I promised you more Bali photos! Here are our two little cherubs with some stone pals at Bebek Bengil.
This was our lovely private pool at Alam Shanti in Ubud. This is the second time we have stayed at this amazing boutique villa and we were not disappointed. If you ever go to Ubud definitely look it up - if you can get a booking!
Ol sampling the young coconut. He was so keen to try it for days, but not surprisingly he wasn't impressed once he took a sip.
This trip to Bali we did so many different things that we had never done before. One of the things was going to the Waterbom, a truly amazing water park. We had our own private gazebo (that they even delivered beer to!) and the kids had the best day being little daredevils. Ol was such a brave boy, going on all the big watersides, with a lifejacket on. His favourite was a toss up between a really steep and twisty one that was completely dark the whole way and a sheer drop side by side slide that we'd go down at the same time on these mats with handles face first. Terrifying. The kid is going to be a real wild one.
Another thing that we hadn't tried before was using a babysitter. I know all the grandparents will be up in arms but it was through an agency that our Australian run villa used. The first time (yep, we did it twice!) we just went 10 minutes away for dinner. After that went well we ventured out another night down to Potato Head at Seminyak (about half an hour away). Our lovely Nanny came along after the kids were asleep both times and because we took our video monitor, she was able to monitor them from the comfort of the lounge room. She joked that they were the only kids she had ever looked after that she hadn't even met! And all for the grand total of about $35 for both of the nights together.
And while we are talking about new experiences, I had the wonderful experience of going horseriding along the beach. It was just myself and my Balinese guide who spoke terrible english. It was extremely peaceful at times but also terrifyingly awesome at others as my guide allowed my horse to canter at a faster rate than I had ever done so before. From a liability point of view, probably not the best but as all went well it was a brilliant outing.
Nick's equivalent experience was to go surfing. He had a one on one lesson at the nearby Echo Beach. He came back on top of the world, having had a really positive experience. He kept telling me how great it was over lunch and somewhere after the second beer I found myself booked in to go surfing an hour later. I have always found surfing intriguing but I certainly never had any burning desire to give it a go. As I dragged my giant and heavy board along the gorgeous black sand beach I felt as if I was slightly disconnected from my body. I couldn't quite believe that I was being brave enough to paddle through the waves and that I wasn't terrified at the prospect of a shark taking a nibble of my legs. Unlike Nick I didn't succeed in standing up on the board. I caught a few waves while struggling to get onto my knees but most of my time was spent attempting to paddle out to where I was supposed to catch the waves. It stopped being fun very quickly. I got massively dumped a few times, including getting whacked on the back of the head by the board. My guide was extremely patient but after an hour I declared that surfing wasn't really for me. I don't think he was too shocked.
Here you can see our gorgeous Canggu villa where we spent 10 nights. Canggu is really off the beaten path, taking about 40 minutes to get down to the shopping areas. Perfect for us. Also perfect because it had a proper pool fence which meant that we could actually relax as the kids ran around on the grass. It really was heavenly.
One of our favourite parts of Canggu was the Echo Beach restaurant - just metres from where the horseriding and surfing activities took place. It sits on the edge of a cliff and has the most gorgeous views. It also has a pretty darn good seafood BBQ every night. I'm pretty sure we had dinner there at least four times. It certainly earned a special place in our hearts. In fact, if we ever win the lottery you will find us knocking back cold Bintangs right there.
We also took the kids to Bali Zoo which was really great. The animals appeared to be really well looked after and the enclosures were really lovely. And like many Asian zoos, the standards were just a little bit more lax - so we got to pat a lion cub, feed elephants and Nick even got to feed a tiger.
We really had the best holiday. It was about a week or so longer than most of our family holidays so it seemed to go on forever, in a great way. The kids really loved to have Nick around all the time and they also had so much fun just playing with each other. It cemented our insane love for this wonderful island and we really truly had to talk ourselves out of packing our lives up and moving to Canggu. It still might happen. We just need that winning lottery ticket!
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