Posts Tagged With: pool

Day 1 and 2: Bali (Jimbaran)

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Mel

We arrived at midday yesterday after a 15hr (yes I did say fifteen hour) delay – thanks Jetstar you giant bag of dicks. I used the TICBALI service on arrival who meet you in arrivals, priority pass you through all sections and then transport you to your hotel. That was $50 well spent as we were walking out of the airport 45 minutes after we arrived and saw on social media afterwards that wait times were closer to 2.5hrs for others.

We checked into Ayana Segara which only opened about 4 weeks ago. It’s part of the Ayana resort which is four different locations all near each other and with shared facilities – which means 17 restaurants, 12 pools, many bars and a beautiful day spa. Plus a private beach! They also do towel art. I love towel art.

After check in, we enjoyed the view from the room and the closest pool, before heading to Rock Bar for dinner. Rock Bar is built into the cliff rocks near Jimbaran and is pretty amazing. No beautiful sunset for us *shakes fist at clouds* but the view was still lovely and the food was great.

Our first night was rough with 5 star resort pricing not stopping bogan jerks from carrying on. I spoke with a manager this morning who was apologetic and arranged for us to move rooms and have a free massage. Hopefully tonight is better!

After our included breakfast we headed to see how busy it was at the Ocean Beach Pool which is the much instagrammed infinity edge pool that overlooks the ocean. We got lucky and scored a cabana as well as a very empty pool!

After laze in a cabana and a refreshing fresh juice we went to try out the Thalassotherapy Pool. I had never heard of one before but apparently it is the therapeutic use of sea water and minerals to promote health and wellness. You basically work through over sixty different jets at 32 stations over an hour and oh boy, am I sore afterwards! We will likely do this again though, it was amazing after 8hrs in airports and on a plane.

After the Thalassotherapy spa we lazed around another pool with some cocktails…then a 4th pool with yet more cocktails….it’s kind of the theme for this trip! After an hour in the pool number 4 which was an infinity pool on the roof, I declared it “my pool” and refused to get out so we had dinner at the Luna Rooftop Bar. I ate from my spot in the pool in case you were wondering. We almost got a sunset tonight.

Plans for tomorrow include more pools, more cocktails and a massage!

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Singapore Day 3 cont’d: Chinatown and Marina Bay

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Mel

Today we did our first ever cooking class at Food Playground in Singapore! I wrote more about it in a separate blog post, including lots of photos, which you can find here: https://travelseeshare.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/singapore-day-3-food-playground-cooking-class/

After finishing the class at 12:30pm, we decided we were full of good food (naturally – since we cooked it all) and energy, so headed off to explore Chinatown for a little while. I think we will go back again as some of the food looked amazing. It was very humid today, and the markets were very crowded, so after about 40 mins of wandering we opted to head back to the hotel. Let me tell you, the walk up the stairs from the MRT station was KILLER.

The afternoon was spent relaxing in the pool – which we pretty much had to ourselves – and napping.

Our evening adventure was a trip on the Singapore Flyer with champagne. I read quite a lot about the history of the Singapore Flyer before booking this as it seems that the Marina Bay Sands viewing deck has basically put it out of business given that they are notably cheaper. I figured as first time visitors, we would give both a go at night to see which one we preferred.

Singapore Flyer

After doing some research, I opted to buy us two “champagne flight” tickets at $79 each rather than standard entry for $36 each. In theory, this meant we chose a date and time, got priority boarding and also had a glass of champagne.

I did consider the dining option but it was very pricey and you share the capsule with others which felt a bit weird. All went well until it got closer and closer to our boarding time of 7pm. Something was obviously going wrong and I was getting grumpy….at about 7:15pm they took us through a different way to other VIPs and in front of a whole queue of people we boarded A COMPLETELY EMPTY CAPSULE! Maybe we were the only champagne people? Maybe they were planning to put us with a later group and my grumpiness scared them? Who knows, who cares….it was amazing!

After alighting from our marvellous, child and people free flyer experience (40min round trip) we walked across the river on the Helix Bridge – visible to the left of the below pic – to Marina Bay shops.

We then had dinner at the DC superhero cafe. This was full of memorabilia and totally themed to DC heroes!

I had a Batman burger box and an atlantean hero cocktail. B had a Green Lantern quesadilla and a Mr Freeze cocktail. While it’s not an experience I’ll ever repeat (the bill for that was a whopping $137!!) it was worth doing it once it for the novelty value. My wagyu burger was also pretty damn tasty.

We also had a beautiful view of the colourful fountain and light show while eating.

After resting and rejuvenating, we headed for the sky park to complete the Marina Bay Observation Deck (SkyPark) comparison. What a failure that was! We got down there at 9:20pm and the lines were obscene. The queue for tickets was winding into the queue to actually go up.

Nope. Nope. Nope. I literally went down the escalators and straight back up. Maybe we will try again next week but for now….Singapore Flyer is a winner!

HFC Perk 3: we have seen very few kids staying here and the ones we do see are very, very little. This means the pool is actually RELAXING and there is minimal screaming. Sorry friends with kids but I think it’s awesome and wish more hotels we stayed in were like this!

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