2 months in Bali

We have spent 2 months in Ubud, Bali.

Here are some of the costs and good things that we found.

Villa - we hired 2. First one was 1 bed, with a shared pool and breakfast delivered every day. We paid £25 per day, but if we rented it by the month it would have cost £250 per month. Pretty cheap. We decided we needed an extra room, and we wanted a quieter location. Our next villa was a 2 bedroom place with a decent pool and a lovely view of rice fields. This costs £750 per month.

Food and Drink - there are loads of great cafés in Ubud. You can expect to pay about £2-£4 for a main course. You can get Nasi goreng at a local place for under £1. It's cheap enough that it's not worth cooking. We have 2 baby coconuts delivered every day for £1. At the local supermarket (Bintang) you can get decent cheddar from Australia and decent sausages. The imported foods cost about the same or a little more than in Sweden. So it is quite expensive to buy those. A lot of the cafés focus on health or raw food and the quality is good in most places. We have had pizza delivery amongst others. The other day us 4 shared pizza and salad for dinner and the total bill was £4.10.

Internet and phone - mobile Internet is about 1mb/s so quite good. This costs about 50p per gigabyte. Many cafés have free decent internet. Clear Café is good. Dumara Café has  over 10 mb/s.

Transport - we hired 2 mopeds for £30 per month each. Taxis are  reasonable. To the airport is £10 and a day trip to the beach at Sanur is about £20. Petrol is 40p per litre.

For Kids -

we hired a nanny for £2.50 per hour. Other expats pay less.

The Reuse Centre where kids can make stuff out of rubbish, for £2.50 per kid for a few hours. Our kids loved it, but I saw the owners husband hit his 2 year old and had a right shout at him, before pointing him towards some good information. We'll see if it made any difference next time we go there.

Kidsworld is about 15mins by moped and costs £4.50 per kid. They have a load of bouncy castles, pool, WiFi, cheap lunch and Winston and Henry love it.

The Mansion has a kids club for £2.50 per child per hour. Where they can play supervised by a teacher from Pelangi school at the weekends. You can also pay £1.50 to have access to there nice pool, but the food is overpriced and they started charging for internet.

The art museum has a hornbill in the garden. It costs £4 entry, and you can hold the hornbill.

Sopa garden has a weekly kids club, where they do craft things or treasure hunt. It costs £2.50 per kid.

The local schools offer drop in, or you can pay yearly or monthly. They seem pretty good with a variety of philosophies.

The Paradiso cinema is fantastic. You can have a heathy and delicious meal there and a beer while the kids also watch the move sitting on little chairs at the front. The film costs £2.50 per adult  and £1.25 for kids, and the food is regular prices. We have been to the 5pm showing 4 times so far.

Fake Lego is cheap and good in a shop in Denpasar.

There is a restaurant in Denpasar where you can catch your own fish and they cook it.

The feast at the Sheraton in Kuta is an amazing buffet for about £15 for adults, and the kids get their own mini-buffet with some staff taking care of them and playing with toys. Winston and Henry loved it.

People are friendly and nice to kids. Winston and Henry love it, and want to stay there as long as possible which would be easy to do. Maybe we will travel around a bit more but go back there. It's a decent base to explore Asia and Australasia from.

Film review - Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

We went to the fantastic cinema in Ubud, Bali and here is Henry (and Winstons) review of the film we saw.

Ubud

We had enough of India, and after a few days of indecisiveness we decided to go to Bali and not Spain. Good decision.

Caroline got taken from the boarding gate to explain to security how the electric toothbrushes were not going to blow up the plain.

The flight was 3 hours to KL. Which is a nice shiny airport...  It was being renovated last time we were there and the results are good. They have golf buggies driving around giving free lifts, so we did that. Plenty of travellators for the kids to have fund on, and the food court is good. They change most currencies, but not roubles...having trouble getting rid of some old roubles.

Arrival in bali was refreshing. Nice clean airport and normal people.... Except the taxi drivers being a bit too pushy. We had a nice meal and got a taxi to Ubud, arriving at Villa Yuliati at about 11.

Villa Yuliati Costa about £25 per night, and we have a nice pool and a outdoor area. It is all clean and everything works. There is a good shop just opposite. The traffic is noisy though, especially due to the shop.

We hired mopeds. £2.50 per day. It was tricky at first, but getting the hang of it now. The kids stand on the step part, or perch on the front of the seat.

We went to visit a couple of swedes that Caroline found via facebook. They had lovely houses, so we decided to move to a nicer villa. We plan to stay here for a couple of months.

