{"id":692,"date":"2015-01-31T17:22:21","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T01:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/?p=692"},"modified":"2015-10-26T01:19:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T01:19:31","slug":"woo-hoo-bali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/2015\/01\/woo-hoo-bali\/","title":{"rendered":"Woo-Hoo…Bali!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Well we left KL on Tuesday and 3 1\/2 hours later we were in Bali. I am not going to lie, in light of recent events I was a little nervous to fly Air Asia. It will be our first of many flights with this company as we booked all our flights months ago on a seat sale. I am sure it will be fine…”just don’t think about it” Paul says. That is some good solid advice, but easier said than done.<\/p>\n

We flew into the Denpasar airport and took a pre-planned hotel transfer to Canggu\u00a0area. Most hotels here offer hotel\/airport transfer for a reasonable fee. We will stay in this area of Bali until Tuesday, then head to Ubud for four nights and then we will head further up to the Mt. Batur area for a few nights.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Ok, so I was in charge of booking our accommodations in Bali with the only premise, they had to be cheap. I feel I did pretty good so far, but Paul finds the place a bit to “hippie-dippie\u00a0baloney” for him (You know you have young kids when the first quotes that come to mind are from Disney). The Guesthouse is called Serenity Eco Guesthouse. Paul’s favorite saying over the past few days has been “Serenity Now!!”. \u00a0I chose Serenity Eco Guesthouse for several reasons; it is locally owned and operated, they try to run things as environmentally friendly as possible, they are affordable, breakfast is included in the room rate, they are steps from the beach, they have a swimming pool and they rated quite well on Tripadvisor. They also have massage rooms (which we have all visited twice), a meditation room, a yoga studio and a raw\/vegan menu (Callum loves the raw energy balls).<\/p>\n

<\/a>So, I have to admit when we first arrived, I thought “aw gees…we have kids, were old and we are really out of shape!”. But actually, everyone we’ve met has been super nice…and skinny!<\/p>\n

<\/a>We stay in the Yin room which has one queen bed and two singles. The room itself is quite spacious, but the true gem is the outdoor livingroom and dining table. This is where Paul and I have our early morning coffee, which is always early due to the neighboring rooster that reminds us every day to get our asses out of bed. No snooze button on that guy! Having this extra area is perfect for us as the kids can sleep in and we don’t have to tiptoe around. Our View while sipping our coffee is the path leading to the pool.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The grounds are adorned with fresh flowers every day. We had a chat with the owner and she said she regularly picks up the fallen flowers from the ground and places them in bowls, steps and on the statues. She never picks the flowers from the plant as the Balinese believe flowers on a plant are like girls, you can not pick them, you have to let them choose for themselves when they want to fall.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Canggu area, where we are staying, is pretty quiet and the shoreline of the local beach is lined with fishing shacks and boats. The beaches in the area are mainly used by surfers. The only real negative thing is the garbage on the beach. Instantly made me think of the Gorillaz song “Plastic Beach”. All along the beach, there are plastic bottles, spoons, combs, lone flop-flops, and Nike runners and the sort. Areas where the rivers run into the ocean are the worst. When we walk along the beach we have to wade, sometimes waist deep, through the river to carry on. This one area in particular is especially dirty and in fact I saw a man step into the river, pull off his shorts, squat and evacuate his bowels. Not so bad I guess as it flushes out into the ocean, but lets just say, that’s not something you see every day. Two days later, I had to take off my shorts and wade through that very same water and all I kept thinking was “human feces…HUMAN FECES”. \u00a0Once we got to the other side, a lovely Balinese man who watched us cross, gave Callum an abalone shell that he found. Nice! After being here for only a few days, I now know why the Balinese people are known for their kindness. While the beaches around us are a bit dirty, the beaches in the main touristy areas are kept very clean.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Walking around the neighborhood offers an aventure every time. The scenery is beautiful with a variety of shops, homes and rice fields along the way. While dodging motorbikes, dogs and cows you also have to be aware of the sudden rain showers, as we are visiting during the rainy season. The Thunder and lightning storms freaked Lydia out a bit at first, but Callum consoled her by explaining that thunder was just god farting. Now she laughs when she hears it.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Not a big worry when it rains, we just pull off, have a beer and wait it out. That’s how it is when you have no place to be. Callum likes to hold my beer for the pictures (I am not promoting childhood drinking). I have discovered the local beer does not agree with me. Not sure if it is the quality of the beer, or the quantity at which I was drinking it. Needless to say I have given up on beer, which I never really drank much anyway. Hopefully after a day or two of sobriety, I’ll be able to try a yoga class without the threat of a code brown in the yoga studio.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Balinese Petrol\u00a0station<\/p>\n

Along with all the other sites, there are the Murals and graffiti. Some of them are true works of art and in my opinion add “pizzaz” to the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

<\/a>As many of you have been enquiring about our niece Chelsea who is battling cancer, I thought I would include an update. As most of you know she ended up in hospital for the last week of our stay in KL with an infection in her port. She was able to come home the day before we left, but unfortunately, she ended up back in hospital and since then the doctors and family decided to operate and remove her port. During the surgery, the surgeon found gangrene so a good decision to remove. Please send all the positive thoughts and energy you can for brave little Chelsea who through all this, still manages to find her smile.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well we left KL on Tuesday and 3 1\/2 hours later we were in Bali. I am not going to lie, in light of recent events I was a little nervous to fly Air Asia. It will be our first of many flights with this company as we booked all our flights months ago on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,13],"tags":[34,41,65,90,116,239],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1600,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/1600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nixoninteriors.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}