Mr & Missy in Bali Day 3

Time flies! Its already our last day in Bali!!!  I was quite excited as we planned to do some water sports that day! 

My must-have items in my bag for a day out at the beach! 

Remember to always bring sunblock, sunglasses & hat to protect your skin from the harsh sun light.

Breakfast served in our villa by the pool

Of course, we gotta re-charge ourselves first! 

Our mini-kitchen is well-equipped, right?

Initially, we have already chose a water-sports company based on the brochures and requested the receptionist to make a reservation for us.  But our driver overheard us making reservation.  Once we reached the car, he told us that USD 30 for 3 activities (Para-sailing, Jet ski, Banana boat, lunch, return transfer to hotel) is considered expensive. He offered to bring us to a company he knows which would charge us more favorably.  Being naive, we readily agreed to his suggestion to bring us to a water sports center that he knows.

However, he kept insisting that we go to water activities first. Usually, I would not argue since locals know their island best. BUT it totally did not make sense geographically.  Tanah Lot was located at the north of our hotel in Seminyak.  Both Nusa Dua beach (for water activities) and airport were at the south of Seminyak.  Plus, Nusa Dua beach and airport were pretty close.  Considering the infamous traffic of Bali, I did not want to take any chance of missing our flight and needed to be close to airport in the afternoon.

Plus, I just did my hair and make up.  I did not want to go into water as waste my efforts immediately.  We wanted to do sightseeing first then do water sports.  Think about it - we had already checked out of our villa and where were we gonna clean up after getting wet? We would be uncomfortable for the remainder of the day and I would rather postpone it as late as possible. Thank you very much.

So I put my foot down and here we are at Tanah Lot - our first stop of the day.

Entrance fees was 30,000 Rp per pax and 5,000 Rp parking fees per car.

Tanah Lot Temple (in the background) is one of the 7 sea temples around the Balinese coast. The actual temple sits on a large offshore rock which was continuously shaped over the years by strong ocean waves. 

Local legend has it that if you bring a boyfriend / girlfriend to Tanah Lot before marriage, you will break up. And I sincerely hope that it is just that - a legend and not a reality.

Beautiful waves there!

Splash!

Magnificent Hindu Temple perched on the rock, just a few meters offshore

The temple itself is only accessible at low tide so we were lucky!

But we did not go up to the temple as non-Balinese are not allowed to go up.  Even for Balinese, I guess you have to be in a proper attire to pray.

The most popular time to visit this temple is in the evening, just before sunset.  While you get to enjoy the spectacular sunset, the downside is that it gets really crowded.  Besides, we didn't have much time during our 3D2N trip so we went there in the morning. We left around 10am after spending about an hour there.

We then headed to Nusa Dua Beach for water sports.  Its about 35 km away from Tanah Lot Temple and guess how long it took us? TWO HOURS!!!!! That's so freaking long for 35 km, don't you think? The distance is about the same from Changi Airport to Jurong East MRT in Singapore! Travelling that distance with a car took us TWO FREAKING HOURS! The traffic was just crawling in the Nusa Dua area.  We heard that there was some maintenance work going on for the electrical line or water pipe which caused the already-narrow 2-lane road to be even narrower and cars were just crawling at a speed which could be easily overtaken by a turtle!

Anyway, we finally reached a water sports centre (Wibisana) and one of the sales ladies sat down with us to explain to us all the packages available.  To our horror, the exact same package which we booked in the morning for USD 30 with another company was going for a price close of USD 100!!  Of course, we bargained.  Then the lady said she would give us very good discount since our driver brought us there and the final quotation was USD 65! We showed her our brochures and protested and guess what they said? They explained that it excluded all the extra fees such as 21% tax, instructor fees and insurance fees.  Including all these, the other company would end up charging us much more than their price USD 65! 

We were speechless.  What could we do?  We suffered bad traffic jam for 2 hours to go there. We didn't know how far or near the other water sports center was. We didn't want to endure another unnecessary traffic jam for sure too. There are other water sports centers on the beach too but what if we encounter the same situation? We would just be wasting time negotiating with them.  But it was a daylight robbery! So we just settled on one activity: para-sailing for USD 25 each. 

Just for your reference, all the Wibisana equipment and boats and parachutes are in yellow and blue.  The one we wanted to book was Bali Best Adventure.  If you are trying to make a reservation, I guess you can email a couple of Marine Adventure companies and check the rate as well as terms and conditions before confirming the deal.   Make sure there will be no additional fees added.  It somehow reminds me of a budget airline ticket. The funny thing is we were not even paying budget prices for these water sports!

After so much negotiation, we changed and waited for our turn for about 30 minutes.

That's Mister right there in his blue life jacket!

