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The Insider's Guide to Travel, Food and Wine
The official travel magazine of the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association, Global Writes provides an ever-expanding library of illustrated trip reviews by professional travel journalists with advice on the best vacation ideas and itineraries, plus tips and recommendations on global destinations, hotels, B & B's, cruises, restaurants, food, wine and more. To plan your next adventure -- or just dream about one -- become an insider through the travel experiences of IFWTWA members worldwide.
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Island Nations
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Bali…Heaven Can Wait
Story by Kevin Moloney
Edited for Global-Writes by Kim Rahilly
Some hotel operators must think we're the guests from hell.
Sure, we make allowances for things not always being quite right. We adjust our expectations according to what country we're in; how much we're paying for the hotel room; and the difficulties we cause by speaking only English. But, there are some things we just can't compromise on.
My travel philosophy has always been to spend a bit more money on accommodations and enjoy all the facilities the hotel has to offer. When things aren't quite right, I speak up in an effort to get them fixed (I have never suffered from the “put-up-and-shut-up” syndrome).
A recent stay in a villa in the hills of Bali verged on the comical with too many little things going pear shaped.
Upon our arrival, we were met at Denpasar airport by a man carrying a lovely handwritten sign bearing my name: “Mr Kevin.” The trip in the mini van, past the rice fields, to our accommodations was without event. A good start.
Checked in, our bags were delivered to our beautiful villa within minutes. This was to be a relaxing holiday filled with books (both the printed and the talking variety), sun, swimming and duty-free gin and tonics. We had checked the hotel's website to confirm that the villa had a CD player.
The villa really was beautiful: typically Balinese with the massive bedroom upstairs, the living area downstairs and our own private swimming pool. Our first request was to have the sound system relocated from the bedroom to the living area so we could listen to our music and books while splashing about in the pool. Two men arrived and dutifully moved the equipment for us. No problem.
Things then started to go wrong but, with typical Balinese efficiency, were corrected as soon as possible – in a very Balinese kind of way.
-There were no towels in the room, so we rang reception to have them delivered
-The collars on the supplied robes had more makeup on them than Tammy Faye Bakker, so we rang to have them replaced
-The phone downstairs didn't work, so someone came to correct that (but he had to return later with someone else who knew how to sort out telecommunication problems)
-The toilet backed up after the first flush, so a small army carrying plungers, wrenches, toolboxes and pipes was dispatched to get us flushing again
-We ordered some ice to chill the G&Ts since the icemaker in the fridge wasn't freezing
-We called for milk so we could make tea in the morning
Finally, with a sigh of relief, we poured drinks (with ice), plugged in the stereo system, and started to listen to Bill Bryson read one of his books while sitting in the pool. However, the water cascading from the mouth of the giant frog drowned out Bill's dulcet tones, so I ventured upstairs to the working phone and requested that the fountain be turned off. Minutes later, a man arrived, rustled through the lush foliage, found the switch and presto: silence. We sat in the pool for the rest of the day, turning into steamed pork buns while sipping on our duty-free purchases. Day turned into evening and, then, into night, until it was time for us to turn in too.
While it can be very lovely to be at one with the elements and breathe the warm, mountain air; sleeping without air conditioning on this night was all but impossible. I turned on the unit before heading off to bed, but it didn't work.
I fiddled with the controls and blew out the electrical system in the villa. Now, we had no power.
I fumbled around, found the working phone in the pitch black (an exercise made a little more difficult after half a bottle of Tanqueray), and rang reception around midnight. Within minutes, another small battalion of tradesmen arrived. A procession of hotel staff passed through our front door, some with wrenches, some with torches, one with more towels and one with a jug of milk.
The ones who looked like tradesmen attended to the electrics while the others stood in the center of the room with their towels and milk.
With a bang and a clang, the power came back on but despite their solid efforts, the electricians couldn't get the air-conditioning to work properly. More banging, more clanging, a smash, a bash and…still no success.
Moving up the chain of command, our next visitor was the night manager (obviously having been recently awoken from a deep sleep). His solution was to relocate us to the downstairs bedroom where the A/C worked at arctic levels.
By 1:30 a.m., we were all set for a good night's sleep.
At 2:30 a.m., the mosquito fogging commenced. This involved two or three men with petrol-driven blower-vacs pumping clouds of blue-grey fog throughout the neighbourhood in the pitch black of the Balinese night. The noise from their machines would've had the EPA swarming like a SWAT team back home. They worked for an hour, which was irritating but, at least, it eventually came to an end. After the mozzie killers had gone, and the mozzies were (presumably) now dead, we fell into a dead sleep of our own.
Staying in the Bali countryside is a wonderful experience. However, no one has ever issued a wristwatch to any of the thousands of wild chickens that roam the streets, fields and hotel gardens. Their chorus of crowing, which I had always associated with the crack of dawn, started at precisely 3:30 a.m. Their performance in surround-sound lasted for one and a half hours and finished with a rousing finale accompanied by the mangy, homeless dogs who also roam the streets obviously looking for a chicken to sing with. They bayed, barked, hooted and crowed until the sun eventually cracked the black sky. By five o'clock, the sunrise spectacular beamed piercing shards of yellow light into our room. With the light, a rising temperature, and day two of our holiday unfolding, who could sleep?
After a sleepless night in the villa, a cup of tea was the first thing on our minds; but the kettle didn't work.
I roamed the grounds of the property searching for someone who could replace the kettle – anyone. Finding a gardener, my kettle was replaced and by 7:30 along with fresh towels and, even, more milk. We were in business, and the hotel's staff members were all smiles, as usual.
There was nothing else in the villa that could break, go wrong, be missing or need freshening up.
If Bali is the paradise described in all the travel brochures, the locals' encounters with guests like us must really be like meeting inhabitants from hell.
We just treated the first night as purgatory, and heaven followed just as we had always imagined.
© Story by Kevin Moloney, 2010
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Island Nations
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