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| Denpasar, Bali |
After nine hectic days in Chicago for Christmas, we all went to Bali for New Years. The plan was to get over our jet lag in Bali. Everybody recovered from their jet lag in Bali except for Stella, who didn’t sleep for nine days in Chicago and so wasn’t jet lagged in Bali.
Denpasar, Bali is about a five hour flight from Hong Kong. Bali is a large Indonesian island best known for its friendly people and lovely beaches. We stayed in Sanur, which is on the eastern side of Denpasar. Most of the action is on the western side, so Sanur is a bit more relaxed and quiet.
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| Fairmont Resort in Bali. |
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| View from the pool at the Fairmont. |
We had a spectacular villa at the Fairmont resort, which was probably over 2,000 square feet, with our own pool. The resort also had a beautiful pool overlooking the beach.
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| Boys trying to get WIFI in our villa. |
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| Resturant in Denpasar. |
We mostly just laid around in the (extremely hot) sun, occasionally taking walks along the beach or into town to find a restaurant, play life-sized chess on the beach or go shopping. The boys played a lot of badminton in our pool. In town, there were a number of small Hindu temples and every day at lunchtime they were full of people, roosters, flowers and giant fruit baskets.
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| Women at lunchtime walking to their Hindu temples. |
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| Peter, Stella and Spiro at New Year's Eve dinner. |
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| Joe and Stella at N.Y.E. |
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| Peter and Spiro trying to stay awake. |
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| Spiro and Joe watching the fireworks. |
On New Years’ Eve, the hotel hosted a lovely dinner by the beach with live music. Upstairs, there was a DJ and dancing. Unfortunately, everybody but Stella was too jet lagged to enjoy it. Peter went to bed early and none of us made it much past midnight.
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| Stella, Joe, Spiro and Peter at Nirvana Golf Course. |
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| The Indonesian caddies sporting their mint green jumpsuits. |
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| Peter and Joe waiting for the rain the stop. |
One day we ventured out to play golf. It was a long drive to the other side of Denpasar to get to Nirwana Golf Course. The drive through Denpasar turned out to be quite interesting. There are a hundred motor scooters for every car and they all just sort of flow on both sides of the road around and between the cars, miraculously never crashing. Most of the roads are narrow and some were quite curvy. Red lights appear to be optional. We passed everything from high rise office buildings to rice paddies. Nirwana, one of the top 100 golf courses in the world, was beautiful. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there, it started pouring rain. After a 45 minute delay, the rain finally stopped and the day got nicer and nicer as we played. The caddies were young Indonesian women in mint green jumpsuits. Each of the four of us had our own caddy. Spiro played particularly well. The caddies would line up when Spiro hit and, in unison, say “ahhh….” Peter thought they were a mint green version of the little yellow minions from various Disney movies.
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| The clubhouse view. |
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| Spiro at the picturesque tee box at Nirvana Golf Course. |
