Hello Jesso

Nusa Dua

Bali has long been on my list of places 'to go'. A far-flung paradise I'd heard so much about and seen so many beautiful pictures of. Well, I finally got to go for the weekend as some friends of ours had picked Bali as their wedding destination.

To make a long story short, we did very little on this weekend away. About 0% of our time was spent exploring and 95% of our time was spent relaxing. The other 5% was wedding stuff. Sometimes you need holidays like this. Time to switch off and just enjoy the moments. Also, I figured that the lack of exploring this time round means there is a definite reason to go back.

Anyway, I took very few photos but here are some to give you an idea of what we did and what we saw.

THE AREA

Our home for the weekend

We stayed in an area called Nusa Dua. It mainly consisted of luxury resorts and hotels. There was nothing else around which meant no quick trips to the supermarket for snacks or jaunts to local restaurants.

We picked our accommodation based on the bride and groom's suggestion and it seemed to be the hotel where people attending the wedding were staying.  We turned out to be wrong on that point as a lot of families and groups ended up renting villas in other parts of Bali.

Our resort had its own private beach (see picture above) where we spent most of our time lazing around and enjoying the cooling breeze.

The room was comfortable and the bed HUGE! I could even lie width ways across it with room to spare. There was even an impressive bathtub in the bathroom that I didn't get a chance to use and pretend that I was Madison from Splash.

All in all, it was a great place to stay.

THE WEDDING


The wedding and reception were held at a cliff top villa in Uluwatu. It was a stunning location. The sky even put on a little show at sunset. Oh, and there were fire dancers!

THE SUNRISE // SUNSET

A sliver of sun at Nusa Dua

This was sunrise. I only managed to wake up for sunrise on our last day in Bali. This is what we saw. It was slightly underwhelming with just a sliver of red unable to burn through the thick layer of dramatic cloud.

Sunset at Nusa Dua

This was the first Balinese sunset we experienced. It was, ok. We were on the wrong side of the island to experience its full technicolour glory, but somewhere someone was getting a great show.

THE FOOD
I took no food pics on this trip. Our meals were mainly eaten at the resort, the wedding, one dinner in Seminyak at MAMA san Bali, and at the opposite end of the scale we had one local meal at Warung Babi Guling Sari Dewi.

All the food we had was tasty. The wedding food was yum and the red velvet cake was a dream. We have a MAMA san in Hong Kong, so going to MAMA san in Bali didn't feel any different - the food was equally delicious. The resort food was not mind blowing, just ok in my opinion. However, we did only eat at one of the three restaurants at the resort. This was mainly for breakfast which was served buffet style. It's probably not fair of me to judge all their food offerings based on their breakfast buffet.

As for the only local meal we had at the warung babi guling, that was delicious. Simple yet full of flavour (and spice). The restaurant basically served different cuts of roasted pork with rice and a bowl of soup. I'm glad we got to have at least one authentic meal in Bali before we left.

Oh, the last place we went to for food was Secret Cafe. It's a quiet and cute cafe with a surfer/beach theme. We stopped here for some coffee - I opted for watermelon juice - and some homemade cake.

THE SUMMARY
It was a great weekend spent laughing with friends in a beautiful location. What more could I possibly ask for?

I will most definitely be back at some point to explore more areas and eat more food!

TIPS & INFO
Who we flew with: Hong Kong Airlines
Where we stayed: Sofitel Bali Nusa Dua Beach Resort
Tip: Use Uber to get around. Cheaper than Bali's blue Taksi and much cheaper than transport organised by the hotels. If you plan to do lots of exploring or travelling around, consider hiring a private car and driver.