By the time I landed, got to my hotel and checked in, I felt like I was coming down with a nasty cold. I ordered a room service pizza and plate of fries (only vegetarian items on the menu)...
So I went back to my room and decided to go with room service. The only items on the menu without meat were the salad and mozzarella sticks! (Oh, and I also got a brownie with ice cream)
On Saturday morning we woke up to the sound of someone hitting the tiny gong at our weird mini-palace gates! I went out to investigate and it was the hotel staff setting up the 8am breakfast we'd ordered the night before out on the little island thingy in our pool!
Our bungalow had these crazy sprawling gardens and was walled off from the rest of the resort like some crazy feudal castle. Here are the "gates" to our room. Meredith laughing at the hanging gong people at the hotel would hit to announce their presence. WHAT?
I totally forget the name of the 2nd place we stayed at in Ubud, but it was pretty insane. Here's Meredith like "Whoa" as we walked through the stone-walled maze that led to our bungalow.
We cooled off with a quick dip in the pool, and then packed up our things and headed off to the REALLY fancy hotel we booked for our final two nights in Bali.
Since it was our last few days in Bali, we decided to splurge and stay at a fancy place in Ubud. Our first choice hotel was booked solid for night, so we made a reservation for the following day and set out to find a place for the night. We ended up finding a rad place around the corner that had these cool two-story houses with wrap-around porches.
The grounds of the resort had all of these beautifully sculpted ponds and hills. The result of locals applying their rice-paddy hill-terracing technology to the purely aesthetic realm.
After dinner, we ended up going just a few feet down the road and booking a bungalow at Saranam Eco Resort. The hotel's front desk is right off the road at the top of a mountain. In order to get down to the bungalows (which are at the BOTTOM of the mountain, you have to get in a little elevator car and a cable-winch slowly lowers the car down a railway laid on the hill.
Here's the entrance to our bungalow. (Although, considering that the structure was primarily made of marble and stone sculpture, I don't know if it technically qualifies as a "bungalow" anymore)
After I was awoken by a noisy gecko in our room, I went outside to explore the beautiful grounds at the Amertha Bali Villas. It was pretty dark when we'd checked in the previous night and getting to see the resort by daylight was breathtaking. This is the view of our bungalow...
Our plan was to stay at the Mati Hari Resort, which was highly recommended in our guide book. The Mati Hari was booked, so we ended up getting an ocean front bungalow at Amertha Bali Villas, the second most-highly recommended place. It didn't disappoint.
Pretty much the entire front of the hotel is a koi pond that has closely-placed stepping stones that allow you to transverse the koi pond to the elevator bank.
Around 10pm, we woke up after a super-long, jetlag-induced nap and decided to head downstairs for dinner. We were so tired we could barely chew our food and ended up back in bed before 11pm!
Our parents had found the hotel and made a reservation for us to spend our first two nights there while we made plans for the rest of our trip. It was really nice.
