Bali - My 1st day (7 Nov 2011)

Singapore to Bali is only a 2hr 30 minutes flight and hence, travelling on budget airline is a good way to save cost. For this trip, I was travelling on Airasia.

I reached Bali at around 7pm and I was surprised that it had already turned pretty dark. The sky looked like 9pm in Singapore.  To be honest, I don’t really feel good about it since it is my first time there and I prefer daylight to feel “safer”.

I have done my research on Tripadvisor prior to this trip and many travelers recommended taking Blue Bird taxi. Unfortunately, there are no Blue Bird taxis around outside the airport premises. Perhaps, I didn’t wait long enough? I had no choice, but to go to the kiosk where another taxi company operates.  From Bali Airport to Kuta (which is less than 15 minutes away), they quoted me a fixed price of RP$50,000, equivalent to around SGD$7.20.  Seems like not too bad… until you hear how much it cost to travel from my hotel to Airport on Blue Bird taxi – RP$17,000. Just for information, the exchange rate of Rupiah to Singapore dollars is around 7000.

Blue Bird Taxi (Taken from http://www.indonesiamatter.com/)

After I paid at the taxi kiosk, there are 2 persons that brought us to a dark carpark just infront of the airport exist. 1 of them, without asking, help us to push our luggages to the carpark and carried them up the taxi. Afterwhich, he requested us for tips. Having the thoughts that he will be going with us in the taxi, I have rejected to give him on the spot. Reason being that I will prefer to give him tips upon reaching safety to our hotel. He wasn't too happy when I told him that I will give it to him later and walked away. 

Tips - these people are "porters" that will help you to carry luggage and requested for tips. Do not let them carry your luggage if you don't want to give tips

Tips - Blue Bird Group Taxi is highly recommended as they work on meter. There are other taxis that have meter, but from a lot of reviews, they are reluctant to turn it on. Note that there are a lot of blue taxi with a bird painted on them. Blue Bird Group Taxi is in Light Metalic Blue with Bluebirdgroup painted on the side of the taxi.

I reached my hotel, Aston Kuta and checked in at around 7pm+. I was pleasantly pleased that the hotel staff was pretty fluent in English, hence, there was no problem understanding each other. As usual, we need to place a deposit for the hotel stay.  The deposit was SGD$100 and a receipt was provided.

We were also given the choice of using our credit card, but we prefer cash since we do have some Singapore Dollars on hand. Our room is on the highest floor, level 6 and the room is furnished with a contemporary resort setting. I didn't take any photograph of the room, but you can easily find it at Aston, Kuta Website. The photographs from the website did not differ too much as the hotel is still very new.

I have took a few photographs of the hotel as follows:

Swimming Pool (Daytime)

Kids' playhouse



Near Lift Lobby



View outside hotel (Daytime)

After settling down, it was around 8pm and we decided that eating our dinner at the hotel restaurant was our best bet since it was already very dark outside.  

The hotel restaurant, Sugar Spice, is very nice, with good ambience and some of the seats face the pool. It was pretty quiet at that time of the night with a few tables occupied. Browsing through the menu, we found that the prices are very reasonable for a restaurant situated in a hotel and the food tasted not bad too. 

Entrance of Sugar Spices (Daytime)

 

Swimming Pool View from the Restaurant (Sugar Spices) (Daytime)


We ordered Soto Ayam Bee Hoon (RP$35,000) and Nasi Goreng Ayam (RP48,000). The Soto Ayam Bee Hoon Soup came with a bowl of rice too!

Soto Ayam Bee Hoon

Nasi Goreng Ayam

Apologies that I did not take a close look of the food photo.

Till now, I am still wondering what the reason is for that since there was already bee hoon. =)  What was definitely more expensive than even Singapore restaurants are the drinks, the coke cost RP21,000, which is equivalent to SGD$3. The total cost is RP151,250 inclusive of 21% service charges and tax.

After finishing our dinner, we went back to our hotel and rest for the day while watching television programme the whole night and planning our itinerary for our 2nd day.