day I came back and got some food to go, making sure they took all the chicken from the one truly not spicy dish (they gave me 4 different chicken dishes last time). This time I went with a Snickers ice cream bar, also fabulous. Their name is Warang Nasi Ayam Ibu Oki. Okay so I think Warang means restaurant. Nasi means rice. Ayam means chicken. So a very descriptive name.

Coconut storage

restaurant urside

Restaurant inside

Gelato made in Bali

caramel gelato popsicle

My original plan was to walk home but I didn’t fancy walking in the dark, sharing the road with cars, and running the risk of stepping in dog poop (you gotta see it to avoid it) so I took another Grab bike back.

The next day I used a Grab to go to and from the bank (needed to make a deposit on my accomodations in Bunaken) and noticed signs showing exchange rates of 14.1, which is a reasonable rate (2% commission). T he bank had an exchange rate of 14.125 and I kicked myself for not bringing USD with me. I took another Grab bike home to get my USD and then got some exercise, walking to town using an umbrella for shade. By the time I got to the exchange place only the 13.75 sign was there (the sign I’d seen earlier was gone) so I inquired about the 14.1 rate and he said he could give that rate. I exchanged a bunch of money there for my trip to Bunaken and Raja Ampat, both quite off the beaten path. So to summarize my monetary suggestions for those traveling to Indonesia, an ATM card is probably best since there is no fee, but exchanging cash should only incur about a 2% difference off the exact exchange rate, and if there are two signs out, refer to the correct one

I had accidentally read the wrong email and asked my driver to pick me up at 6:30am for a 9am flight. I had remembered it being earlier so I checked my ticket at it said 7:00am so he agreed to pick me up at 4:45. We got there around 5:15 which was good as it was taking a very long time to check people in, as they had to check a ton of paperwork and their printers were very slow. When I got to the front, he said my flight was cancelled and the new flight was at 12:00 and asked if I had gotten an email. This explains my original 9:00 time. For some reason, Nusaair (you have to book Lion Air through a third party as they don’t accept US based credit cards) had sent an email including my connecting flight at 9:00am as well as the new flight at 12:00. Glancing quickly at the email I thought the 12:00 was the connecting flight when it actually is a combined flight where I stay on the plane when the stop in Makassar. The good news is that I’m not going to miss the connecting flight to Manado as I no longer need one. The bad news is that I now have 5 ½ hours to kill at the Bali airport when I could have gotten a full nights sleep and a good breakfast.

The domestic terminal is pretty empty and there was a whole section of seats with only a few sleeping/relaxing airport workers so I settled in on 4 plastic seats (not super comfortable) and slept more or less for 3 hours. Luckily there is a Priority Pass lounge in the domestic terminal as well so I was able to get something to eat (not a great selection) and have some excellent cinnamon tea and also ginger tea. More imporantantly I had a place to plug in and get stuff done using the free airport wifi since I don’t think internet will be very good the next 11 days.