Bali for Spring Break!

The strangest thing happened in between our trip to Phuket and Bali.  The older boys were adamant about not being pulled out of school because they said it was too hard to get caught back up.  After a teacher conference or two, I realized who the boys were dealing with and sympathized with their request.

So after a cold, windy winter, shortly after our friends left Yokosuka to go back to a sweet flying job (you know who you are), we decided enough was enough, we were going to go big in Bali.  We decided to stay at a Club Med because of the activities, Kid's club and off course all inclusive food and booze!

But first the flights…

The Japanese airline ANA is pretty nice.  Very clean, very friendly, everyone has their own TV with movies, shows and music.  The food is good considering it is airline food.  Of course any food is good after a few glasses of wine.  The only complaint I had was the seats.  They are not the normal tilt back seats.  When you hit the little button on the armrest and push back, nothing happens.  These seats recline by having the part of the seat you're actually sitting on slide forward.  It achieves the same effect as a tilt back and the head rest has those little wing things to stop your head from flopping like a fish, but there is one problem.  When your knees are already jammed into the seat in front of you, there is no where for your legs to go when you slide the seat forward.  So if you are over, I don't know, 5 foot 8 inches, you are sitting straight up the entire flight!  More wine please!  

Finally, welcome to Jakarta.  It was everything I imagined, minus the chickens running around the terminal.  It was hot, humid, and slow!  "Oh, 250 people just showed up to pay their Visa charge and go through customs?  Yes, one line will be enough."  Thank god we had a four hour lay-over.  It took us 3 hours just to get through the lines.  The airline we flew next was Garuda airlines, the Airlines of Indonesia.  It was okay.  The over the intercom prayer prior to take-off was interesting.  Whatever works.  At least my seat reclined.

Welcome to Bali.

Beautiful view from the Club's private beach

Terraced Rice Fields

No caption necessary, Right?

Bali was beautiful.  Staying at Club Med was awesome.  It gave everyone tons of things to do, but also offered some really nice quiet time to chill by the pool or beach.  The kids clubs were great, the kids tried archery, cricket, wind-surfing, kayaking, trapeze…all sorts of stuff.

Everyone had a great time.  It felt like the day-to-day stresses were gone, no longer confined to a tiny house, dealing with school or work.  There were moments of bickering but they seemed to sort themselves out.

We didn't spend the whole time on the resort.  We found a driver, name Kadak, who for one day took us around the normal tourist spots of Bali.  That's where we saw the volcano, the coffee plantation, the traditional Indonesian dance, and an impressive temple.  He was a very nice gentlemen who was very helpful, talking about the sites.  It wasn't until after the ride that Amie told me she was asking him a ton of questions to keep him talking so he wouldn't fall asleep.  We did impart upon him the wonders of a vending machine.  At one point in the conversation I was explaining a Sushi go round.  Amie and Harrison thought it was hilarious when I said, "a conveyor belt delivers the sushi, like a Choo-choo train."  To my defense Kadak knew exactly what I was talking about.

The best part of the day out in town was the stop at Monkey Park.  For what ever reason this park is infested with monkey's (it probably has nothing to do with tourists coming everyday giving them bananas).  I won't get into the story of the monkeys that attacked Harrison and Ethan, which took me playing the roll of the great Silver Back to scare off the monkeys and save the boys, but I will tell you that for 2 bucks, you could get about 20 bananas and feed the monkeys.  If you held the bananas up in your hand, like the Statue of Liberty, the monkey's would climb up to your shoulder and sit down while eating the banana out of your hand.

This didn't work for everyone.  Ethan and Liam stopped trying to get the monkey on their shoulder and ended up just chilling with new friends.

While Lila continued to try, until the very bitter end.