You should have seen my hubbie’s face when we got to the resort! He was speechless.

Thanks for your welcome back email! We had such an awesome time in Bali. It was just what we needed after all that planning leading up to the big day. I just loved our wedding day, even though it was a little bit wet. My hubbie kept saying that no matter what the weather, we’ll still have fun – and we did! It was just so nice seeing all our family and good friends together in the one place. All the planning and stresses are worth it in the end 🙂 By the way, I’m really glad we used the Butler honeymoon registry. It was just so easy to use and we loved how our friends and fam could upload pics of themselves.

So after our big day we couldn’t wait to get on that plane and start our honeymoon. You should have seen my hubbie’s face when we got to the resort! He was speechless. Our villa had the most amazing views of the jungle and the river. And our pool! It was so much bigger than what we were expecting. We definitely made use of it. I’m so glad we decided to stay at the Royal Pita Maha, we just felt so spoilt and pampered there – thanks so much for recommending it. The staff were lovely and the entire resort exceeded our expectations. I’m actually really glad we didn’t stay in town because it was nice to escape at the end of the day back to our quiet villa and go for a swim in our private pool. The complimentary afternoon tea at the resort was a nice surprise too.

The biggest questions we had were, what do we feel like doing and what food do we want to eat today?  We love Balinese food so we’d go for walks around town seeking out restaurants serving tasty local dishes. We went back to our favourite restaurant serving babi guling, suckling pig. OMG it is just too tasty for words. The spices they use are just so delicious. We also treated ourselves to foodie experiences and had degustation at Mozaic. Definitely worth it. We also made the nice trek out to the rice fields and managed to find Sari Organiks. Indus was good too. Your restaurant recommendations were spot on.

Given how much hubbie and I like the local food, we of course had to do a Balinese cooking class. I think this class had to be the highlight of my trip 😎 We went to the markets and learnt about the spices and then went back and started preparing pastes and sauces using local spices and ingredients. It was so much fun. We made bakso which is a tasty spicy soup with fish balls, chicken satay sticks, pepes which is chicken steamed in banana leaf, yellow rice, and pandan pancake with coconut and caramel filling. And we got to eat this huge meal at the end of the class. I loved it. There were 8 of us which I think was the perfect size for a cooking group. I liked how it was really hands-on and not just a cooking demonstration. I think we both rolled out at the end of class we were so stuffed.

The last time we went to Indonesia we did a batik class so this time we decided to do something different. Hubbie decided on stone carving and I went for silver jewellery making. My creation, a pendant, turned out to be a rather interesting piece of abstract silver work… hubbie on the other hand came away with a really cute stone carved turtle. He sat there for 3 hours carving this little turtle while holding it in place with his feet (!). I didn’t realise he was so flexible – and neither did he!

I just love Ubud. I could definitely live there. For our next holiday though, we’d love to go to Vietnam – yep here we are planning our next holiday already when we’ve only been back for a couple of weeks. Thanks for all your organising and all the restaurant recommendations. We had such a fantastic time. We’ll be in touch when it comes time to go travelling again!

Best Wishes
Michelle and Kris McDonall