Trip Notes: Bali in the Wet Season

by Mike Tourist

January 2002

Part 1: Getting There and Back; Weather; Besakih Hotel

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Getting There and Back

We flew Qantas from Perth and, frankly, we can't see what the Qantas knockers complain about. Perhaps we have always struck a good flight and crew, but we have seldom had any real gripes about the flight itself or the service. The cabin crew were friendly and attentive both ways and concerned to see that we were comfortable, without being fawning. Yes, you can get better service on Singapore Airlines and Garuda, but in my opinion the main aim is to get there and back safely, not to have a mid-air dining experience. And yes, the Qantas staff are less servile than their Singapore Airlines equivalents, but that is Aussie egalitarianism.

Before this turns into a testimonial for Qantas, we do have a gripe about the time of their flights. They used to fly Perth-Bali early morning, returning around lunch time, but now, for reasons which remain a mystery, they have decided to take you there and back in the middle of the night. Our outgoing flight left at 8.40pm and arrived in Bali a little after midnight. By the time you get through customs at Denpasar and get taken to your hotel, it can be well after 1am and not the time to haggle with hotel staff about the room you are going to get. All you want to do is fall into bed and you will take anything on offer. The return journey is just as bad. We left Denpasar at 1.25am, getting into Perth at 5am. After some late shopping and a meal, there is not much you can do to kill time waiting for a flight at that time. Even travelling business class, which we did this time, you cannot get a full night's sleep in the three and a half hour flight home.

The other problem with Qantas is the size of their aircraft. They have taken to using 737s on the Perth-Denpasar route, and they are not exactly the roomiest aircraft in the world. One of the cabin crew told us that they are upgrading their 737s to the 800 series in April, with better seating and one-class configuration.

We used the new Premier Lounge at Denpasar airport. Mrs Tourist was impressed, but I thought it was fairly ordinary. It was also quite noisy as it was full of irritated passengers waiting for flights that had been delayed. When we arrived most of the food was gone and the staff were more interested in watching satellite TV than restocking the table. At first we thought we would have trouble getting Mrs Tourist to the lounge because it is up a flight of steep steps, but an eager young man came to our assistance when he saw her struggling and led us to an elevator. The other disadvantage to the lounge is that it is located near gates 1-2 and it was a long hike back to gate 6, where the Perth flight left from. It would be good if Denpasar introduced moving walkways like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for people who have disabilities.

Most seasoned Bali travellers will know not to buy anything from the shops at Denpasar airport, unless you are desperate. The prices can be up to four times what you can pay on the streets. A lot of the stock is marked in US dollars so you will have to do some calculating to see if you can buy anything of value with those loose rupiah that you didn't have time to spend.

Customs was painless at both ends. We got through the arrivals formalities at Denpasar in about 10 minutes. A couple of luggage porters tried to heavy us into paying a huge amount to carry our bags. We found out from the tour guide on the return trip to the airport that the standard expected fee for porters is Rp.1,500 per item. A far cry from the $10USD being demanded of us when we arrived. I gave the porters Rp.3,000 for each case when we left and they seemed totally satisfied with that.

We did our civic duty on the way back into Australia and declared all the wooden items we had bought. We were asked to open our bags so that the items could be inspected. Having had the experience of digging through piles of clothing to find a wind chime in the past, I had remembered to pack all the wooden stuff on top so it wasn't a great hassle this time. The quarantine people look for signs of borers in the wood, so it is always a good idea to examine any wooden articles for tell-tale holes before you buy them, otherwise you will lose them or have to pay stiff quarantine fees when you try to bring them into Australia.

Disembarkation at both Perth and Denpasar was fairly friendly, in terms of access. The ramps off the aircraft are not too steep and there are handrails part of the way to help those with walking disabilities. Getting onto the plane at Perth is shocking as you have to walk down several flights of stairs. If you have trouble walking it is best to ask for lift access. You can do this at check-in or at the Qantas Club. One of the staff will assist you to a lift.

The Weather

We took a risk going in the middle of the wet season when monsoonal activity is at its greatest. The gigantic thunderstorms make for interesting landings and takeoffs and we had bumpy arrivals and departures, but nothing to get white knuckles about.

It didn't rain at all the first few days, and then we had a sequence of four days where there were fine mornings and drenching storms in the afternoons and evenings.

One of the shopkeepers at Sindhu Beach Market assured me that a sudden downpour was only "three clods" and would soon pass.

You need to plan your trips for the possibility of storms. Although the weather looks fine when you leave the hotel it can suddenly get very wet, as we found out on a couple of outings. It can also be dry and sunny in one place and bucketing down elsewhere. We got drenched one day in Denpasar and returned to dry streets in Sanur.

Most hotels, including the Besakih where we stayed, will loan you an umbrella if you forget to bring one.

Besakih Hotel

This was our first experience of the Besakih. We have previously stayed at Segara Village and Griya Santrian and decided to stay at Besakih both for a change and because it seemed to offer good access for Mrs Tourist.

The hotel is Balinese-owned and has the friendliest set of staff that we have encountered in twenty years of travel to Bali. Everyone was courteous and helpful and went out of their way to give guests personal attention.

This is a comfortable hotel, but it is not five star. The rooms are functional, clean but basic. The gardens are immaculately kept and the restaurant is adequate, but not exciting. There are two smallish pools and a spa. The second pool was out of action most of the time we were there and the spa only worked occasionally. The pools have dark tiles, which give them a mysterious appearance. So mysterious that Mrs Tourist refused to use them on the principle that she couldn't see what was in them. Fair enough.

