Bali was our big trip for 2014 with stops in Los Angeles, Lombok, and four distinct areas of Bali. Planning started summer 2013 with our intent to fly Cathay Pacific first class again. After several false starts and a few phone calls Eric was able to book LA to Hong Kong, then filled in the rest of the trip.
Our general itinerary:
- May 15th – we left for LA, and spent the next day at Leandra’s brother’s house
- May 16th – late flight out
- May 17th – on a plane!
- May 18th – land in HKG, continue on to Bali, then continue to Lombok. Collapse.
- May 19-20 – enjoy Lombok
- May 21 – travel from Lombok to Bali by air, then five hour car drive across island to Menjangan
- May 22-23 – snorkel, hike, etc.
- May 24 – four-hour car ride back across island to Ubud
- May 25-28th – explore Ubud and surroundings
- May 29th – transfer to Candidasa on the east coast
- May 30th-31st – explore east coast
- Jun 1 – transfer to Nusa Dua along south coast
- Jun 2 – finally home
AA flights in red, Cathay in blue, inter-island in orange
In all we had nine flights on four airlines plus taxi rides, several boats and one downhill bike ride in our efforts to sample Bali. We were consistently surprised by the number of people on Bali, marveled at entire families on one motorbike, greatly enjoyed some awesome snorkeling in the North, experienced some great food, and managed to read a few books too.
If we were to re-do this trip we would spend more time in Lombok and Candidasa and would skip Nusa Dua in favor of one of the other beach towns near the airport for our last night, but we greatly enjoyed the places we did see.