Getaway Gone Wrong: Bali (2013)

July 20th, 2013.

Bali. You hear the word and think blue water, beach, and bliss. But our 3 day trip turned out to be anything but relaxing! Here’s the hilarious story of our vacation trip gone wrong…

We arrived in Bali excited and eager to pull into our hotel, which looked amazing from the pictures we saw on the internet. Cliffside views of the Indian Ocean and a glorious infinity pool had made us count down the days until our arrival. As we were given a tour of the resort, we “Ooh-ed” and “Aah-ed” over everything we saw, and we smiled as we took in our beautiful surroundings.

Our tour guide then informed us that the cliffside lift down to the private beach was broken. A huge wave and strong winds had broken it, and they were in the process of fixing it so we couldn’t go down to the beach area. “Oh..” I said, “well, at least we still have the pool!”

The villa that we booked had a picture perfect view of the Indian Ocean, so we thought we got the best villa out of the entire lot. Little did we know that we had invaded another creature’s favorite hangout spot.

Before we went to bed, my mom announced to all of us that she had read a notice in her room that said, “During your stay you may see our local residents, the monkeys, moving freely amongst the villas. We regularly feed the monkeys in designated areas around the resort and ask that you do not feed them. We also ask that you do not leave any food or personal items unattended in the outdoor living area as the monkeys are curious and may take an interest in items left behind. We thank you for your understanding.”

Monkeys?? We thought. Nobody had advertised that on the hotel website. Our tour guide didn’t even mention it, so we thought, It must be no big deal.

The next morning, my brother and I woke up and stepped outside into our outdoor living space. My brother spotted a cute little monkey perched on top of one of the trees outside our villa, so we excitedly called our mom outside to look.

Within five minutes, about a dozen monkeys large, medium, and small had descended onto the walls and roof of our villa. I grabbed my camera and started snapping shots, and couldn’t believe how close the monkeys were to us. They seemed to be checking us out, but we thought it was cute.

It was a windy day, so wind was banging against our villa doors. We hadn’t thought to lock them after going outside, and in our excitement to gawk at the monkeys we were not paying attention to the doors.

Well, the wind blew open the door to my room while we were outside. Thinking nothing of it, a few minutes later my mom and I returned to get something. As we walked around my bed, there in the hallway a monkey stopped, and stared at us. IN OUR VILLA, five feet away.

We froze. Suddenly, the monkey went from cute to terrifying. “Ohhhhhkay” I said, as I turned to run our the other way. “Go, go go!” My mom said as the monkey started to follow her into the bedroom.

I booked it out of that room in about 2 seconds and we ran into my parents room.

From the window, we could see the monkey had snatched an orange from the room and was now sitting on the doormat, happily munching on it. When the monkey dropped the orange, my mom picked it up and handed it to my dad, who chucked it over the wall of the villa. The monkey sat on the pathway, and his eyes followed the orange up and over the wall. Then he looked back at my dad and stared at him as if to say, “You jerk.”

When the last monkey left, we were all shocked and slightly unnerved. Monkeys coming into, not to mention inside, our villa was not relaxing as it turns out. However, we shook the incident off and headed out to go to the pool.

The pool area was actually jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The weather was perfect that day, and the sunlight on the water of the ocean started to put us in “relax mode.” After nibbling on some food and sipping drinks by the water for a few hours, my brother and my dad decided to go back to the villa to get something.

Two minutes later they came running back. Jack had the hugest grin stuck on his face, red with trying to hold back laughter. My dad announced, “The monkeys. There’s like 20 of them, EVERYWHERE.”

“Mom, don’t come, or you’re going to have a coronary!” Jack warned.

“What?!” I exclaimed. I jumped up and started running back with my brother to investigate. We peered through the slots in our villa door, which had an auto-lock so we couldn’t get in without the key. In a short glimpse, I saw that the glass doors had been slid open and monkeys were indeed everywhere. One monkey was carrying a pineapple out of the doorway while another monkey stood by the door.

“Oh my…” I said. Me and my brother were freaking out, we couldn’t believe it.

Somehow, the clever things had noticed that we were gone, and pried open the shut (but not locked) huge sliding glass doors that enclosed the family room, and had ransacked the entire room.

We called the hotel staff, and backup came to scare the monkeys off so we could go inside.

It was a complete mess. Ripped open Illy coffee packets, tea packets, and bits of food littered the floor. Red drops of fruit juice stained the stone outside. A teacup was on the floor, and the tabletops that had been covered with food and snacks were bare. The trays containing mini-donuts had been stripped of their saran-wrap and were empty. Even the bowl of coffee powder that was on the counter was eaten.

