Travel and Arrival

On 22.06. Julia and I took the bus to Hamburg at 10:30 in the morning, as our flight was from there. We spent the day with my friend Lisa, went out for sushi and took a walk.

Once again, we just made it to the airport in time with Drive Now, 5 minutes before check-in ended - a great achievement for Juja and me compared to previous trips :)

After a 6-hour flight and a little panic attack during takeoff, we arrived in Dubai around 5:30 in the morning local time. From there, we continued directly to Bali - a 9-hour flight, arriving at 20:30, but didn't see much daylight.

Unfortunately, we didn't book any transportation in advance, so we had to look for a taxi after passport control. On the way out, we passed official taxi providers and people approached us directly, quoting fixed prices for a ride to our accommodation, which were, however, still negotiable. We declined for now, as we wanted to get an idea of the prices first and weren't sure if we were being taken advantage of. We then went to a small minimarket still in the airport to buy water. There, a Balinese person approached us again and offered to take us. He also had a taxi service sign and we negotiated a good price compared to the previous offers (400,000 Indonesian Rupiah, about 24€). We loaded our luggage into his van and drove to Ubud, which was over an hour away. It felt a little strange at first, as the car didn't have an official taxi sign and apparently didn't belong to the large taxi company that had offered us prices initially. But everything went well, the driver was very friendly and helped us find the right accommodation. Already during the first drive, we noticed that on the roads, scooters were ruling, there was quite a chaos everywhere. :)

So, at around 23:00, we arrived at our first accommodation 'Suarsena House'. From the main road, you walk down a side street where one accommodation is next to the other.

Although it was dark and we couldn't see much, the entrance and the outdoor area were beautifully designed in Balinese style. The large pool, which we also knew from the photo, was the highlight.

At the reception, there were 2 young Balinese people and we received our key and towels, but there weren't many explanations or anything. When we arrived in our room, which was right in the garden in front of the pool, we were shocked... hardly any facilities, just a big double bed, a bedside table, and in the back part, a toilet and shower. It would have been okay, but it was incredibly stuffy and extremely high humidity, which smelled very unpleasant and the walls were partly moldy already. So, I went back to the reception and we were shown another room, this time on the 4th floor at the top with a nice view. The room itself was okay, definitely better than the previous one, but everything was very outdated and not as nice as it looked in the photos and unfortunately, the bathroom didn't smell very pleasant either... :(

Well, although we had booked 3 nights, it was really cheap (7€ / pP. for 1 night), so we calmed down and said that we would wait until the next day and if necessary, change the accommodation.

Actually, we wanted to go out again and take a closer look at the main street and maybe get something to eat, but unfortunately, it started pouring rain.. so we sat down on our terrace first and thought about what we could do next. Since it was only 6 pm in Germany at that time and Germany was playing at 8 pm, we didn't want to go to sleep yet. For the next two hours, we tried unsuccessfully to watch the Germany match live on the tablet we had brought with us, but every app or website that would have allowed it said that the broadcast was not allowed in our country. A little frustrated, we went to sleep around 2:30 am.