Memories by McMillan: Beautiful Bali

I know that I won't be able to get it all out in one shot, so here's part 1 of our Bali adventure!!

It's no secret that a McMillan family trip wouldn't be complete without a bit of drama and that's how our story begins. Most of you know that I now work 2 days a week and during that time Kylie is in daycare. Before going on I have to say that I *LOVE* our daycare center. The girls are wonderful and Kylie really enjoys herself there, however, it's still a daycare (aka germ haven). The week before we left for Bali both days that I picked Kylie up she ended up with a fever by bedtime. I don't mean your typical low grade, teething fever either. I mean 101 and up. When she would wake the next day it would be gone. Very weird but no big deal. The week we left for Bali was no exception. Wednesday she was fine, but Thursday by the time she had dinner her temp was 101.7. How is this different than the week before you ask? It lasted the entire next day as well. By dinner time the fever was gone but I wasn't convinced it wouldn't reappear in the middle of the night. All I could think was "Great, now Kylie will be sick the entire trip. Why did we ever think it would be okay to travel with a 14 month old?"

Just when I think that Kylie is my biggest problem another one comes along; my eyes are starting to hurt. I know weird right? So I think "Oh, it's just because I am tired, no big deal", and I get ready for bed. While in bed I get the really annoying feeling that something is in one of my eyes. I stick my finger in it, trying to get it out and nothing. I rub it, but that only makes it worse so I decide to get out of bed and look in the mirror. What I see when I get in there is two very red, blood shot eyes staring back at me. I suspected then that I knew what the problem was so I put some drops in the one that was hurting the most and got back into bed, without telling Jamie. When I wake up the next morning I am now positive that I have the same viral infection in my eyes that Jamie had a few weeks before. How annoying!? First off it's annoying to have the damn problem in the first place because it hurts but secondly it looks freakin’ terrible! The whites of Jamie's eyes were covered with bright red veins and everywhere he went people asked if he had pink eye. Who in the hell wants to walk around like that, much less go on vacation to a place that's on your bucket list and look like ass in all the photos?? Not this chick!

So, it's the morning of our flight and I look like I'm coming down with pink eye. Great. Kylie seems to be better and no sign of a fever exists. I think to myself "Okay, I can work with this. As long as Kylie is good, I can work with this". As luck would have it though Kylie was not "good" and was a complete nightmare the entire flight over! Well, maybe not the entire flight. She was okay for the first 45 minutes or so and she slept for about 30 minutes almost 3 hours into the flight, but for the rest of the time she was a nightmare!!! I don't know what happened to the kid. I felt sooo bad for the couple behind us because once upon a time we used to be them. No kids, relaxed and waiting to hang out and drink cocktails on the beach all day. Yes... that used to be us (sigh). I know exactly how they felt listening to a crying kid for the entire flight. I gave 'eat shit' looks to the parents of those kids just as they did to us not too long ago! They have no idea how bad I felt about it! It was the longest 3.5 hour flight OF MY LIFE!

The best part, her shitty attitude didn't stop once we got off the plane. She was a nightmare on the bus to the terminal and in the immigration line. She was so loud that the immigration officer called us up to the front of the line to get us through. She then asked the people if it was okay and they all replied "please, go ahead"! How embarrassing!! Alas, we made it to the villa and things quickly started to turn around. Kylie was excited to have room to move around and the private villa with yard and pool ended up being well worth the money as it gave her plenty of space to burn energy. We went for a swim and then took a walk down to the main street where she fell asleep while being carried. She slept like a log that night and Jamie and I enjoyed some ‘in villa’ massages to relieve the 'stress' from the trip! Yes my friends, things were starting to look up! I'm also happy to report that my eye never got as bad as Jamie's and by Sunday afternoon it had cleared up. Thank goodness we had some drops left over from Jamie's issue!!

Our private villa and compound

Taking a much needed swim!

The villa at night

Jamie patiently waiting for the massage people to get there ; )

Sunday we did a walking tour in a little town called Ubud about 45 minutes north of where we were staying. We weren't sure how Kylie would take it but we decided to arrange a sitter through our tour guide just in case Kylie became possessed again. What was supposed to be a 3 hour tour + lunch ended up being about 7 hours (including lunch). With the drive time we were out from 7 am until about 4pm. Kylie did AMAZING and had loads of fun. The sitter was great, even though I felt the need to take over on some parts of the tour (see photos below!!). It ended up being a very magical day; filled with once in a life time memories that Jamie and I were so glad we were able to share with Kylie. Even though she won't remember it, we will (and we've got the photos to show her later on). Here are a few photos from our beautiful tour!

Photos of a typical Balinese family residence (click here to learn more about the set up)

Kylie and I in the family Temple

Jamie at the entrance

Rice paddies

(All still farmed by hand. Each stalk is cut and planted by hand! Farmers only earn about 50,000 IDR (about $55 USD) a week doing this)

Rice field that is about 1 month old. That's a resting house for the farmers to break in since they don't have enough time to leave during the day.

Very narrow, downward walkway we had the pleasure of walking through. (I took over with Kylie here!)

Where it gets dark it turns into this...

But this is what it took us to! The photos don't do it justice!

Kylie enjoying the walk through the village and the attention from some local children

Beautiful temple at the end Pengukur-Ukuran temple (aka Temple of the giants) built in the 12th century

Yes, I carried Kylie all the way up those steps! Very scary!!

The next day we hired a baby sitter at the villa and Jamie and I spent the day hanging out and shopping. We went down to the famous Kuta Beach and I have to say that neither of us was impressed. The beach itself was nice, but being from Florida (Pensacola) and currently living in Perth (WA, Australia) I've definitely seen better! I've also never seen so many people trying to sell you something in one place. The would even go as far as walking in front of you, so that they could block your way while trying to get you to look at something. It was seriously annoying and made the afternoon pretty blah! It was nice to spend some time together taking our time having lunch and walking around though. It's something we don't get to do nearly enough anymore! After our shopping adventure we went back to the villa, hung out around the pool and took Kylie out for a yummy dinner! All in all a long, but wonderful day!

Me on Kuta Beach