Bali with the Teongs

This post is more than 1 month over-due. Have been so busy with work............. Will write about that on a seperate post!
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BL & I brought our boys to Bali for the March holidays. It was a bit difficult to decide on what we were going to do; Having not worked for more than a year, I was on my "austerity" drive and my very dear friend, BL, is more of a 5-star type of girl.... There was no way I was going to pay for villas at US$900 a night and I knew I wasn't going to be able to convince her to stay at the huts at Amed beach for US$3 / night!! After much debate, we finally settled on a small villa in Seminyak for under USD200/night. Things looked good on paper, but when we arrived, the place was completely "un-preped"! Cob-webs everywhere, no toilet paper, musky smelling rooms.... Sitting at Bali Deli, we decided to leave the villa and find alternative accomodation. It was really quite difficult to get anything since it was Galangan (Balinese Christmas / New Year) and many places were closed as the staff return home to their villages.

We finally ended up going to Mt Batukara and staying at a gorgeous place called the Mountain Resort Retreat which is run by a lovely Australian, Dutch couple. Rebeccae, Richard and their daughter Imogen were excellent hosts. The resort is literally in the middle of nowhere and was supremely peaceful. Days were spent reading, playing games and going on lovely walks..... With temple visits and cermonies every other day! We were treated like part of the village and participated in all the woderful festivities and were even invited to the home of a local Balinese family for some local delights.

Eng Guan came to join us at the end of the trip and the boys just had a truely wonderful time together whilst BL and I sat out on the porch indulging in loadsa port and girlie-chat!!!

The boys spent hours on end playing RISK!

Bali is a special place and being there for Galangan made it even more special. Next time, we are going to stay for Neypi (the day of silence so the bad spirits can't find their way back, after Galangan, where we made tons of noise to chase the spirits away. Everthing shuts down even the airport and people aren't allowed out of their houses and there is supposed to be no cooking or fires!)

Beautiful hikes in the paddi fields. Kids were a little grossed out by the leeches but we managed to convince em of the medicinal cleansing benefits!

Temple festivities

Balinese home visits after the temple!

Cycling trip : This was so much fun! It was down-hill on mountain bikes until we reached the main road and here, we had a little mis-communication with the driver and instead of depositing out bikes, decided to attack the last 10km to reach the beach. 10km is no problem normally, but little did we suspect that it was bloody 10km uphill in the middle of the day along a major express way! I had to get off and push my bike twice!

Playing @ the beach near Tanah Lot

Stephan's 5th birthday. He finally gave up his bottle in BALI! yeah!!!

Stephan is 5!

Stephen celebrated his 5th bday a few weeks ago and had his 1st proper bday party with school friends and all.....

Steph wanted to have an army cake!!! eeks! I have no idea where that fascination came from.........

We organised a pool party @ Sunset Way and it was all great except there was a party there just before ours and all our dear guests had to melt outside by the pool under the sun until we could set-up in the hall.

It was a pool party after all, but there were tons of children that came without their swim stuff and I had absolutely no idea what to do with them!

I don't know what I would have done without mum's help. She brought food, organised for game organisers and helped control the crowd!

The yo-yo competition was a little too difficult for Stephan and his K1 friends but the older boys sure had fun!

We were in Bali for Stephan's real birthday on the 19th March. He asked Rebecca (our host at the mountain resort) for a spiderman cake and amazing, she whipped up a most amazing cake... spider-man and all!!!!