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A delightful lunch at our hotel with Lloyd and Fiona, Australian friends we met on our cruise to Antarctica

Every now and then a friend will tell us they checked our blog for ideas before planning a trip somewhere. That might be a good idea — advice we should have followed ourselves when planning this trip!

We decided to conclude this trip with a final stay in Nusa Dua, one of just a few spots in Bali with resorts that are truly beach-oriented. But nine years ago we did the same thing — ended a long stay in Bali with a beach stop in Nusa Dua — and then wrote a blog post that was pretty unflattering to the place.

Our complaint then was that dining options outside the fancy resorts were surprisingly poor. When we travel, we invest quite a bit of time researching restaurants. And the result is that we very rarely have a meal that isn’t pretty good. We love food, and a missed opportunity for a good meal while traveling feels like a tragic loss.

It turns out things had not changed here in Nusa Dua, and we find it very odd. There is a huge tourist population here, including a lot of people staying at pretty high-end resorts. Because we’re not the only people who tire of overly fussy resort food (and resort food prices), you can usually find good quality independent restaurants in places like this. But it’s strangely just not the case here.

That leaves us with three options:

1) Eat at nice resorts. This we did plenty of because our hotel had a truly excellent restaurant, just not the kind of place we want to eat every day. Plus a neighboring resort had a somewhat more casual poolside restaurant that worked well for lunch.

2) Take a car somewhere. We don’t always love the hassle of this, but the Grab ride-sharing system here is so good and inexpensive that we did this a few times. One night we even traveled 25 minutes each way to a pretty amazing place in Jimbaran called Cuca.

3) Give the local independent restaurants another chance. Many restaurants are clustered in a Nusa Dua development called Bali Collection. It’s a really bustling place with a ton of physically attractive restaurants with indoor/outdoor seating, good lighting, and a wide variety of cuisines. One night we went to an Indonesian place with decent reviews, but we left feeling like we’d had a decidedly mediocre dinner (i.e., a failure). A couple nights later we tried a nearby “French” place we’d liked the looks of. And the food was positively terrible.

Because we have good survival skills, we managed to have a lovely time here in Nusa Dua, despite these epicurean setbacks. We stayed at a St. Regis resort, where we had a beautiful room with a lovely deck with a heated private pool and direct access to a “salt-water lagoon.” The latter turned out to be a huge, sprawling, wonderfully warm salt-water pool surrounded by incredibly lush tropical gardens. And of course there is a big wide sandy beach.

Our living room at the St. Regis

In the “lagoon” looking back at our room, with the entrance to the left and our “bale” lounge space on the right

Lounging areas along the lagoon

There was also a big fresh-water pool

Our patio and pool, with the lagoon just behind it, after a morning rainstorm came out of nowhere. It poured fiercely for a few minutes, then cleared up like nothing had ever happened.

The resort grounds just after the rain came and went

But the highlight of our stay was a visit from our Australian friends Fiona and Lloyd. We met these fun people on our 18-day cruise to Antarctica last winter. We’d discovered back then that we had similar long trips planned to Bali, just barely overlapping. So we made a point to get together just after their arrival. It was so much fun to see them that we all marveled over the fact that we’d only just met earlier THIS year.

Lloyd and Fiona are travel maniacs who retired on the young side and are determined to make the most of their adventurous spirit while they can. While they still live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, they are on the road much more than at home. We don’t often meet people who travel more than we do (Looking at you, Aunt Debbie). Makes us long for our earlier days of full-time travel, when we never had to suffer that indignity.

Thus we wrapped up a fantastic five weeks on the magical island of Bali. I write this on the plane as we approach Singapore, where we will catch a quick 18-hour flight home. We look forward to being back in New York and taking a few more trips planned for this summer and fall. But I can’t help wondering when we’ll get back to Bali.

Jim and Fiona coordinated their outfits

Despite all those bad things I said about food in Nusa Dua, this was Jim’s stunning Tasmanian salmon dish at lunch with Lloyd & Fiona

One evening we trekked by car to a wonderful Japanese place

Walking along the sandy beach back from lunch at the resort next door

The scene of our “mediocre” dinner; we didn’t bother taking any pictures at the truly awful place later on

A frangipani blossom on the lagoon

You really should not dive into our pool. That guy looks like he is in some serious trouble.

