in between black and white
One of the highlight from our honeymoon back in 2015 was Karma Beach Club, which we visit in our 3rd day in Bali.
We opt for a laid back afternoon after we went to Garuda Wisnu Kencana in the middle of the day, so Karma was a great choice.
White sand and clear water were ready to treat our eyes – even le husband couldn’t resist the temptation to dip his precious leg. 😆
ps. Thanks for the visit, Bang Yosh-Fanti-Nabel! ❤
Hello Thursday! The first #ThrowbackThursday post is here.
This post has been in my draft for far too long. *my bad* :sigh: So, this is story about my honeymoon – it’s just two years ago, not too old, yes? 😀
Please enjoy!
It is a story of our first day in Bali. As I stated in this post, we choose to wake (as) early (as possible for our tired bodies – 8 am is still considered early for a honeymoon morning, right?). The rental car was delivered after breakfast and off we went to Ubud around 10 am. My husband is the one in charge to drive while I was navigating him with GMaps in hand.
Pecatu to ubud was not a short journey, it took almost 2 hours to reach our first destination: Bebek Tepi Sawah Restaurant. The restaurant itself was in a very large compound with real paddy field as the view (before this time, I ate in Bebek Tepi Sawah outlet in mall: to see a real one was joyful) – even if the paddy field was in planting season.
We ordered our favorite: crispy duck with plecing kangkung and some infused water (+ ice tea for my husband). I couldn’t remember the other side dishes that we ordered but I do remember how full our stomachs were. They cost us around $50 (around Rp 500.000 – the exchange rates were not as high as now).
With our full stomachs, we drove around Ubud, enjoying the green of its forest. We went to Monkey forest but only till its gate : take videos of monkeys and then off to Tanah Lot.
Gmaps was very useful in our trip, since we had no knowledge of the route. I have to warn you tho, Gmaps gave us the shortest routes, of course, but by the shortest I mean they really were shortcuts that made us take a very small road, even the one in the middle of a paddy field or small village. Thank God that our car was a small one!
I remember vaguely that our trip from Ubud to Tanah Lot took around 30-45 minutes. We arrived around 4.30 pm and my husband really loved the view. He took many pictures and I told him about the giant snake – he had to see the snake alone, since I am not a fan of snakes. I have visited Tanah Lot before in one of my work trip, so I was kinda noisy telling him where I have been when i was there with my friends.
We heard announcement about the Sunset with Kecak Dance and that was so appealing, but we both weren’t enjoying the crowd in Tanah Lot. We remember being told about the beauty of echo Beach and how serene the beach is : off we go to Echo beach, which luckily only took around 15 minutes.
Rather traumatized by the Gmaps’ routes, we asked local people how to get to Echo Beach to catch the sunset and liked the answer they gave. We were in time to see the beautiful sunset in Echo Beach.
We didn’t stay long in Echo Beach. We were going to spend the night in Kuta Area, since that was my husband’s first visit to bali, Kuta was a must visit place. By the time we get to Kuta, our stomach was growling but we need to take some pictures first so we can enjoy dinner. 😆
…and we went to Wendy’s for dinner! 😆
See you in the honeymoon post #3!
Love,
the daRk Jasmine
Ever since my mind full of wedding plan, the honeymoon plan is also included. I always wanted to spend the honeymoon in a room with private pool because I really want to swim without my long full coverage swimsuit (still not naked, sorry 😆 ).
Since I am a full time procrastinator, my research for possible honeymoon destination is begun in the end of April while I have to leave for my hometown in early may. 😀
The first destination ever crossed my mind was Bintan Island, as it is not too far from Pekanbaru and not too crowded. My dream destination turned out to be out of my league because the resorts are too expensive and I am not feeling comfortable to spend too much money in the first week of our marriage (assuming I have enough money to afford it, which is absolutely not!). Then my attention shifted to the most common destination for honeymoon.. yes! BALI ISLAND. In my mind, there must be a not so expensive luxury villa within my budget somewhere in Bali – since Bali is full of any kind of resorts for any kind of people (also, my fiance had never been to Bali 😀 ). So the hunting began from a deal website which is one of my favorite past time shopping… I found many kind of hotels and villas which offering private pool: researching each one of them by reading review from tripadvisor and other similar websites, also from personal blogs. Almost frustrated by the options – none of it made my heart clicked – a day before my flight to Pekanbaru, I somehow stumbled upon a luxury villa offering flash sale with galleries that I love: The Flamingo Dewata Villa, a luxury private villas in Uluwatu.
