Intern's trip to Bali!

Finally, the day arrived where we (Andreas, Kanika and myself) went to Bali to have some sunny days at the beach. Just before we left, Estee decided to extend her stay in Malaysia and to join us. So we hurried to the airport, because we had not bought her ticket yet.

When we arrived at the airport, the queue at the sales office was sooooo long, that we thought we would never be able to buy a ticket in time. But with her puppy eyes and the brightest of all smile, Estee managed to convince a young lady in front of the line to let her pass :D

So we hurried to the departure hall after buying the ticket just to discovere that the flight was delayed. All the rush for nothing -_-"

One hour later, the plane finally took off for Bali and after merely three hours later we arrived at the local airport. We took a cab to Kuta Beach, the main tourist spot in Bali and after a quick stroll we found two available rooms at a nice hotel.

After a night of sleep at the hotel, we decided that the hotel wasn’t that nice after all so we set out to find a better place to call "home". After walking an hour through Kuta, searching for available rooms, we found that the nicest/cheapest hotel was just beside our old place!

So, we took one big room in the Secret Garden Inn. The room had four beds in a row, a fridge, air-conditioning and a nice bathroom.

After settling down in our new room, we went to a surf school along the beach in Kuta, to book some lessons for the next day. Having done that, we went to the beach to check out the sea and play in the waves.

In the evening, we went to a nice restaurant and had a nice western-styled dinner.

The next day, we were picked up at noon from our hotel and were brought to the surfschool for the surfing lesson. We were given our surfing gear and went to the beach for some enlightenment on the theory and basic surfing movements. After mastering the basics, we set out for the "real thing" and plunged into the sea!

What looked easy at first turned out to be quite tricky. Balancing on the fake surfboard on the beach was much easier than in the water. Especially getting up from the lying position into stance without falling was very hard.

All three of us managed into stance on the board occasionally, but the consistency wasn’t really there. This because of the strong waves who made us loose our balance. At the end of the day, Andreas, who had been dying to surf since the day he arrived in Southeast Asia, decided to take the 5-day surfing course while Estee, Kanika and I chose to do some sightseeing the next day.

Because the surfing was quite tiring we went to the hotel's swimmingpool afterwards to just float around and enjoy the afternoon sun. Actually we made this a routine and visited the pool everyday.

Of course we ended the day again with a nice meal in a very fancy restaurant. We enjoyed our pasta and during dinner Andreas discovered that the restaurant had an adjacent hotel next to it. Andreas went there to get some information about available rooms, but came back with a rather sad face. The rooms were expensive, even for Europeans ;).

The next morning, we were picked up by a van from the travelling agency who took us to the watersports center, were we did some parasailing, jet skiing and snorkeling.

In the afternoon, a chauffeur took us to Tanah Lot and Uluwatu. Tanah Lot is a beautiful Hindu temple in the sea (see picture) and Uluwatu provides a beautiful view of the coast and sea. At Uluwatu, we also watched the indigenous people perform a fire dance.

After our day trip ended, we went back to Kuta Beach to hooked up with Andreas for a very nice meal at the Havana Club, a Cuban-styled restaurant. We filled our stomachs with a huge meat covered skewer. The skewer was so big, that it had to be shared with two people. So me and Estee teamed up and so did Andreas and Kanika. The latter of the two had big difficulty finishing the plate, while me and Estee were screaming for more ;)

The next morning, was bye-bye day. We went to the airport early for our flight back to KL because a new adventure was about to start: Penang!