Good times.
Up at the crack of about 8.30am again, off to the breakfast room, took some photos, at some eggs.
We’ve come to to a conclusion on the coffee here, it sucks. Balinese coffee is seriously seriously bad. Tastes like some sort of tropical wood has been boiled up with a touch of some vaguely unpleasant spice in the pot.
Spoke to one of the other guests (Frances, and Australian) who obviously wants us to go on a tour with her. It actually sounds like a good idea, the tour company is recommended by our guide book, and the tour goes to several of the places we wanted to visit anyway. So, that might be on the books for tomorrow, or the next day.
Anyway, the plan for today was to head over to the Waterbom Waterpark, so we did. It’s only a few minutes from our hotel, but on the way we stopped in at a little internet cafe so Claire could check her email, and send a brief missive to a couple of people.
56k/s access is super-homax-plus, but you tolerate these things when you must.
Waterbom park is awesome. Truly.
I’ve only been to maybe 3 other waterparks, but none of them come even remotely close to this one. Not in scale. Not in quality.
The park is big, and includes lots of facilities, kiddies pools & slides, spa (not the bubble water kind, though no doubt there are a number of them, this kind of spa gives you a nice massage, rubs oils into your skin, gives you a manicure, etc), numerous restaurants (one of which served me some of the best bakmi goreng ayam I had in my whole trip, and a perfect granita), and a really cool ‘river thing’ that loops through and around the park, you ride it on yellow ‘floaty things’ and can get off at a number of points. Very good fun, especially the crazy monkey statues that spit and piss on you with huge cocks, and waterfalls to trap (or at least splash, depending on which waterfall it is) the unwary at several points.
The main attraction, of course, are the slides & I certainly wasn’t dissapointed there, the tower is might, you approach it along a path through lovely bush, with birdsong drifting down from the canopy. There are several levels of the tower, and varying levels of intensity to the slides, from very easy and mellow ones, which I saw children riding (and which Claire and I rode a couple of times) up to the truly insane. We got the video and took a few snaps, I hope they come out alright.
My favourites were probably the Jungle Boogie and the Splashdown.
Splashdown, which is mostly near verticle (okay, maybe 60° – 70°), followed by maybe 50 metres of runoff, to give you a chance to slowdown. Wedgie city. Really.
The pictures will have to tell the story. But you have to try it yourself, most likely.
Anyway, we spent a whole day there, and even so didn’t do everything, money well spent, and really good fun.
On the way out we saw a wall of photos taken throughout the day, there was a fairly nice one of us, so for about $4, we didn’t say no.
Got a bit of redness around the shoulders & head, even thought I slapped on sunscreen several times, probably should have used one of the uber sporty sunblocks, I expect the slides pretty much scraped the block right off.
Never mind.
On the way back to the hotel I was thinking of buying a hat, so we went into one of the nearby stores, bad choice, they had no hats for me, and none of their shorts fit right (fine around the waist, but a bit tight in the leg, not useful if you want to be sporty), everything else being a bust I spotted pile of Bintang stubbie holders, the guy wanted 250,000 for 5, I laughed and went to walk out, this seems to really piss the Balinese people off a lot – they think I don’t understand that their starting price isn’t the real price, but I understand just fine, it’s just that I’m playing my own game, and they don’t understand my rules, anyway, got him down to 5,000 and I was happy with that – but he looked really pissed off, I didn’t feel good about this, but when he didn’t say thank you or goodbye, I was pretty sure I had a reasonably good deal.
Got back to the hotel, grabbed my book, and lay by the pool for a while reading and planning what to do for dinner.
I’m having such a great time.
Later…
We ended up heading to Legian to find dinner, took a horse drawn carriage, really good fun, and very slow, though this is probably a good thing when you want to have a look around.
We don’t think the horses are treated very well, some of them are very skinny, some limp a bit. Basically the same as the Balinese dogs.
Hi Legian, some very nice shops, we dropped into a jewelry place & found a really nice silver ring for Claire, we’re not up here for shopping thought, we’re here to eat, and right across the road is one of the Rough Guide’s recommended restaurants: Gosha.
They specialise in seafood, but they’ll have to do more to prove it. I wanted lobster, so our waiter accompanied me to the front of the restaurant to choose one, expecting to find a tank full of happily frollicking lobsters I was terribly dissapointed to be presented with a lobster – fresh from the freezer!
I bags-not-ed the lobster and had a whole snapper panfriend in garlic butter, a bit over cooked, and the sauce was dissapointing.
We did have some great pineapple juice though.
Anyway, out of there and into a taxi for a quick ride down to Mata Hari at Kuta Square to grab snacks and drinks for the hotel room (oh, and Claire wanted from tea that wasn’t Balinese (and horrible)).
Thena quick walk back to the room, and another day is done.