Bali Birthday Trip - Day 1 aka Nature Day

Hello! Finally I will write about Bali. Don't know if many are interested to read or if I even have that many followers still reading my blog, but I MUST write it for myself. First, you need to know that I arranged the trip on my own. Eventhough some plans didn't actually happen, Im quite proud that my first trip abroad arranged by me can be considered successful. I even had 5 other people following me! Thank you for being such wonderful travelling buddies Ain, Kimi, Wawan, Amer and Aiman!

On 19th of November, our flight took of at 8-ish and we arrived at midnight! Which means I literally turned 24 in Bali! No birthday song or what not. Just Kimi and Ain surprising me with huge tube of purple mentos and big bar of purple covered Milka chocolate. You guessed it! They bought it for me because its purple!

For the first day, I planned for us to head to Lovina which is 2 to 3 hours away from Denpasar. The original reason for us to go there is to catch the sunrise in the middle of the sea while sighting dolphins. Isn't that like the most awesome birthday plan or what??? Our arrangement with the supir is to be picked up at the airport at 3am and start our journey from there. Lucky us, we are at Ngurai Rai Denpasar new airport so everything is clean and new and modern. Unlucky us, we are at the new airport. There's hardly any stores or eateries open. With nothing to do, we had a drink at...get this...Bangi Kopitiam, and then stretched our legs lie down on the floor and had a sleepover at the airport.

At 3 on the dot, Nyoman picked us up and to Lovina we go!!!! OK, there's a but. Abah actually made me promise not to go into the sea since during that time there was a really bad typhoon in Philippines. I told the boys, if the weather is fine, you guys go ahead. I will not be going.

We arrived at Lovina Beach at 6-ish. Guess what happened that morning? It was raining super lebat as if Thor decided to show up in Lovina just because my father asked him too. Of course no boats will take anyone to the sea.We all ended up sleeping in the van until about 8 (it still didn't stop raining then) hoping there's a place open for us to have breakfast. There were none! I told the supir lets just start our journey back, since we will be stopping at a few places anyways. And make sure to stop by if you see any warung or restaurant open. We are all famished!



First stop - Banjar Holy Hot Spring! It was drizzling, and you have 6 zombies walking with umbrellas. We had the option to swim in the hot spring pool but we didn't. Everyone were groggy and still sleepy. But that didn't stop us from taking pictures!

Next stop is my favourite of the three places we went, Gitgit Waterfall! Still in the Banjar area, we parked our van and hiked down to the river. Actually there's a charge for people to go to Gitgit Waterfall - around RM1.50. We didn't have to pay because we were really early, no one was at the counter. I was super excited, I lead the troop during the hike. When we got there.......BEAUTIFUL!



That's when we all got really awake. There was a small stairs we took, as we get closer, the raindrops and splashes of waterfall kinda collide and that sound of bursting water, it was almost majestic.

We stayed for a bit and then the rain got stronger, we hiked UP back to our van. Of course I was the last one to reach the van. Hwaaaaaa in my head I told myself JUST. KEEP.GOING!
Pant...panttt....
I didn't sign up for this! T______T
Come on, sikit je lagi! *horse breathing*
BILA NAK SAMPAI?!

In the van, we all took off our damp sweaters and what not since our bodies are heating up. That's when the supir said, okay next we go to Twin Lake! Is it on a hill?, we asked. Yes, a little bit. GROANNNNNN! So the journey continues uphill, thankfully by drive. We decided to switch off the aircon and roll down the window. Kabus pagi atas bukit, bliss!

The Twin Lake - Danau Bunyan and Danau Tamblingan should actually look like this.

But its soooo foggy when we were at the look out point, nothing we can do about it.


Except go makan at the restaurant across the road. We all are just happy to makan and then we see the last dish in the menu......babi masak kecap. OHKAY! Let's just have breakfast. Since its the fruit season, the banana pancakes and pisang bakar was super sedap. Tapi makan dihurung lalat. We are pretty sure coz we all haven't bathe since the day before. Haha. That was it. Everyone to the hotel now!

This is already a long post. Hang in just a little bit more. I want to show you our awesome villa. Ehem, hotel. The Grey Boutique Inn, Seminyak. Right behind Grand Kuta Bali. I arranged for our rooms to have the pool view, and since we got all 3 rooms in front of the pool - it really felt like we got the place to ourselves.





Mandi and rehat for about 2 hours and then makan time! Im ever so grateful that Sari Ratu is so near to our hotel.

Next in the agenda, shop till you drop! We went to a place in Seminyak, where there's a whole stretch of factory outlets. The boys were super happy obviously. But the best place is Sogo. Gila tak iPanema RM20 sepasang. I bought like 5! Dinner at Nasi Padang Sederhana. We were not very adventurous about food on the first day. Let's just be safe and feed our poor, hungry souls.


Back in the hotel suddenly 5 half naked guys started singing the birthday song to me in front of my room. With a piece of cake. So comel. Hahahah. But the videographer (Ain) didn't press the record button. So there's just a memory of that.

Then they jump into the pool.
The end.