Family visits

Since December 11th we live back in our house in Seminyak and that was also the arrival date of Els, Loek, Marion and Jort (Rino’s family). It has been a busy month, because one week later Julia, Sofie and Roger (Iris family) arrived. It were interesting and active weeks for all of us.

The first week only Rino’s family was there. Rino arranged an airport pick-up from his hotel and they were still quite fit after a 28-hour trip. Once they saw our house we went to the beach and had an early diner. At 20:00 it was quiet in the house and everybody slept already. The next day we spend the whole day on the beach and Rino tried to teach Marion and Jort some surfing. Two scooters arrived, one for each couple. It was nice for us to show were we have lived in the past 3 months. Unfortunately the next day all of them got the ‘Bali belly’, except Els was still feeling quite fine. During the next 4 weeks there was a lot of Bali belly’s going around the group.

In the next days Rino had to work like normally and Iris also went to Ubud for a few days. Els and Loek joined one day to Ubud. Els found out that she didn’t like to sit on the back of a scooter for one hour in this kind of traffic, while Loek actually loved to drive the scooter, he liked to drive every day. Marion and Jort travelled around the east coast of Bali for almost a week.

The Ubud Trip
One week later on the other part of the family arrived. Unfortunately Iris got sick on this day and was not able to join in picking up her own family. The Norwegians were a bit tougher with the whole jet lack, they stayed up until late and didn’t seem to have any problems with the time difference. Els, Loek, Sofie, Roger, Julia and Iris had an overnight stay in Ubud in the beginning of the week. We did some sightseeing in the Ubud area and Iris combined it with going to the foundation and of course showing Sjaki-Tari-Us to the family.
Rino sadly had to work and Marion and Jort were still on their trip across the island. Here a slideshow with the highlights of the Ubud trip:



For Christmas at the Gili’s see our next blog post.

Banyan Tree Bike Tours
Marion, Jort, Els and Loek stayed for a few days longer on the Gili’s and between Christmas and New Years Eve Rino had to work, as usual. Iris and Julia went on an arranged bicycle tour in central Bali, picked up in the morning and brought back in the afternoon. It was a spectacular beautiful trip with lots of breath-taking sights and good guides telling a lot about culture. In the underneath slideshow the bike tour is shown and explained and here is Iris’ review on TripAdvisor.



New Years Eve
For New Years Eve we made a reservation by our number 1 favourite warung “Warung Sobot”. We had planned to walk on the beach after dinner and arrive at the ‘place to be’ around midnight. Unfortunately it was raining and therefore we decided to take a taxi to the beach. After some hassle we arrived 2 minutes before midnight on the beach and enjoyed the great view with lots of spectacular fireworks from the expensive hotels in the area :-).
We really would like to pledge to all governments and local governments back home to don’t let private people shoot fireworks and instead invest some money in real and nice fireworks for everybody to enjoy!
Loek didn’t feel so great and had his first New Years Eve without alcohol since…… ever. Together with Els and Julia he left at around 1am. So the young generation stayed and got a bit drunk at a beach bar with some dancing and some deep and intense family conversations ;-)



Departure
The first of January was the day of departure for Julia, Sofie and Roger, Iris brought them to the airport. We were supposed to go on a trip with Els and Loek and a private driver, but Iris got her strange extreme stomach infection for the 2nd time. Els and Loek decided to go first to the national park of Bali on the west side of the island, Marion and Jort and joined them. In the afternoon they all came back and now Els was feeling sick. Rino had to work the rest of the week and Iris also promised to go to Sjaki for two days. Luckily Els got better and the two of them still went for a trip for two days to east Bali.

So overall we had a good time with our families. With so many people together there will always be some irritations and unfortunately we also infected each other and several people got ill, but all in all we had great time together!

We are truly happy to have the house for ourselves now and finally really make the house our own. It will take a while before the next visits come so we can explore the islands further on our own again. Underneath a slideshow with the highlights from the past weeks.