TANJUNG BENOA BEACH & JIMBARAN, BALI - WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2012
After such a full day yesterday, the lazy day that we had scheduled for today to enjoy the beach and pool was very welcome! Regardless we still woke up early and enjoyed the beautiful sunrise - the advantage of being on the East side of the island! At breakfast in the Casablanca restaurant we ran into others in the group and everyone is looking forward to an easy day enjoying the sun.
The day disappeared quickly between time in the pool, lunch, and a walk up the beach towards the harbour along the boardwalk, stopping along the way to browse through the beach markets. These vendors are amazing selling everything from swimsuits, coverups, sarongs, dresses, baskets, jewellery, fake watches, and wooden carvings and everything in between. The pricing in Bali is very reasonable for just about anything that you should buy be it from a beach vendor or in a store. By now many of the group are wearing new loose fitting and very attractive dresses ($10 to $12 each) that are easy and cool to wear in the high temperatures in the 80's - mind you after Borneo the humidity feels much lower here especially with the breezes off the ocean.
There is a large SPA at the Aston Bali, located next to the pool and beach, and almost everyone tried out the spa today from pedicures to hot stone massage, to full body treatment packages including facial, massage, exfoliation, body wraps and finishing with cleansing tea and a flower bath (the water was covered in heavenly smelling frangipani blossoms) - when I tell you that this package (and it was heaven and very professional) cost approximately $55 each you can see what great value all of the spa treatments were. The rooms were available for single or couples treatments.
Each day in the large and elegant main foyer at around 4pm two Balinese musicians would play their traditional ?? for the next couple of hours. As the sun dipped lower we shared fancy umbrella cocktails sitting at the swim-up pool bar - a grand day for everyone. Brenda was feeling much better today, Audrey was managing to hold her own with a heavy cold, but Suz and Pete were quite under the weather - the only good news being that at least everyone had great digs and comfortable beds to relax in and did not have to do anything should they not want to!
Today we had arranged to be picked up at 4:30 and taken to the West facing Jimbaran Beach, 20 to 30 minute ride, for a seafood dinner. Jimbaran used to be a tiny local fishing village where you could go for a wonderful fresh fish dinner cooked by tiny restaurants in makeshift kitchens - you would sit at teak tables and on this beautiful beach with your bare feet in the sand while you watched the sun dip below the horizon, while the twinkling lights at Denpasar would glow brighter and the planes would continue to land and depart from the international airport. Today this has developed to the point of there being over 60 restaurants at Jimbaran with much more effective kitchens, You still sit at tables with your feet in the sand but there are hundreds of tables and a couple of thousand tourists enjoying dinner and the sunset. There are also tourists and locals walking up and down the beach who buy corn cobs from the vendors roasting and selling it on the beach. So even though this was more commercial than our previous visit it was still very enjoyable. We had a long beachfront table at the Matahari? restaurant and our dinner was timed perfectly to enjoy our corn soup before the sun set and our main fish course arrived just after the sun went down. The restaurant provides the transfer free of charge so we all fit into the two vans with drivers whose English was pretty limited but their capability of driving fast in the very heavy traffic was quite well developed! After dinner we didn't hang around but headed straight back to Aston Bali and shared a couple of drinks at the main lounge.
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