We’d had quite a full on day the day before, so decided to take it easier on our second full day. We started off with breakfast, which was a banana pancake and a platter each of fresh fruit! Mum had an hour of massage the day before and followed it up with another one today, the previous day was foot massage so today was an hour-long full body massage for only £4! We tried to find a reiki practitioner who we’d seen the day before, but the two times we tried to find him to book an appointment for the following day, he wasn’t there… I had a coffee while mum had her massage 😉

After the massage, we went for lunch, which was a shared portion of nasi goreng ayam (fried rice with chicken) and a portion of sate ayam each (chicken satay with peanut). Delicious!

We had a bit of a wander around the markets, mum bought some flip flops, I bought a t shirt, and wandered until teatime. As we were wandering, we went past the reiki man’s place and checked again – he was apparently on his way back, so we waited for him, and mum had an hour long session with him. Two treatments in one day; luxurious or what!

We had booked a table for tea at a local place which supported local children, called Fair Warung Balé, set up by a Swiss German man and which was cheap and popular! We weren’t a big fan of the decor, as we had hundreds of flies dive bombing us and dying in the light in front, but we were there to give to a good cause rather than the quality of the place. Food was alright, pudding was better 😊 We then headed over the road for a cocktail – well I did, mum was having a healthy day so she had some tea without milk.

Day 3 started off again with breakfast, this time rather than giving me squash like I had been given so far, I was presented with a mango “smoothie” which wasn’t like any smoothie I’d ever had before; it was nearly solid, like it was part gelatine. If you lifted the straw out and dropped it back in, it didn’t sink… Mum saluted the straw 😂

We had planned to go to Monkey Forest today, and we decided to walk it, even if mum did moan about being hot or making us walk on the other side of the road for a while, etc… In order to prevent any monkey-related catastrophe, I’d decided that we shouldn’t bring our bags or any water, but instead just ourselves wearing long trousers, the room key, and money for the ticket. I checked online the night before and it said it was 30,000 entry so I brought around 70,000 rupiah with me. Got there, and it had gone up to 40,000 per person! I tried to explain to the woman that the official website said otherwise, but she just shrugged and turned away. I offered mum to go in without me, but she said no… What else could I do… I literally begged people to give me 60p! Probably a new low in my life, but one Aussie woman gave me 20p and a Belgian man gave me the 40p, so we coul go in!

First thing we saw upon entering was a woman with a monkey on her. Then later, a different woman, onto whom a monkey leapt, pulling her hair, crouched on her chest, scratching her arm, and biting into her water bottle. Felt quite pleased we’d packed light!

Wandered around the temple complex, which was so humid you could hardly breathe, you could see lots of monkeys just chilling out, and people being stupid towards them. Towards the end, we walked past the cremation ground, and mum walked past some monkeys at the end. This following few moments are now referred to by mum as the “menacing monkey” incident although I disagree. Mum was walking towards me when a monkey got up on its hind legs and very slowly began following her. Its arms were in the end but it wasn’t trying to get her, otherwise it would have just lunged/jumped like the others did. Mum slowly did a crab walk away, with the monkey slowly following her. Mum didn’t scream exactly, but did let out a brief high-pitched noise. I on the other hand was just laughing 😂 Eventually I clapped my hands and the monkey ran off. I think the monkey was just having a dare with its mates to see if it could freak out my mum without actually doing anything… Which it won!

We went for a juice and coffee to recharge after the monkey experience (after returning back to the room to get the bags of course, as I had no money on me!) Mum did her standard thing of tripping over every slightly different surface; between the bathroom and the room, corridors, stairs, etc. We then went for a look around the Ubud Palace. Lots of Chinese tourism there, lots of rural people pushing us out of the way.

We went to have a quick beer before returning home to get freshened up. Finally, that evening, mum decided she wanted to go back to her favourite restaurant, Hujan Locale. For starters, we had sate babi – we wanted to take a picture of it but it was just so delicious, that I only got a picture of mum scraping the plate clean! I had duck leg for my main and my mum had a curry. We also had more delicious cocktails! It was our last proper night in Ubud (as we would have to have an early night the following day) so good to go out with a bang!

