I woke up at 8am and felt completely refreshed. It has always been my dream to wake up to green pastures, although today I woke up to yellowing paddy fields, it’s near enough to the dream I had since I was a child.
Dream, better be slightly far-fetched than near reality, if we dream of reality, it’s a waste, we already live in grim reality.
The breakfast was brought to us on the villa’s veranda.
Mike had japanese breakfast; I had banana pancake.
It was very enjoyable to have breakfast in a somewhat tucked-away location. The surrounding was strange and foreign to me, yet it felt more comfortable than the familiar.
The hotel staff was hard at work, gardening.
The very sweet lady came by to make offerings to the Gods, I assumed. We noticed that there is a small alter, or similar, built on one corner of the veranda of each villa. She has the kindest smile on her face, I have to believe that she has deep kindness in her heart too.
I wanted to read a book and do nothing important for the day, but also planned to go Ubud market when the sun began to set so that it’s not so hot.
Mike stayed on the veranda while I sneaked into the air-conditioned indoor.
I took a bath using Kajane’s bath foam lotion and the lavender salt from Muji.
I planned to read a book while soaked in the tub, it proved to be quite impossible since the tub was really large and it was too slippery so I merely rested. It was quite liberating to lie in a bath tub that is partially exposed. For one, it felt better than having a bath in a hotel bathroom, because the natural breeze in the openness is warmer.
After bath, I found the room very stuffy and hot, and for a minute, I thought it was the effect of the bath salt.
I examined the air-con and suspected it was not working, so I called the front desk to check on the aircon.
It was steaming hot by noon, so the heat was unbearable. The hotel staff came by to check the air-con and confirmed that the air-con unit was not working.
Meanwhile, the front desk sent someone here with a plate of pastries – complimentary afternoon tea from 3pm onwards.
He went and returned with a canister of gas and pumped into the compressor, it still didn’t work, he went again and returned with another compressor – probably from another vacant villa. Ok, I was beginning to think that the bizarre sleepless nights at Barong were just warming up to a dramatically different holiday that we had originally planned! Seriously, changing the compressor, from under the villa in the pond!
After changing and re-gasing, it seemed to be cooler.
We decided to go out as temperature outside started to cool – cloudy weather in a split second.
We went to ubud market by the complimentary car service and planned to have the car pick us up after dinner at Dirty Duck diner at about 8pm.
(Kejane Yangloni provides complimentary car service to most places in Ubud, but charges if you are going to places further)
Ubud market is like the Singapore’s parsar malam or Thailand’s chachuchuk, it’s tightly packed with stalls selling repeated items.
Prices may be staggering high at first, but it’s up to your bargaining skill to get you a good deal.
We bought a small owl ornament which was initially offered to us at RP70,000, and Mike managed to negotiate to RP40,000 which is about SGD5.80.
A caucasian tourist bargained for a hippopotamus at USD10, apparently, she must be offered a higher price earlier. At USD10, it’s still overpriced.
We also bought me pants and blouse, at amazingly low prices. we were ‘advised’ by our driver that we would be lucky if we were able to negotiate for maximum 30% discount. Obviously, the united Balinese wanted to protect their own people and not encourage tourists to undercut the price by too much.
We don’t usually get to buy much at such markets due to poorer quality items and the aggressiveness of the vendors.
This is a place where vendors are tuned-in to survivors’ mode and they might act aggressively by pulling customers to view their products.
When we walked past a small fruit stall, a caucasian couple walked past and the male asked ‘what’s that fruit?’ and the female companion replied ‘I don’t know, it’s crazy organic’. The fruit they were talking about is the purple fruit that we know as Mangoesteen. It’s interesting to observe how people react to things that are naturally familiar to us; I bet we did the same when traveled to an unfamiliar country.
A well paced holiday allows us to pause and sight. Mike spotted another paddy fields and asked if I wanted to take photos. I was thrilled! It’s like a science trip!
Dinner at Dirty Duck was fine, the food was quite tasty, except that the lights were really dimly lit in most of the dining places in Bali. I prefer to have clear view of what I am putting into my mouth.
We finished our diner at around 7pm, so we decided to take a cab off the street – RP25,000 approximately SGD3.60, back to the hotel, and asked the front desk to contact the driver not to pick us up as arranged earlier.
We asked if the front desk was aware of the status of our air con, he replied that the aircon was fixed and that we could check
when we returned to our villa, the air-con was turned on, obviously it was not shut off since we left.
Disappointingly, the air-con was not cold and just blowing regular air.
I called the front desk to feedback on it and he sent someone over to check. He said that he could arrange for someone to come and fix the air-con on the following day, meanwhile we may wish to sleep in another villa for the night.
I wanted a more complete resolution – what if the air-con is still not fixed by the next day? We couldn’t waste all the time waiting for the air-con to be fixed. We didn’t want to move permanently to the Room #5 because it was much smaller.
It was agreed that we could move to the other big villa next to our original one when the guest checked out on the following day. I prefer that arrangement so that they could take their time to fix the air-con, and I didn’t have to be concerned about it.
Mike was quite affected by the move and I could understand that annoyance since we had planned to have a completely relaxed holiday. Who knows, life had something more interesting for us in plan! Hah!
We had shower in the new villa and it’s very ‘interesting’ to shower in the large tub with dim light. When it was my turn to shower, it was beginning to rain, so the wind was getting strong, it did feel like showing in the open lake, especially that the toilet was built literally on the water!
I tried to take all these in my stride, and on the lighter note, I get to tell the story of dramatic episodes since we arrived at Bali. I love to tell stories!
We tried to watch DVD but the disk was bad.
I uploaded the photos to facebook, and I had had bad running nose soon after we arrived at Bali. I suspect it was the poor air quality and the fumes let out from mosquitoes coil burning made it worse.
Bali is quite clean, at least cleaner than Thailand,the problem is that they cleaned up the rubbish quite regularly and dispose the collected thrash by burning them up, and among the thrash are some plastic and rubber materials. Imagine the toxicity in the fumes!
The running nose caused me to need to go to bed early.
After ordering breakfast with the front desk, I hit the sack and slept. It wasn’t a better sleep than the night before as the smaller room was filled with the fume of the mosquitoes coil. The room is built in such a way that there were openings everywhere, including top panel of the front door/windows which is not covered up with glass. No wonder the room took forever to cool completely.
References:
+ Kajane Yangloni
Jl. Peliatan, Bali, Ubud
+ Dirty Duck
Telp. 62-361- 975 489
Padang Tegal – Ubud
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