There used to be a small shop (the sign above it still says "drug store") but that has closed down. There is also no coffee shop, apart from the main restaurant.

We had breakfast most mornings at the hotel, mainly to save Mrs Tourist's energy for the day ahead. Breakfast for two (2 eggs, bacon, toast and coffee) cost Rp.63,000. Along the beach you could buy a full American breakfast for two for Rp.28,000.

As with most beach-side hotels in Sanur, the hotel opens up onto the beachfront where there are umbrellas and beach lounges. You have to be quick to secure the best lounge. It seems to be established custom now that you can stake a claim to a lounge for the day simply by leaving your towel on it. A number of the guests were in the habit of leaving their towels on lounges before breakfast, choosing a time of their own convenience after breakfast to return. Unless you got down to the beach by about 8am all of the good lounges were gone.

Each hotel on the strip has a fairly standard set of beachside stalls and services. The set seems to be (a) one or two small shops selling everything from sarongs to lontar calendars (this is the first time I have seen lontar - palm leaf manuscripts - offered to tourists for several years), (b) one or two boatmen offering trips in glass bottomed boats or perahu, (c) a water sports centre where you can arrange snorkelling, water scooters etc (d) a group of 3 or 4 women doing massage, manicures and hair braiding. The masseuses and manicurists will come to your room if you prefer. Mrs Tourist had her nails done by Mandy for Rp.35,000.

There was scarcely a hawker in sight. Sadly, I think, the colourful watch sellers are gone (they operate from stalls near the shops now) and there isn't and endless stream of people selling toy boats, bangles, wooden boxes and statues etc as there used to be a couple of years ago. Some people found them a hassle, but I enjoyed having a chat and a joke with some of them.

We didn't get a single approach from time share touts on the streets of Sanur, but one or two tried their luck on us outside Matahari store in Kuta. This seems to be their favourite haunt.

The Besakih rooms essentially come in two types, stand-alone bungalows or hotel rooms. The hotel rooms are in a two-storeyed complex between the reception and the beach. We shifted from the bungalow they assigned us, a fairly dark and unattractive unit at the rear of the complex well away from the beach, to a ground floor hotel room. We had hoped to get a bungalow close to the beach but when we arrived we found out that a Dutch tour group had taken up 30 rooms, including all the best beachside bungalows, for two months.

Access to the rooms and around the hotel is reasonably good. Mrs Tourist walks with the assistance of a walking stick and she was able to navigate her way around most parts of the hotel. We met a woman a few rooms from us who was in a wheelchair. She could find her way around most of the complex, but had to use a walking aid in the restaurant-pool area. For those with disabilities, even though there are a few steps they are low and relatively easy to navigate. The worst feature was the paths which are made out of broken flag stones. The uneveness of the stones and the gaps between them require constant vigilance. The stone itself gets quite slippery when it is wet and there were a few occasions when Mrs Tourist nearly came to grief when her stick slid from under her hand.

We didn't hear many Aussie accents in the week we were at Besakih. The Dutch tour party had arrived on 10 January and were well and truly in the swing of it when we got there. The group, named O.B.I (which stands for something like "over-wintering in Bali, Indonesia"), numbered 49 at the Besakih. We were told that there were another 100 at the Grand Bali Beach and more at other Sanur and Kuta hotels. In the conspiratorial manner that the Balinese are so good at, the hotel receptionist whispered to us that the Dutch Consul's wife had a commercial interest in the venture. We couldn't verify that, of course, but the group certainly appeared to be well organised. It is easy to see why the Dutch were such good colonisers. There appeared to be a number of tour leaders ("boss ladies" as we came to call them affectionately) who regulated the days of the tour members. Each day at breakfast the boss ladies would hold court where the tour members would attend on them to be told, from a master list presumably compiled and controlled by the boss ladies, where they would go, what they would do and with whom. Lists were posted on notice boards around the hotel and there was even a tour library with the stern notice above it saying "OBI Members ONLY!" Not that I can read in Dutch anyway, but I was really tempted to borrow one or two books, just for the hell of it. They also had lectures where a very tall, blond haired, bronzed boy came and told them about Balinese culture. The tour party appeared to have an average age of about 70, but this did not deter several of the women from fluttering their eyes at the lecturer (we could see all this because the lectures were in an open pavilion). We were relieved when the hotel receptionist, who seemed to know a great deal about the tour party and their activities, told us that they had also brought a doctor with them from Holland. I had envisaged having to do rapid CPR on a couple of the old girls who appeared to be besotted with the Adonis in their midst.

Speaking of behaviour, the OBIs were well-behaved on the whole. The only exception was a woman who insisted on exposing herself to the pool attendant. This good lady, probably at the younger end of the group's age range, bore a striking resemblance to Pru Goward. Her morning ritual consisted in a quick trip to the pool before breakfast where she would take up position on a lounge somewhere in the vicinity of the pool attendant. She would settle herself on the lounge and then slip the straps off the top of her one piece. She then proceeded to expose the upper half of her anatomy and pretend to sunbathe. I say pretend because the pool area at that time in the morning was entirely shaded and there was not even the faintest shaft of sunlight to give her European skin the chance to tan. On one occasion she did this just as the hapless attendant was walking past with leaf scoop in hand. The unfortunate youth almost fell into the pool as he caught sight of the adventurous OBI's upper torso. I don't know about him, but it fair put me off my fried eggs.


[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]