Day 263: Arrival in Manggis for a…Serious Vacation.
This morning we had to head back to Densapar and the immigration for two out of three visits to complete our visa renewal.
This was breakfast at our little house/villa thing. So peaceful.
We pulled out of the Origin Villas, a place we’ll remember fondly (as with all relaxed, unstuffy, small boutiques).
Here are the nerds, ready to move on:
I am super sore from that crazy exercise class yesterday.
Oh! One memory I wanted to document here that I forgot: Origin is where I sat by the pool one night this week and called my sister Hardage to hear the details of her new engagement to boyfriend Bob! Very exciting news! Woooo!
Nyoman drove us back to the office. Same drill with kids’ audio books for the ride. The roads here are crazy, even more insane than Vietnam. They’re all tight, rickety, small and jam-packed.
We appreciated Nyoman’s slow-and-steady driving style.
We were in and out of immigration quicker than last time.
Next stop: Manggis! A town on the east coast where we’ll be staying for five nights.
We pulled into the Alila Resort and said farewell to our driver Nyoman. And reality?
This stop is, admittedly….a vacation. I know that sounds absurd. Honestly, feel free to stop reading right now and delete this blog from your life forever.
But it’s the kind of place you come for your one week off to “get away from it all” and have spa treatments, hear the ocean while you sleep, get pampered, glide through a gorgeous pool, etc.
You come inside its grounds and forget there’s a whole teeming hustle of real Bali life outside its wall. Not really the goal of our year, but certainly welcome for the occasional break.
We’ve had a handful of such “vacations” this year (Brazil’s Praia do Forte, Mozambique’s Santorini, Corsica house rental), and this is…definitely one of them.
It’s not over-the-top luxury, but the grounds are lovely and manicured and right up on the beach. We can hear the pounding surf all night and enjoy the warm breeze all day. There’s tea time from 3-5, and free massages poolside from 2-3 pm. Lots of honeymooning couples. No kids.
We’ve learned to say that these places require library voices.
This hotel also has a feature that, in our 50+ hotel stays, we’ve never seen: A bag dedicated to your giveaways/leave-behind items. The tag says they’ll donate whatever’s put inside to charity.
We leave behind items in every single hotel room. Over time we’ve learned we have to put the stuff in a designated bag with a note saying “THIS IS GIVEAWAY” or else inevitably the front desk will call or email saying we left items and they’ll ship them to us.
Now there’s no confusion. I love this idea. Every single hotel should have this.
We spent the afternoon by the pool, reading, swimming, eating. I wore my thong bikini in public!!
Teddy and I each got a ninety-minute massage for pennies, and I kicked the soccer ball with James and took the kids down to the beach as the sun set.
We grabbed a light appetizer down at the beach bar — warm ocean breeze, waves crashing, Bob Marley playing, kids playing cards, only one other table there. Are we appreciating this??? It’s a freaking Wednesday night in September. Gah.
At one point James pointed at an outdoor dinner table that had been set up about 100 feet away on the lawn and said, “That’s a lot of fancy ladies having dinner!” It was a yoga group of 20-women we’d seen around, all dining al fresco under twinkling lights with a suckling pig bbq setup and live traditional Balinese music. More on them tomorrow.
We read more “13-Story Treehouse” and called it a night, feeling very, very lucky.
MISC:
Speaking of brilliant hotel do-good/charity/leave-behind ideas: We got an email from the Santorini in Mozambique saying they’ve added a program for hotel guests encouraging people to leave behind half-used sunscreen bottles and/or sun shirts for the handful of albinos living in the nearby village. Not something you see in every hotel. Thought it was good and worth noting.