Did I mention how amazing that lagoon was?

The perch over the beach where we would spend every morning. Yes, those are Mark’s legs peeking out.

After 16 nights at three resorts in the Ubud region it was time to move south, down to the Bukit peninsula on the southern end of Bali. This is very different from the jungles and forests of central Bali; it has, instead, a dry and stony landscape with massive cliffs on the western shore. So a big change from what we’ve been experiencing.

First, though, we had to get there. Now, that shouldn’t be too hard: it was only about 42 miles from our resort in Ubud to the Bulgari resort we were going to. How bad can that be? Don’t ask. You just crawl getting through Ubud and in fact it took us some two-and-a-half hours to make the trip. Yikes!

Now, to be fair, we did choose to make one stop en route. Pretty much every resort we’ve stayed at on this trip has their dishes made – typically custom made – at a place called Kevala here on the island. We’ve loved the ceramics and were going right past their main store in Denpasar so we made a quick stop (and picked up a few pieces for home; perfect souvenirs…). But we were in the store for no more than 10 or at most 15 minutes so, yeah, the traffic.

A couple frangipani trees, the infinity pool, and the Indian Ocean

Once we got to the resort though it was just as beautiful as we’d hoped. The property is apparently 20 years old, meaning that the gardens and grounds are fully mature, but it feels very modern, probably the most beautiful place we’ve stayed so far.

The resort itself is way up on a cliff and we didn’t think it had any beach access at all. When we got there, though, we discovered there was a funicular-type thing headed down. So every day after breakfast we’d head down and – because we’re early birds – get the best of the 10 chairs there. Even tbough it was on the beach you couldn’t actually go in the water – it was all rocky and dangerous. But just the roar of the surf and the isolation and natural beauty kept bringing us back again and again. Even our last day, when we were leaving at noon for our next destination, we had to spend a couple hours down there before coming up to pack.

The almost shockingly steep funicular

But once you got down there they’ve carved this little oasis into nature. Note that while there is a sandy beach you can’t swim there – the bottom is all sharp and dangerous rocks. It was still glorious anyway.

Oh, and did I mention coming back up? Notwithstanding the (shockingly steep) funicular that ran for some 500 feet, there were a total of 301 steps – some of them decidedly big and steep steps – from the beach up to the roadway leading to the lunch restaurant. For us, at least, it was worth it though it was obvious based on seating capacity that most people don’t ever go down there. And meanwhile, we could see a fair amount of construction down there, a bit away from our perch. Turns out there was a restaurant there that needed a refresh, so they were doing pretty much a gut renovation while we were there. In other words, there used to be a restaurant and there will be a restaurant in the area, but not during our visit. Sad.

As for food, we enjoyed lunch at the resort every day since nothing else was in the area. At night though, we’d usually use the Uber-equivalent here and go maybe 20 minutes to little tourist zones that had some good places. One night Lebanese that was pretty authentic, another night French, and yet another night supposedly Italian but there was stuff on the menu I’ve never seen in an Italian restaurant. All good though.

Lunch with a few of the ocean

All good and way cheaper than at the resort. The place was really gorgeous and the service was great. The prices were steep even by New York standards though, and that’s saying something. And honestly a martini there was no more than half the size of what we would typically get at our favorite restaurants at home so that was not ideal.

Now it’s on to our last stop. We’re on our way to a legitimate beach stop in Nusa Dua. Amusingly, we decided to check our blog to see what we’d written the last time we were there, back in 2017. The opening line in that blog was “Nusa Dua – an enclave of five-star resorts in southern Bali – might be the most beautiful place we’ve been that I just can’t imagine going back to.” Maybe we should have done some research before making that our last stop!

This sign that we passed a couple times on the way to dinner pretty much sums up our feeling about Bali

Mark wanted his picture taken on the beach so he went down to pose

Fortunately I was still taking pictures two seconds later when this is what he looked like

Flowers, pool chairs, the pool, the ocean

Bulgari is a very high end jewelry maker (among other things) and they like to advertise themselves

The view from our patio over the pool

Our cabin under a full moon

One more picture of the main pool

And finally, our last shot on our last morning. Mark is still down there squeezing every last minute he can out of that beach chair.