We have hired a nanny called Shanti. She works 4-6 hours a day and besides playing with Winston and Henry, she does some cooking and is generally helpful. We pay her about £2.50  per hour.

We went to the monkey forest. The monkeys are not shy, especially if you are carrying a bunch of bananas.

We have spent  of time in the pool. Winston is getting close to being able to swim and Henry is gaining confidence with his armbands.

There are loads of good cheap places to eat, so we barely have to cook. It's quite an easy time really.. Just what we needed.

We move to our new villa tomorrow. In the rice fields, so nice and quiet with a pool, air-conditioning and decent internet.

The weather is perfect. Shorts and T-shirt everyday and warm, but not dripping with sweat and hiding indoors hot.

We have sent our visas off to be extended through an agent, so we can stay until 22nd June, then Darwin.

Lego

Went to a toyshop today in Denpasar. They were selling Lele, a Lego copy. It was very cheap, and the quality is fine. Shame that IP laws in most of the world stop competing Lego products. 

Mysore to Chennai

We went to the UNESCO palace of Mysore. It was built about 100years ago. It costs 200rs for foreigners.. Not sure if its free for Indians, but I can't imagine the  opposite happening in Europe.  The palace is still half owned by the former royal family with the rest being taken over by the state.

We got a golf buggy to take us around the edge first for 100rs.. It would have taken ages otherwise and it was pretty hot.

I managed to lose the tickets, so I had to go and buy some more before going inside. They didn't allow photographs, but we sneaked quite a few anyway. A guard caught us and made Caroline delete all hers.. I was crafty and managed to keep mine.

There were camel rides available for 30rs and elephant rides for 100rs. Caroline and Henry went on the elephant and Me and Winston went on a camel. The driver was helpful with taking photos. Henry's elephant kept getting stopped by people wanting to take pictures of him... So they took a long time to get round the short route.

We only had waiting list tickets for the overnight train to Chennai. At 5pm we found out that we were not going to be on the train... So having got used to a bit of luxury at the Regaalis hotel, we decided to stay at the Radisson. Bargain for £54. Same as a Travelodge in UK... But you get breakfast.

The next morning we spent in the pool, and then went to the train at about 3pm. As there were no spaces available for Chennai, we decided to see Bangalore instead. We were in an AC sleeper compartment with 3 births high. It was empty apart from us and Winston and Henry liked climbing on the top bunk.

There was no one going along the train selling stuff and we had hardly any water. I jumped off the train and quickly bought some water and had to jump back on the moving train.... How fucking heroic.

At Bangalore we hired a porter to carry our bags over the bridge over the tracks for about £2. He huffed and puffed a lot. They are not that heavy and he didn't bother to use the wheels for some reason. Some taxi driver was trying to scam us and a helpful lady pointed us in the direction of an honest firm They took us to our hotel.

We moved rooms because we needed a sofa. Decent hotel for about £30. In the morning Winston puked up at breakfast.. He thought it was going to be a burp. They took about 30 mins to clear it up. Went swimming in the little shady pool and tried to go to a 5 star hotel for a posh Italian lunch, but the restaurant was closed.. So we went to another pasta place which was nice and had super fast service.  We got to the train station with minutes to spare although I had to carry all the bags over the stairs over the tracks. They are not as heavy as they were because we lose stuff here and there.

We had left the kids swimming stuff in the Radisson.

We took the double decker train to Katpadi, and from there a rickshaw to Vellore. We stayed in SMS hotel. Very good value, I would recommend it.

The highlight of Vellore is a golden temple. It is only 7 years old, and the roof has 5 tons of gold leaf.  The story is that some bloke was praying near an anthill and people thought it was cool so they started to hang out there too. Then they started giving each other food, and donations and before you know it he had enough money to build a hospital and a temple. The guy in charge was doing the anthill thing as a teenager and now he's 37. Now the temple acts as a big draw for donations which can be used to run the hospital.  I'm in 2 minds about this. At least people are funding the hospital without threats of violence like in a state funded system, but they are being lied to and manipulated with impossible promises of healing or a better life in order to get them to donate.

We had an argue on the way in about being asked to put our valuables in their storage. We got our entrance money back, but couldn't be the money back for the clothes they had made us buy so we could be decent enough to go in. We persevered and eventually got a private tour for free and we could take our belongings with us.

We took a taxi to Chennai for 3400rs.

Our hammock suppliers had arranged a serviced apartment for us. We had a few moans. The water stank of sewage. There were no laundry facilities, the pool was green and unusable and they wouldn't let us use the kitchen to cook for ourselves.

