My wife and I have just returned from our 3-week honeymoon. We left December 15th from JFK airport in NYC on Northwest airlines ($983 r/t per ticket – booked back in August) to Bangkok connecting through Tokyo. It was approximately 23 hours, however, if you take enough Valium you wouldn’t believe how fast a flight like this can be. We arrived in Bangkok a day later on Saturday 16th around 10:30pm and hopped a bus to our favorite hotel. The next day we made travel arrangements on Thai Airlines to Denpasar for $525 r/t for 2 tickets open return. The best deal I could find from the States was $750 r/t per ticket on same airline. Always buy your tickets abroad. They will always be cheaper. We left for Bali on Tuesday the 19th and were met at the airport by our guide Wayan Sueta. Wayan Sueta has to be one of the most gentlest and kindest man that we have met in a long time. His English including slang is 90% perfect. He drove us to our first hotel (Klub Kokos) just outside of Ubud. I have to say that although the staff was very friendly and efficient and the room was very nice and clean, we felt that it was just to far out of Ubud and remote of a location. The thing that pissed us off the most about that place was the amount of dogs and the never ending barking that persisted throughout the night. We were unable to get any kind of decent sleep there, which was the main reason we left. We stayed there for 2 days and then checked into the Honeymoon Guesthouse a day early. This was a good move – the Honeymoon Guesthouse is situated in the heart of Ubud but on a side road, which makes it very quiet place. They have just completed two new villas there that are exquisite. If you go do try to get room 10, it is breath taking. Believe it or not, the only thing that it lacked and could use was air-conditioning. It got a little sticky at night. Everything in this room was either marble or intricately carved wood. The breakfast was always on time and very delicious. As you all might know – the owners of this place also own the two busiest restaurants in Ubud (Casa Luna and Indus) and you might say that they have a monopoly on eating which does not help the rest of the commerce there. We ate at both of these restaurants and I have to say that as much as the people of the Bali forum rave about these two places, my wife and I found them highly over-rated with food that was just ok. As a matter of fact, when we went to Indus (their jewel) we saw the exact same menu as Casa Luna except that it was much more expensive. Note that if you go at night to eat at Indus you will see absolutely nothing except swarms of insects. All of the highly touted rice fields views are pitch black so you might as well be at McDonalds or any other place in the universe. I actually took 2 bites of my main course and left the rest for the trash or whatever they do with it. Casa Luna is not much better except the prices are a little less. If you like to look at a tiny river with a lot of garbage in it and on the sides of it then you will thoroughly enjoy this restaurant. My only suggestion for the newbies is stay away from Indus and go to Casa Luna for a dessert after you have eaten at a quality restaurant like Café Lotus, which happen to be across the street. The Chef at Café Lotus cooks up superb meals at half the price of these other two tourist traps. Do not miss any of his pasta dishes! Two other fabulous recommendations are Naughty Nuri’s and the Dirty Duck Diner.
Touring with Wayan Sueta in his air-conditioned Toyota 4 wheel drive was a pleasure. He is friendly and funny and we had such a wonderful time. He takes great pride in showing all of the nooks and crannies that most tourists would never see or even know that they exist. We saw many beautiful Temples and numerous rice paddies in different stages of growth. He took us to the real Bali way back in the country where life is simple and primitive, the way it always was. He was a fountain of knowledge about his people and every tradition that is celebrated. His threshold of patience is overwhelming especially when we were snapping pictures like a Japanese tourist. After three days of touring the countryside we got templed and ricepaddied out and wanted to relax so we went back to Ubud for Xmas eve and Xmas day and chilled out. The highlight of Monkey forest was definitely at the entrance where there is a bunch of shops that sell the usual shit to tourists, the owner of the very last shop next to the entrance has a medium size, typical Bali mutt, and he would wait patiently for one of the many aggressive monkeys to turn its back and then sneak up on it and bite the shit out of the monkey causing the monkey to almost have a heart seizure. You might not find this funny but if you have experienced some monkey aggression towards various humans you would definitely be rooting for this dog!
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