Wednesday, October 18, Day 5

Neil asked what I wanted to do today; did I want to go explore? I said I wanted to just relax after three intense days of touring!

As you could see from the photos in the last post, our villa at Toya Devasya was marble and wood and open air. And best of all we had our own private hot pool. We could step out of our bedroom and into the pool. The pool had a continual flow of the hot springs water spouting from a statue at the far edge of the pool. The pool maintained a bathlike temperature. A little more heat would have been nice, but it was at a temperature where we could stay comfortably in the water as long as we wanted without overheating.

Breakfast was included with our room. We put on our suits and robes and headed out to explore the resort. There was a central area with restaurant counters that had different types of food: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian, and Western. They had a multipage menu that we could order from and not have to wander around to all the counters. They had very sweet waitstaff hovering around to assist you. We found one waitstaff who finally understood we had tickets for breakfast and explained the menu to us. She took our order and we found a table that overlooked one of the infinity pools. A lot of other folks were arriving and claiming tables. We figured out these are the day visitors who can buy entrance and hang out all day. An option for us next time. 

While we were waiting for breakfast, a man appeared at our table and introduced himself as Komong and said he was sorry he hadn’t greeted us last night as he was at a ceremony at the temple. We couldn’t understand the word he used for his role but we finally figured out he was our personal valet and/or concierge. He wanted to know what time we wanted our room cleaned. We settled on right away since we were heading to the hot pools and he got on the radio to call this housekeeping staff. He asked if we needed anything, and we requested two extra towels and another lounge chair.  (As a note: There were about 12 villas. In our three night stay, we only saw one other villa occupied. We definitely got personalized service.) With our breakfast came a pot of burning oil to keep the flies away from the food. It was necessary and appreciated.

We next headed to the HOT pool. We discovered it the night before when we were moving around the infinity pool to the back (and away from the loud pounding music that started pouring out of the bar at sunset.) The hot pool is up a few steps and through the Love Cave. I am serious, that is what they called it. Anyway, that is where we spent our soaking time among the purple elephants spouting nice hot water! I wonder if the elephant theme was inspired by Ganesha?

After we were like prunes, we headed back to our room to dress and explore the town for restaurant options. Exploration only went a few hundred yards in either direction on the dirt road that had very few eatery options for lunch and dinner. We tried one for lunch and the food was extremely disappointing with the prices about the same as the resort. We decided to eat at the resort for the rest of the meals and got a wristband for charging meals and drinks. The wristband was waterproof and can go in the pools with us.

We rested in the afternoon and used our private pool. We went for happy hour at the bar and then enjoyed dinner in the second floor dining room at sunset and a soak in the hot pool to end the evening.

Thursday, October 19, Day 6 My Birthday

Soak, rinse, repeat. My birthday was perfect.

Neil served me morning tea floating in our private pool, we went to breakfast in our robes, we sat in the hot pool, we met the owner by happenstance, we explored the resort, we went down water slides, then repeated the soaking.

Komong arrived at breakfast to confirm we were ready for our room to be cleaned. I gave him the keys, just as yesterday, even though we never did figure out how to lock the front doors so it really didn’t matter. He would then return the keys to me while we were in the hot pool so we knew the room was ready. He also wanted to know if we needed a driver to the airport the next day. He called his friend to come talk to us at breakfast. The short version is the driver wanted to charge a lot more than Wayan because we wanted to do some touring on the way to the airport. I sent a Whatsapp text to Wayan and he confirmed he would pick us up at 3 pm the following day. Transportation secured.

Neil had researched having us take a boat ride on Lake Batur on my birthday. The boats were very large pontoon boats with some plastic chairs. Reviews said they were a comfortable ride. They would take you across the lake to see a cemetery (with skulls hanging around), and a statue of Dewi Danu, the primordial water goddess in Balinese Hinduism. I know it is a cultural tradition for the village and the reviews said the guides do a very good explanation but nothing about it really attracted me. And where the lake had been flat the first day of our visit, we woke to a windy white capped lake and were happy to not have planned a boat ride.

Neil was asking Komong questions about the source of the hot water and other details like temperature and flow rate. (Neil is fascinated with spring water in general.) He was having a hard time explaining when the owner happened to walk by and Komong introduced him. The owner (Ketut) lives in Australia most of the time but was in Bali as there was work being done on property he was overseeing. He was thrilled to answer Neil’s questions and show us the site of the spring and the wells including the new one being dug because the original hot water well had been cooling. That answered one main question by learning all of the resorts in the area sourced their hot water from underground. The spring flow has greatly diminished due to all the wells on nearby properties pumping vast quantities of water.

We were out and about so we decided to walk the rest of the resort. We found the tent camping area with “tentalows” where you could rent a tent with beds and shared restroom/shower facilities. The dock and water sports were accessed from this area but were not in operation as it was low season. We found more soaking pools and the olympic size chlorinated swimming pool. There were two pools where they had water slides. We had to carry up a two person inflatable innertube boat like thing to ride down on. Naturally, we had to check out both slides! A few times! We were laughin’ and hootin’ like kids.

After lunch, another birthday present: I got a massage in our room on the outside lounger! Lovely!

For dinner, we actually dressed up in clothes, ha. I had noticed earlier a chocolate cake and some chocolate pudding cups in a refrigerator by the Japanese food counter. We asked to get chocolate pudding for dessert with our meal order. The process was so confusing because the servers said those were for breakfast but finally they sold us some. The best way to describe them was Neil’s comment that they were JLOs – Jello Like Objects. It was a firm brown jello with NO flavor. I didn’t taste even a hint of chocolate. We had a few bites, ate the whip cream off the top and that was my birthday dessert. (That’s okay because on our layover in Manila airport, I found a coffee shop with chocolate cake that I thoroughly enjoyed.)

We would have had another soak in the hot pool after dinner but they drain it at 7 pm, scrub it, and refill it for the next day. Instead I floated around our private pool before bed. What a wonderful birthday.