Sanur a quiet beach town

Sanur, a beach holiday

Last leg of our holidays was Sanur, a quiet beach town located east of Denpasar. The ride itself was quite an ordeal. Traffic rules? I am not sure if there were any, because what we took for granted in our home country did not seem to apply in this part of the world. Stopping at red traffic lights, overtaking other cars on bends, giving an indication when turning left or right, all of these things seemed to be optional :-)). Honestly, it was the worst ride in Bali so far. In fact it was a shortening of my life (I was sitting next to the driver)! A nice relaxing massage like the one we had the day before would have been most welcome.

On our way to Sanur, a quieter beach town in Bali — *On our way to Sanur, a quiet beach town in Bali*

When we finally arrived in one piece in Sanur, we got a very positive first impression of the town. It was certainly the nicest beach town of our entire holiday. There were many nice bars/restaurants and shops. Our hotel ‘Sanur Maya’ was extraordinarily beautiful, so much better than expected ! Suddenly we regretted that we only slept here for 2 nights. We decided to do the beachfront walk and found a nice beach restaurant for our lunch. This seemed like the perfect ending of our holidays.

Apart from some beach walks and shopping we only relaxed. We just enjoyed the sun and the wind, the beach and the pool (which was freezing cold).

Before heading to our last dinner, we had farewell cocktails in the treetop bar of the hotel. There was live music in the background and a fantastic sea view. Then we walked along the beach to a restaurant where they grilled fresh fish on the BBQ.

Farewell cocktails in the treetop bar of our hotel — *Farewell cocktails in the treetop bar of the hotel*

The next day we all regretted going home. On the way to the airport we enjoyed the Bali traffic for the last time :-). It was a great holiday with very nice hotels and fantastic food. However, we won’t miss the nasi and mie goreng for a while ;-).

Things to remember from our trip ?

The Balinese are very friendly people.
The food was incredibly cheap compared to Belgium (i.e. outside the hotels). You could easily eat very well for 5-7 EUR per person when going to warungs. We found many good places to eat using Tripadvisor.
There appear to be very few traffic rules, the only places in the world where I had a worse experience were Bangkok and Delhi 🙂
Beds were often plank bottoms with a mattress on it, so much harder than what we were used to
Temples were everywhere. Every house seemed to have a little temple (or place to worship). During the mornings offerings were laid everywhere even on the street.
In Sanur we had a fantastic seaside resort, Lovina was a bit less, but that was definitely the place to be for dolphin encounters.
Bali Belly (also called tourista) was around the corner, so we had to be careful with eating raw vegetables and ice cubes.
Skewers were small because otherwise they wouldn’t fit on the mini BBQ.
The most expensive coffee in the world seemed to be the Luwak (coffee beans were first eaten by a feline animal, then the feces were collected and finally the fermented beans were cleaned).
Everyone seemed to have a motorcycle. Even though the legal age was set at 17 it seemed that kids usually were able to drive before they could walk. On one motorcycle you often found 3-4 persons !
Bali was the place to be for wonderful massages and this at a very low cost.
We requested a tour operator specialised in Bali to pre-book the transfers and the hotels. However, it would not have been very difficult to do this ourselves. Finding a driver in Ubud would have been very easy !