Четыре ночи в музее Four nights at the museum

I liked the Bali Spirit Hotel extremely. He is very unusual. I can’t unequivocally rate it by the stars - something for 4, something for 3, and something for a two. But, regardless of all these trifles, the hotel is wonderful. "Spirit" in English spirit, therefore, the name is translated as "Balinese spirit" or "Soul of Bali" and the hotel is the best match for its name. You find yourself in the palace of a local prince, I will not say exactly what century, but, in any case, long gone. Architecture. Situation. Decor. An abundance of works of art - stone and wooden statues, brightly painted according to tradition, wall paintings, park arbors. A wonderfully designed concert venue - exclusively for princely dancers. And an open-air restaurant above the river, where instead of a common room for each table there is a separate gazebo! Everything looks surprisingly natural, although, of course, an antique imitation. You, as it were, got into a certain historical film about the everyday life of one of the Balinese nobles. What else, other than to enjoy such experiences, did you fly to Indonesia?
The hotel is located on a mountainside and descends to the river flowing below, but never reaches it - the river remains outside the hotel territory and serves the traditional needs of the local population - bathing, washing, fishing. You sit at a table in a restaurant and observe local life from top to bottom. Taking pictures again. Thus, the main entrance with the front porch, decorated with wonderful statues of elephants, is located in the upper part, then from top to bottom - the lobby, rooms, park, concert venue, swimming pool, restaurant over the river. You move either up the stairs or along the elegantly designed paths. Not very comfortable, maybe, but how beautiful! The pool is very nice, clean, with a bar and a comfortable seating area. The rooms are also nice, spacious and stylish, with a balcony and air conditioning. In a word - everything is as it should be. But! The bathroom is terrible. No, it's clean, of course, but the floor is paved with stone and by no means flat! So round, can you imagine? The water from the shower pours directly onto these round pebbles. That is, there is no special floor for the shower, as well as curtains. Although the room itself has a door. There is a hole in the floor under the shower for water to drain, but by the time it all goes there, the floor in the whole room will become wet. And slippery! Can you imagine what it's like to screw up on this extravagant floor covering? We asked for something to lay on the floor so that it would not be slippery to take a shower. They brought a rug. Thank them. The rest of the plumbing is normal. It takes me so long to describe the bathroom because it really surprised me. But I liked the hotel anyway.
You can stay there only with breakfast, and this is not a buffet, but a set on duty: toast, scrambled eggs, ham, juice, tea or coffee, you can have cereal with yogurt. But everything is delicious. The rest of the time - an ordinary restaurant with à la carte dishes, mainly national cuisine, adapted to European tastes. The restaurant is inexpensive. Personally, I really liked spring rolls - fried pancakes with vegetable filling, shrimp in all forms, my husband and son ordered meat. We liked everything.

About the hotel, in fact, everything. In summary, I will say that I was fascinated by him, and, accordingly, the shortcomings seemed unimportant to me, so the assessment is probably subjective. We still need to talk about the place. Ubud town. Prospects call it the capital of Bali's national art. There are indeed a lot of shops with carved wooden figures and masks. It was very nice to choose souvenirs. Ubud is located not by the sea, but in the mountains, so we planned the tour - five days in Ubud, eight by the sea and finally five more in Singapore. There is a forest of monkeys in Ubud - I really liked it, reminded me of a book about Mowgli, the place where he ended up in the city of banderlogs lost in the jungle (where Kaa dealt with them). Very similar. Huge ancient trees, stone ruins turned green from time to time and monkeys all around. Great! We also visited the bird and reptile park. Beautiful and interesting. A lot of unusual birds, the white peacock was extraordinarily beautiful, various parrots. A lot of pictures were taken. The reptile park is just a small zoo with lizards and snakes. They let you take a picture with the monitor lizard. Also interesting. I will not describe other excursions - if you go, you will see everything yourself. There are only three things to be warned about. First, at Uluwatu Temple (don't mess with the monkey forest), watch the monkeys super-attentively. Grab the camera tightly, and if you wear glasses, then they will snatch them out and throw them into the abyss! Nightmare! Secondly, rafting happens on two rivers - fast and slow. I don't remember the names. Take a fast one. It is longer and the scenery is more beautiful. A slow river flows in a rather dull canyon. In any case, there is no danger. The third is an elephant ride. 45 minutes for $65. It was a year ago. Now I'm afraid to even guess the price. A rip-off, in general, in my opinion. But I compare with Thailand. There we walked completely freely for an hour through a vast territory, went into different groves, crossed streams. And here - an artificially made track, I can’t pick another word. But for those who are the first time, it will be interesting. I know that there is another Elephant Park, somewhere closer to Chandi Dasa. There, it seems, judging by the prospectuses, a real green park, it will be more pleasant to ride an elephant there. But once again they did not pay $ 200 for the same entertainment, I judge only by the avenues, of which there are a lot at the airport. As soon as you arrive, type more and then slowly study. You will draw the right conclusions about who and what excursions to order. Happy travels and happy holidays!