Our last morning in Sanur, another banana pancake for breakfast, and we just had to wait for the car to arrive; I’d arranged a car to pick us up and take us to our next guest house the day before over email, which was just as well as there was a power cut in Sanur so we had no aircon or Internet. We sat and waited by the pool while the staff seemed to be building a patio; lots of tiny buckets of concrete being brought to and fro, almost spilling on us! Fortunately the driver did show up on time and drove us to Ubud. It took about an hour as the traffic was appalling.

But finally… 6 years after I first said to my mum that she’d love Ubud and that she needed to go one day, she was finally here with me! We stayed at Loris Homestay, and the family were so nice; English level was basic but still better than our Indonesian. We we shown to our suite, one of 4, which was upstairs with a nice balcony, a massive room with twin beds, and strong aircon.

Once we’d dropped off our stuff, we went into Ubud to have a look around a bit. Stopped off at a little place just off Jalan Monkey Forest for mum’s first experience of Indonesian food – we had nasi goreng, chicken satay, and green beans with peanut. And of course the pre-requisite beer to accompany 😉 The temperature here was very pleasant; there was no aircon but we didn’t need it, definitely not after Japan!

It was lovely being able to walk up and down the road; traffic is obviously quite crazy and motorbikes absolutely everywhere, parked on the road and the pavement, appearing round corners, weaving around pedestrians and cars, but yet despite the apparent chaos, there is definitely some underlying order as no one was run over that we saw!

After a gentle relaxing day of wandering around, we went for some food, to a restaurant just opposite our accommodation, called Hujan Locale. It turned out to be mum’s new favourite restaurant! We had a delicious margarita with tamarind jam, nutmeg and herbs, and then I had beef rendang for my hit of classic Indonesian food. Mum had a beef stir fry which she ate very quickly so I presume she enjoyed it! We had got a papaya salad to share but we really didn’t need it, as the portions were so generous.

After a great day, we headed back for an early night 😁

So good to wake up and be in an actual bed rather than on a plane for a change! Lovely room, aircon, roomy, although it wasn’t quite the place I’d booked; I’d booked the Sindhu Mertha Guest House and they’d “upgraded” us to the Sindhu Mertha Suites supposedly; another staff member said that the Guest House was undergoing renovations, yet walking past it I could see guests going in and out so who knows what was actually happening. True Indonesian style 😉

Nice view from our room as we were upstairs at the back of the complex with a view over the pool, although we didn’t quite understand how breakfast worked – everyone else seemed to have a menu and breakfast delivered whereas I had to go in search of it. Standard banana pancakes, mum ordered tea with separate milk but we received hot coconut milk in a jug – unfortunately we didn’t notice until she’d already added it to her tea! That one went straight down the sink!

We headed towards to beach and sat down for a lovely lunch at a cafe next to the beach overlooking the sea. I had fresh grilled fish and mum had shrimp, with beer and fresh fruit juice to accompany. Delicious! Finished off with a pudding – mango with coconut icecream. We met a fellow Brit who told us he came to this cafe every time he was in Sanur, and that he had lunch here every day!

It was quite interesting to note how much the island had changed since my last visit in 2010 – so many more buildings and restaurants along the seafront, more upmarket venues, and also a lot of signs and businesses advertising in Chinese. Sadly also a lot more boats were arranging trips to Nusa Lembongan, and the British guy told us how it was full of hotels and other businesses now. Times have to change I suppose…

We walked along the seafront, parked ourselves on the edge of a hotel maintained section of beach, and had a lovely swim in the sea! I forgot how warm the sea is here 😊 At least that aspect of Sanur hasn’t changed!