We both signed up for 1 round of para-sailing each and it lasted for less than 2.5 minutes! That's what we got for USD 25. 

If you think about it, this is more expensive than Singapore Flyer as every 5 seconds of para-sailing cost SGD 1 approximately. 

We were done around 1:15 pm and tried to walk on the beach to remind ourselves that we were on an island vacation. Alas, we quickly realized that its not a place for a leisurely stroll as there were many staffs running around, trying to coordinate water sports and several tourists waiting for their turn. So we left shortly afterwards.

Since it was 1:30 pm, we were starving. But we had been eating at Bali's famous restaurants throughout our trips (Naughty Nuri, Ibu Oka, Dirty Duck) so on our last day, we wanted to try authentic street food. Besides, it would be faster to eat at roadside stalls compared to restaurants and we really needed to save time as so much time was wasted on the traffic jam. So we kept telling our driver to bring us to any nice road side stall along the way to the Jimbaran Beach.

Traffic jam situation had not improved one bit and we finally reached a restaurant after an almost-2-hours-drive at 3:20 pm. This driver brought us to an expensive RESTAURANT even though we kept telling them that we wanted to eat street food!!!  From the decor, we knew this was definitely not a roadside stall. When we saw the menu, our thoughts were confirmed.   How can this driver do this??!! Argh!! During the drive, he kept asking us if we wanted to try pork ribs and we repeatedly told him that we already tried it that Naughty Nuri.  Now, we want Indonesian street food like Nasi Campur or Bakso. How could this driver do this to us?????!!!! My annoyance level was at its maximum!

If the food was good, I wouldn't complain either. But it was just so-so. And look at the size of that pork ribs.  Sigh... We wasted around 300,000 Rp there.

We quickly finished lunch and it was around quarter to four. By then, I had given up on visiting the Uluwatu Chapel.  Considering its such a beautiful place  http://www.tirthabridal.com/venues/tirtha-uluwatu/ , I was soooo regretful!!! :(  Considering that our flight departure was at 6:55 pm, I requested the driver to send us to the Jimbaran Beach first.  The beach was on the way to airport and it was just about 7 km away from Bali's airport. But he told me we shouldn't go as we might not make it in time for our flight. The nerve of that driver! First, water sports. Then, lunch.  Now, this? Probably he sensed that I was unhappy and drove us to the Jimbaran beach. We reached there around 4pm and left after about 45 min.

This beautiful beach is facing west, which makes it ideal to view sunset. Thus, there were so many restaurants lining the beach, with tables set up for the crowd, desiring to view Bali beach's majestic sunset.

We were soooo happy with our one and only street snack of Bali! This BBQ corn (15,000 Rp) was so yummy. There was just the right amount of butter and salt. You must try it!

We reached the airport entrance around 5 pm and as usual, there was a massive jam to go inside the airport.  You know what our driver did? He asked us to alight and walk.  We thought we have reached our departure terminal so we did!  But we had to walk for about 10 min to reach the International departure area with our luggage. Luckily, we only had cabin luggage. We paid him for the full day of service but he wanted to leave by 5pm. What a driver!

Inside Bali Airport

Our third-day bad luck wasn't over yet.  It was already 6:30 pm but we were refused entry into the boarding gate for our 6:55 pm flight! We didn't know what was going on but the security kept saying no.  It turned out that our flight was delayed for more than 2 hours!!! The boarding area was filled to the brim with passengers of all the delayed flights and thus, we were refused entry...

We bought these to use up our Indonesian Rupees :D

In summary, 

Day 3

Check out from hotel

Tanah Lot

Nuasa Dua Beach

Late Lunch

Jimbaran Beach

Departure from Ngurah Rai Intl Airport at 9+pm

Arrival at Changi Airport at almost midnight

*** We had to cancel a visit to Pura Batu Balong Temple & Tirtha Bali Chapel Uluwatu due to  the extremely horrible traffic jam, to and fro Nuasa Dua Beach.  We should have gone to Pura Batu Balong Temple & Tirtha Bali Chapel Uluwatu instead of Nuasa Dua Beach.

Last note:
Remember to set aside 150,000 Rp each for airport tax. You will have to pay it in cash upon departure at the airport.

Adios!

xoxo  
Miss N

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Itinerary

http://musingsofmissn.blogspot.sg/2014/01/mr-missy-in-bali.html

Day 1

http://musingsofmissn.blogspot.sg/2014/02/mr-missy-in-bali-day-1.html

Day 2

http://musingsofmissn.blogspot.sg/2014/02/mr-missy-in-bali-day-2.html

Day 3
http://musingsofmissn.blogspot.sg/2014/02/mr-missy-in-bali-day-3.html