For We are Jolly Good Fellows!: Bali Break

Bali Palms at Candidasa

We had our little man (the driver), Yogi, pick us up from Ubud and drive us to Candidasa - he is always glad of the work (and the money), and he is a safe, reliable driver.

On the way he suggested we stop and visit a palace / museum. Well, why not?

"Never Boring" was the claim on the guide's T-Shirt - I was having trouble understanding his speech, so I was a little bored!

This area is very different from the Ubud area. There are much less tourists, and less sales pressure. The resorts, however, are very western.

Bali Palms Resort is very nice - nice villas mostly clustered around a beautiful pool, right by the beach.

We have a lovely room on the second floor ...

And from the balcony we have a view of the pool and the sea ...

I have enjoyed waking up at night to the sound of crashing waves when the tide is in.

There is a lovely restaurant.

We were amused to discover via the menu that (as I have always suspected) fish are in fact vegetables.

Peter's Little Fishing Trip

We were told that the good people at the front desk could arrange a fishing trip for guests. Not having caught any good-sized fish since about 1990 (Murray Island), Peter thought he might give it a go. The chap said they would spend some time trawling for the big local Mahi-Mahi, and then do some fishing for bottom-feeding fish. It was sounding good.

Peter got up early and went to meet the chap at 6.00am. His first warning should have been when he climbed on the back of a motorbike with the 'ship's captain' to go and board the boat.

When I got up a little later, I looked out and I could see a boat on the horizon, and I wondered if that was his boat.

But then I noticed something in the waves, a much smaller boat ...

and I wondered .... yeahhhh!

Here is Made (the man) taking his outrigger boat down to the water to go fishing.

It was a good chance to look back at the coast, and the nearby hills.

Peter was disappointed as he was provided with a little rod and reel and rusty little hooks. At first he hoped that was just for catching bait, but soon it was obvious that this was not the trip he was hoping for.

He did catch some (little) fish - in fact embarrassingly he had pulled in 7 before Made managed to snag even one - and then Made managed to catch a 'Nemo', which gives an idea of the types of fish they were catching.

Made complained that business was poor, no one seemed to want to go on his fishing trips (funny that!) and his children were hungry. Well, he got his money out of Peter, plus a bucket of fish for his hungry children. (We do wonder why he doesn't just go out and catch more fish for those hungry kids.)

Shangrilai Buffet

On our first day here we heard that there was a buffet meal (including a roast suckling pig) at a 'sister' resort (belonging to the same company as Bali Palms) just down the road - a free shuttle would be provided, and there would be live entertainment. It sounded like a cheap and filling meal, so we joined.

We had to wear the silly hat and a flower in our hair, and the food was ok (not really that 'flash'!) There was an Indonesian group doing the percussion thing and a lady dancing too. It was nice enough music, except too loud.

They tried to get everyone to join in and dance a bit too.

Lots of Aussies

The nice thing about it was meeting a bunch of other Aussies - you don't realise at first how much you have missed chatting about Aus-related stuff, and how nice it is to be able to refer to things and people know what you mean without explaining.

So the next night there was a band and buffet at our resort. This time the band was a group of three fellows with guitars, and one with a voice like Rod Stuart, and they provided very nice background music - familiar songs with an odd Indonesian twist here and there!