I didn’t know monkeys would even like coffee and donuts. But, apparently, they LOVE it.

The cleaners came right away and started clearing the mess while someone apologized to us. We all kept exclaiming over the mess and what they ate. We couldn’t believe that had just happened!! A monkey invasion was NOT supposed to be part of our package!

From then on, we locked all of the doors. We went to dinner laughing about the two incidents. I dubbed it “Monkey Wars.” My mom started thinking, What if they get into our rooms at night? What if they attacked one of us? One had already hissed at her. The hotel staff told us that if we grabbed rocks and clicked them together the monkeys didn’t like that, and that we could call our “butler” if they came back.

People kept promising her that the monkeys don’t come to the villas at night, and that they couldn’t get it as long as the doors were locked. They didn’t come that night, but nonetheless she didn’t sleep.

Me and my brother didn’t sleep well either. Because we had discovered that little tiny bugs would fall from the woven roof onto our beds. I loathe bugs and I didn’t want to sleep there. Again, the hotel had not mentioned anything about this. Very stressful and not fun having to spray bugspray everywhere and hope they don’t bite you.

The next morning, I woke up with four mosquito bites. I had sprayed my bed with bugspray but not myself, and hadn’t covered my entire body with the duvet as I had the other night. Great, I thought.

We had decided as a family to take a day trip out of our resort to go get a taste for Bali. The activities and things we saw were fun and very interesting, but we ended up stuck in traffic and my dad was stressing all day because he had to work. So he was constantly trying to find connection for his Blackberry whilst we were doing other activities….let’s just say, not relaxing for all involved. I had a great day that day, even still, but we were all worn out when we got home.

After grabbing some dinner (delicious Italian made the day better) we were welcomed home by….more bugs. At 11:30 we waited until the cleaners finished vacuuming the mattresses and changing the sheets so we could go to sleep. Exhausted and frustrated, my parents had had enough.

Me and Jack slept through another monkey invasion in the morning before we woke up. They apparently were right outside my parent’s door, hanging off the rafters of the roof, and fighting in the courtyard. I woke up to a text, “We are leaving today.”

Unfortunately what was meant to be 5 days of relaxation and pampering turned into a 3 day jungle nightmare adventure.

But that wasn’t the end of our mishaps.

The resort, built on a cliff, uses golf carts to transport guest and to climb up the steep cobblestone pathways. We loaded up a “buggy” with all our luggage and climbed in. The driver was to take us to the top of the resort where our car was waiting by the checkout station.

As the driver was going up one of the steepest parts of the path, with all of us and the luggage in tow, he had to stop. Suddenly, the brakes weren’t working. The golfcart started rolling backwards. In a flight response I jumped out of the cart onto the path, as I thought that was what everyone would automatically do. You know, abandon ship.

No one else did.

I turned around and the buggy, with my whole family inside, was rolling down the path, backwards, as the driver was freaking out. I screamed and started running towards the buggy, trying to grab it. In my panic, I somehow thought that I could grab the cart and get it to stop. My dad yelled “Get back!!” to me in fear I was going to get run over by it. I stopped and watched as the cart slammed back into the brick edge of the side of the path and stopped with a jolt.

Thankfully, the way the wheels had been turned steered the golfcart into the bricks instead of going all the way back down the path with much greater speed and force. My family got out with a few scrapes and my mom had whiplash and back pain. But we were thanking God because it could have been much, much worse. Had the golfcart failed further up the path, it would have been going backwards with greater speed and might have even flipped over the side of the path down into the brush and trees.

Another golfcart came to transfer us from the broken one. Still shaking, I climbed in for the short ride to the top. My dad burst out laughing because he couldn’t believe that just happened. On top of everything else.

Then, as my mom is about to get into the backseat of the car with me, she yells, “There’s a cockroach!! In the backseat!! Get it!” My dad wasn’t fast enough because the disgusting creature scuttled into the seatbelt hole and disappeared.

“Really?” My mom exclaimed. “We get in a buggy accident and now our car is infested?!!” My dad burst out laughing again. Me and my mom were grossed out and made the boys sit in the back instead.

I thought, when we first arrived in Bali, that I would never want to leave.

Well. When our plane landed in Hong Kong, after some nice stomach-flopping turbulence, I was elated to be back.

In our nice, warm, bug-free, concrete jungle.