Wednesday 14 September 2016

The Valentine Brothers - Money's too Tight to Mention

WEDNESDAY CLUB

BALI
The entrance to Nusa Dua Hotel

 
THE VALENTINE BROTHERS - Money's Too Tight To Mention 
BALI 1

One good thing about working for an airline is Staff Travel. When I was with Saudia based in Jeddah I got one free confirmed flight a year and as many free standby tickets as I wanted. I also got discount tickets with other Airlines too.

We had quite a lot of vacation to take in a year so we decided to go to the beautiful Island of Bali. We would fly to the Indonesia Capital Jakarta for free and then catch a flight with Garuda to the Island of Bali. Another perk was we qualified for discount at many top Hotels. We managed to get a good rate at a 5 star Hotel in the resort of Nusa Dua. It was idyllic, we had two rooms looking over the large pool. There was a beautiful sandy beach looking over to an Island which had a Volcano. The rooms were in the Presidential wing and President Carter had stayed there recently.

The day we arrived it was Poon Day which happens once a month. Everything closes early and they do not sell booze and I was gasping.

If the truth be known in these days it was just a little bit quiet for me. I wanted a bit more action and night life. We decided to go to the nearest town of Kuta and this was more like it. Plenty bars and Hotels and many restaurants and cassette tape shops. This was more like it. After a few beers we went to a Hotel not far from the beach called Malisty Bungalows and made a booking for the next day. The vacation was for 3 weeks and we still had another two weeks to go.

We packed up ordered a Taxi and headed for Malisty Bungalows. We got to our Bungalow and it was a bit more run down than I remembered. I must have seen it thought the eyes of my Bintang (local Beer) session.  The Facilities were not so great either, the pool was a disaster and it was actually quite far from the sea. What had we done? The games room was full of locals and they just kind of stared at us. It was all very disconcerting.

That was it I got on the phone at reception and asked or should I say pleaded for our 5 star Hotel to take us back. They did and I can tell you this when we got to our rooms, we changed, dived into the pool and headed for the pool bar right in the middle. Two Bloody Mary's Please.
I have never been so relieved .

When we returned to Jeddah we were playing Tennis with a Captain and his wife. After we thrashed them they asked us to come back to their flat. They had just returned from Holiday and  wanted us to share their photos.  They told us about this fantastic Hotel they stayed at in Kuta in Bali.
When we looked at the photos we could not control out laughter. There was a picture of them both at the reception. The sign above them read Malisty Bungalows.

By Old Pa

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1 comments:

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15 September 2016 at 14:04

I had no idea that this was a cover??! I'll pack my bags.

Aah Melasti Bungalows-gate. Kuta was pretty cool, with all the tape and t-shirt shops (gecko busters) but that hotel was pretty bad. I remember wanting to go play table tennis and as you say there were all these local hoods staring us out. The beach had massive waves too, good for surfing. Shell hunter and I were young and we remember it for stuff like frog, gecko and...well shell hunting. I had bought Sign of the Times on cassette there, a life changing moment for a 12 year old. We were lucky to have such concessions, that's for sure...you snooze you lose. Happy memories.

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