Thursday, March 26 - Nyepi

Today, starting at 5 AM is the Nyepi celebration. We awake shortly after 5 AM and wait around the villa until breakfast opens at 6 AM. We join a few others at the hotel restaurant for a buffet breakfast. There is an obvious stillness in the air and all is quiet save for a few murmured conversations around the restaurant. The strict rules for Nyepi are obviously having the desired effect.

We spend the day doing the only things we can - eating, reading and swimming. My daughter is learning to be quite daring and stretch the skills learned in her swimming lessons to new levels. At the age of 2, though she'll be 3 in June, she has begun swimming underwater, coming up for air, and then continuing. She can also swim on her back with her head above water the whole time, taking breaths as she swims. Once we achieved these milestones, I had her jump from the wall into the water, turn around and swim back to the wall and climb out. We were all quite amazed at her swimming accomplishments.

Not much happened today, so I'll take some time and elaborate on the hotel. I long ago realized that opinions - of people, events, places, etc - depend heavily on expectations. Prior to coming to Bali, I did some research online of both the Aneka Kuta - the hotel we're staying at - and the Putra Bali - the hotel the travel agency initially scheduled us in. As expected, both hotels had 5 star ratings and 1 star ratings from prior guests. The rating is never as important to me as the comments the guests leave. Based on what I read, I came to Aneka Kuta expecting it to be a little rustic, with island charm. To a great extent, it has met that expectation. In some areas, it has exceeded expectations. In others, drastically failed to meet expectations.

1) The bathrooms are very old fashioned and plain. A far cry from what we experienced at the JW Marriott though not much different from an experience at a Days Inn except that the toilet handle does not return to its original position so you have to remember to do that so the toilet doesn't run, we had a poisonous millipede in our shower that I had to kill and dispose of, and it does not have any air conditioning, so it is quite hot during the day.

2) The restaurant is mediocre. We eat breakfast there every day because it is included with our room... and we don't know where else we could go. Same three options - Continental, American and Indonesian - available every day. Not much variation between the three options, either.

3) The pools are beautiful. This was to expectation. Everyone raved about how nice the pools were, and they are, indeed, very nice. This includes the main hotel pool and the private pool in our villa.

4) Our villa has stray cats. The entire grounds do. We first noticed them the day we arrived. Two tiny kittens under fed and malnourished. One of them we think died while we were here as it just disappeared. The other one my mother-in-law decided to feed and it seemed to get healthy enough to go somewhere else to look for food as we haven't seen it back in our villa but have seen it elsewhere.

5) Our villa has two levels. The second level covers only a portion of the ground floor, but the roof covers the whole building, including the porch. This leaves a fairly large area under the roof over the first level. At night, we would hear animals running across our bedroom ceiling. We later discovered this to be a family of bats. Pretty creepy.

6) The linens are a dingy gray and very thin. My wife ended up buying pillow cases for her and my daughter to use. I was fine with what the hotel provides.

7) We're pretty sure we heard a dog killed in a less than humane way for the restaurant behind the hotel.

The grounds of the villa are definitely 5-star. I would say the rooms themselves are, too. The service and the linens, however, are not. This can be a great hotel, or a horrible hotel, depending on your expectations. I would return, my wife would not.