The view from lunch to the pool at Capella Ubud. Just to the left of the pool are steps to an opening in the jungle and the hanging bridge leading to our tent.

We’ve just completed our third and final stop in the Ubud area. We first came to Ubud 30 years ago when it was somewhat off the beaten track. We stayed in the center of town, where you could walk to the monkey forest, stroll through markets, visit temples, and be enchanted by just about everything.

Every time we’ve come back, the town of Ubud itself is more sprawling and traffic-choked than the time before. So we tend to spend time in the surrounding areas where countless magnificent resorts have popped up, surrounded by rice paddies, jungle, and cloud forest.

So here we are at Capella Ubud, where you stay in tents in the jungle and eat delicious food and experience the warm hospitality that the Balinese are so good at. They are not just any old tents; they are gorgeously crafted works of art with heated private pools, indoor and outdoor showers, every comfort imaginable. No hardship here.

We’d cross this hanging bridge to get to our tent

Our not too shabby tent, with a heated private pool

Contemplating the world from our little pool, unaware that Jim is taking a picture

Looking up from our pool at the canopy of trees overhead

One day we decided to take a taxi into the town of Ubud for lunch, in case we were missing out on its old charms. The closer you get to town, the slower and more tedious the traffic. Then we found ourselves walking in tourist-crowded, traffic-clogged streets checking out touristy, crappy restaurants. Not something we ever need to do again.

Our walk through town to look for lunch made us never want to step foot in the place again…

…unlike our first visit to Bali in 1996, when we were joined by John & Alma, my brother and sister-in-law, who lived in Australia at that time. We stayed in Ubud town then and were charmed by everything.

The next day our research led us to a lunch restaurant a 20-minute walk from our hotel. The walk took us across rice paddies, through real villages, and down temple-lined streets, to an unassuming place with good food and views of rice fields and people working and kids playing. That’s the Ubud area we love. You just need to keep a distance from the town itself.

Walkng through rice fields toward a lunch spot…

…and then through the village…

…and rewarded by lunch overlooking rice fields…

…where local farmers were working

The architecture and design in Balinese villages is so ornate that it’s hard to tell where the temples end and the houses begin

Heading back home after lunch

It’s worth noting the peculiarities of the weather here. This is generally the dry season in Bali, with little rain, low humidity, and very pleasant temperatures. But up here in the highlands of central Bali, little micro-climates seem to vary quite a bit. We’ve had clouds and rain move in for a while, then dissipate when they feel like it. It’s been pretty unpredictable these last couple weeks. But I rather like this moody weather.

One evening we took a Grab (the ride-sharing equivalent to Uber, ubuiquitous in much of Southeast Asia) to a nice restaurant 10 minutes away. Out of nowhere, a wind picked up and a torrential rainfall began. We couldn’t believe how hard it rained and for how long. It reminded us of a memorable rain in Kampot, Cambodia 13 years ago, the kind we’ve only ever experienced in this part of the world. It was still pouring something terrible when we called for a Grab to get back to our hotel. After just a few minutes our driver said, “No more raining,” and I was surprised to see that, indeed, the rain had let up entirely. In fact, the road was bone dry. There hadn’t been a drop of rain just a few minutes from one of the hardest rains I’d ever witnessed.

After 16 days in this area, we are now ready to head back to coastal Bali for our final 10 days. We’ll head south to Uluwatu for our a clifftop stay and then finally to Nusa Dua for a proper beach break.

A wonderful dinner at Upper Deck, a 10-minute drive from our hotel. At this point we had no idea about the unbelievable rain storm that was about to move in.

The pathways through the jungle at our hotel

Dinner at our hotel one night featured a Japanese egg custard dish with some kind of dramatic smoking jasmine tea. A little Swedish kid nearby, who’d been bored by the dinner up to that point, shouted, “Can I get more of that?!”

We loved the “gym tent” decorated with Balinese wood carvings and fabric

A small temple on the hotel grounds