Bhatt and Vishal came to collect us in the morning and took us to Bhatts hammock factory. We had a good look around. The factory was very busy with people weaving hammocks and piles of stock and supplies everywhere. The unskilled get about $7per day. The stitchers get about $14.

We went to look at their 2 other sites. One was primarily used for making our hammocks and was staffed solely by women. It was similar to the Pashmina factory.  The other was where they make the hammock stands. We were given a full tour. The road had been dug up by locals who were trying some extortion on all  the factory owners who use that road. I'm pretty sure they will end up just driving away the jobs.

We had a great Chinese meal with Vishal at a restaurant called Mainland China in Chennai. Then we changed accommodation for a place called Somerset. 5 star service apartments. It costs £70  per night including tax, but you have a little flat with a bedroom lounge, washing machine, kitchen., and someone comes and tidies and does the washing up for you every day. There is a pool on the roof and buffet breakfast is included.

5 star in India Vs Renting in Cambridge

We stayed in the Radisson in Mysore a few days ago.

It was lovely. Excellent service, Incredible breakfast, great swimming pool, free internet.

I saw on my card statement that it came to £54.44 per night.

For a 30 day month, this would be £1633.20

This includes break fast and wifi and room cleaning, and toiletries.

Now compare this to renting a flat in Cambridge.

You have to pay council tax which is £2611 a year - £217 a month

You have to pay breakfast (for four people) which is about £100 a month

You have to pay electricity and water at about £100 a month

You have to pay internet at about £30 a month

TOtal expenses come to about £450 per month

So living at the Radisson Mysore is the same as renting a flat in Cambridge for about £1185 per month like these on rightmove  goo.gl/RXNFVb

If in Mysore on business, you save 20% corporation tax at least.

Pay your money, take your choice...

Ooty to Mysore

We went to the botanical gardens. Caroline needed the toilet, but we could see a succession of women coming out of the ladies toilets and throwing up...so decided it was a bit too disgusting.  Load a of people wanted to have their photo taken with Henry or touch his cheeks.

We went to dominos pizza for dinner. Not the best value, but nice enough.

The next day, we went pedal boating on Ooty Lake. It was very busy with Indian tourists. It cost £2 for 45  minutes...with a £2 deposit if you get back more than 5 minutes late.

We had these giant life jackets on the boat which were totally unsuitable for small kids, so we decided we were better off without them. An employee in a motorboat disagreed and was following us around shouting at us and blocking our path with his boat. At one point he was waving a claw hammer at us, but he gave up when I decided to start filming him. I must remember to film problem people sooner, it really makes problems go away.
Winston put his life jacket on anyway after that. I always like it when he makes his independent decisions.

Winston and Henry went on an old kids Ferris wheel.. For ages... Other kids got on and off...but it seemed you could go as long as you liked and you had to tell the operator when to let you out, so they got off when they had had enough. It cost 30p.

We want in a Hindu temple and someone put some paint on our heads. Its quite funny to explain to Winston what people are doing in the temple.. When explaining in simple language it really highlights how mental it all is.

We came across an Easter Hindu procession . There were loads of firecrackers. It was all a bit loud for Winston

The next morning, we couldn't get the train to Mettupalayam because it was fully booked. I was told to queue up at 11:30, so me and Henry went and queud up for more than an hour... First in the wrong queue (for Conoor), then in the right queue... But not even the person at the front of the queue got a ticket... They could have put a sign up to say no tickets available... What a waste of all these people's time. Henry bought some bananas and a few women tried to poke his cheeks.

Also had some frustrating times with simcards, which used up lots of time.

We checked out of the hotel..had an argument about some washable pen on a filthy old bed sheet and drove around in a rickshaw looking for a taxi to Mysore. We eventually found one for £40.

About 15mins into the journey, the driver invited UA to his house for a cup of tea. 4 families live in the house..15 people. Very friendly. We had tea and biscuits and curry and rice and Winston and Henry played with an aeroplane and a toy car.

We went down a 36 hairpin road with loads of advertisements for hospitals and ambulances.

We went through a nature reserve and saw wild elephants, wild boar, deer..some amazing sites...even better because we didn't expect to see anything on the journey.

We arrived at our nice hotel in Mysore at about 9pm.

Next morningme and Henry sent for an early swim. We had breakfast a dn then all went swimming. There was some kids lessons going on, so we watched and waited for a bit and then asked if it was ok  to get in the pool and we swam around in the middle of the lessons.

At 3pm we took a rickshaw to a mall and then to an Ashram where they had the most amazing collection of parrots probably in the world. There was even a talking one. It was free to visit.

We