We popped back to the hotel to get freshened up and then out for dinner, again by the seafront. The staff were telling us how they were all quite cold that evening – it was 25C so absolutely glorious for us! The restaurant wasn’t as nice as where we’d gone for lunch, and so when a huge tour group came and disrupted everyone by moving tables and chairs etc, we took it as a sign and went for a drink at the place where we’d had lunch. We also tried black rice pudding – interesting particularly when served warm, it not mum’s cup of tea at all(!), before using Grabcar to get a taxi back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, off to Ubud – I emailed the home stay to arrange for their driver to come to our hotel at midday to take us there, to save fiddling about with taxis and potentially being taken to the wrong place to try and sell us to another hotel!

One thing I decided when booking my flights to Denpasar was to ensure that we left enough time in KL for our non-connecting flight, as I knew we’d have to collect our luggage and also transfer terminals. We took the overnight flight from Japan to KL with AirAsia with our onward flight at 4pm, so we’d arrive, go to the hotel and sleep, and wake up the following day in Bali to maximise our time there. I planned that we could sleep on the plane and then go into KL during the day if time allowed… Right?

Well, even the best laid plans and all that… Our flight was delayed by one hour leaving Japan which doesn’t sound too bad, but it was delayed due to turbulence affecting the inbound flight. An ominous sign really! We ate our delicious cakes that I got from a patisseries in Daimaru in Tokyo while waiting, and finally got on the plane.

I’d paid extra for the quieter area with dimmed lighting in the hope of sleeping. The area was lovely and quiet, with not many people, so me and mum were able to get an entire row to ourselves! However the dimmed lighting was a lie; considering it was a red-eye flight, you would think that they’d turn the lights off like my 2nd Emirates flight to Taiwan did, however they just dimmed the aisle lighting a dim blue, but the lighting above the window was left on full brightness! In addition, the flight attendants were continually roaming the plane, trying to sell me souvenirs at 2am, offer me breakfast while I was sleeping with my hood over my face, and when I didn’t reply, actually shake me to wake me up…! Eventually I passed out around 3pm while lying across a whole row of seats. Mum on the other hand stayed awake and witnessed a lightning storm which she described as being like the end of days, truly apocalyptic – the seatbelt sign stayed on for the entire 7 hour flight, sheet lightning and massive turbulence!

I woke up during the descent and wished I hadn’t as the landing was appalling, shaking and bumping all over the place! As mum hadn’t slept a wink, I booked us into the Tune hotel outside the terminal for their “refresher package” ie 3 hours of sleep for 100RM. They wouldn’t let us check in until 9am as there were no available rooms so as it was only 7am, we left our bags and went back to the terminal for a drink and a bite to eat. At 9am on the dot we checked in. Mum thought the hotel was damp but to be honest I fell straight asleep and didn’t notice!

at 12pm we left the hotel and made our way to KLIA from KLIA2 on the KL Transit train, checked in (very very slow queue) and then went to Starbucks to while away the next 2 hours until the onward flight.

Flight was on time, we flew with Malindo Air and they were great! In-flight meal, entertainment and everything – brilliant! Plus it was still daylight when we took off so we even got to see natural light from the window!

We arrived and got through security in record time, went outside to find our pre-booked airport taxi… No one there to meet us 😞 Our driver was running late, eventually we found him, he brought the car round to meet us, and finally we were on our way to the hotel!….right??!

NOPE. The car then promptly broke down just outside the airport, on a corner, on a busy road, about 300 yards from the airport toll booth. The driver determined, after failing to start the car multiple times, that it had run out of petrol. He informed us that because he was running late, he hadn’t had time to go to the petrol station. “A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine” sprang to mind! He left us in the car while he walked to the petrol station. Mum felt very unsafe as the cars were coming quite close to our broken down vehicle, so insisted we stand on the verge, which was about 1 foot wide before a deep wide ditch full of water! Luckily the driver found a kind person who gave him a lift to the petrol station and back on the back of his motorbike. After filling up, all was working again! We got to the hotel about 9.30pm, and promptly went to bed. At least we were in Bali 😊