When booking our Bali accommodations, Gigi really struggled on making a decision where to stay. Now that we are near the end of our year abroad, we are beginning to run on financial fumes, so to speak. We won’t find ourselves standing on a street corner in Xian begging for yuan for bus fare to Beijing, but we do need to to watch our budget. Now, Bali can be done very inexpensively, or also quite luxuriously. We have been able to stay out of hotels for pretty much our entire trip, but what we were finding in Seminyak were ‘villas’ that looked pretty luxurious and on the outside range of our budget. Gigi zeroed in on Nest Villas and after a few days of not finding anything in the ‘budget’ category that gave us the warm fuzzies, we booked it. Wow, good choice! We can beg for yuan later if need be.
The villa provided pick up at the airport. We drove through motorcycle and taxi choked streets. The villas were located way down a narrow, one lane alley that was only partially paved and looked quite shabby. However, appearances changes radically once we entered our villa. Everything here seems to be hidden behind high walls, so we could not evaluate what we were getting until we walked through the heavy wooden door.
Balinese style houses are open plan. The interior looked like a covered patio with a pool circumvented by a wooden deck. 8 foot walls gave us our privacy. The covered ‘patio’ was the house. We had a full kitchen with and island, a heavy wooden dining table that could seat 10, and couch and coffee table area with a flat screen TV. To Justin’s delight, we even had an L-shaped Koi pond that separated the dining table from a planter with 4 palm trees. We had a fern wall. The two bedrooms were separated and both had sliding glass doors, curtains for privacy, and very effective air conditioning. The master ensuite bathroom was open air. With all this open air living (except for the bedrooms, which we only used for sleeping) we were at the mercy of the environment. This really was not a problem. Although just a bit cooler than Singapore, the humidity was much less. We did not feel the need for air con or fans. We only had rain at night after 9 PM. In the evenings, we did have some mosquitoes buzzing around, but only a few. Most nights we had a slight breeze that kept them away. Justin, our sweet blooded boy, only got a few bites during the stay.
What really made us appreciate this villa was the level of service and extras provided. In addition to airport pickup and transfer to our next hotel in Nusa Dua, we got these things: 2 cell phones with prepaid SIM card, beach bags with beach towels, daily laundry service, welcome tea, large fruit bowl, hot breakfast, and our own personal cook. Awen, the villa manager, checked in with us daily to see how we were doing and acted as our personal trip planner. She gave us daily suggestions on beaches, restaurants, attractions and prices. She was extremely pleasant and even baked us finger sized French cakes one day. Siti, our personal cook, was fantastic. She arrived at 8:30 every morning with a smile to cook us a hot breakfast, and instructions to us were that she was at our service for the next 8 hours. We had her cook one extra meal each day- that was always plentiful and delicious. She even did the shopping for our groceries, we just gave her the money for the ingredients. One day, we had one hour in-house massages and facials at a rate of $15 a treatment. We are being pampered! What a great way to start our three weeks here. Loving Bali!