Feeling slightly sure and a little obsessed with my choice, I reserved the room via their website and I asked my soon-to-be-husband to call the villa and maybe talk them to give us more benefits. 😀 The phone call was a short one because the receptionist can not guarantee anything and gave us their operational manager’s phone number for us to call. Lucky for us, the in charge person (his name is Mr. Rudi, if I’m not mistaken) was so friendly and very cooperative with our many demands. We were then secured our flight tickets and settled for 4 nights in Bali + 1 night in Bandung for our honeymoon plan.
Conversation about honeymoon and the villa deal were out of my mind in the next week, since I have to face wedding preparation and the wedding ceremony itself. After our Big Day is over, we were back to the honeymoon business and it was only 3 days before our departure to Bali. My husband called the villa again to fix our reservation and compliments : we scored some compliments!
On May 19, we board the plane in the morning to Soekarno Hatta and arrived there before noon. We had to move terminal, since we were arrived in Terminal 1B and our next flight will be from Terminal 3. We finally touched down in Ngurah Rai International Airport at 3.30 pm local time. Picked up by Mr. Rudi himself because he was nearby. We have a pleasant journey to the villa in Pecatu Area : Mr. Rudi told us many things about Bali, its people and its attractions.
Around 5 pm, we finally arrived in the Villa. The check in time is not too long, maybe because we look kinda tired (which newly wed won’t look tired, eh?) and off we went to our room by golf car.
The room was beyond my expectation. I immediately fall in love! We got the room number 3, with large private pool, pool lounge, outdoor kitchenette with complete cuttlery and a microwave plus Fresh fruits (another compliment). Spacious bedroom with king size bed and comfy living room. What I liked the most was the bathroom : it has a bath-up, a shower and large dresser. 😆
For Our first night in Bali, we choose not to go anywhere and just check out our surrounding for simple dinner. The villa was so serene that even the road in front of it felt magical. We had to walk around 10 minutes to reach the nearest “warung” (local convenient shop) to buy some snacks and we finally settled with “pecel lele” (spicy-fried catfish) as our dinner. The dinner turned out to be very tasty and not disappointed at all. After dinner, we called our friend to ask about car rental : we rented a Karimun with cheapest price from Pak made.
We started rather early the next morning because I really wanted my husband to see many places in Bali – since it was his first visit, I had to make good impression so that he will definitely go back to Bali 😆
There were two options for breakfast, either we want to have it in the restaurant or in our own room. For the first day, we chose the first option and turned out that our choice was right because the restaurant is so beautiful and decorated as dreamy as possible : I felt like I was a princess, having breakfast in a white-flowery castle. 😀 For the menu, unfortunately they only offer limited menu list that we had to choose the night before.
It was after midnight when we back to our room, so we chose to have a lazy morning and just enjoyed the private pool. We asked for our breakfast to be delivered to our room.
Another compliment that we scored was private dinner served in our room. My husband secretly ordered steak as the menu : Steak will always be my favorite! We chose the dinner to celebrate our last night in Bali, and it did be a wonderful closure of our honeymoon in Bali tale. The peace breeze, the relaxing moment made that night so intimate for both of us. Those memories will surely linger forever and give me a longing feeling.
Just before the dinner, I got a surprise visit from my university friends whom lived in Bali. They brought their cute daughter all the way from Denpasar to Pecatu and I just instantly fell in love to her.
The Flamingo Dewata Villa really exceed our expectations and I really would like to recommend this villa if you want to be somewhere serene and treasure private moments with your beloved people. I love the vibe… Just thinking about that time gives me chill now. I really want to go back there and rerun the honeymoon! 😆
Love,
The daRkJasmine
The DarkJasmine 