Mills Alumni Association/AHI Travel Tour of SE Asia: February/March 2024

Feb 18-20: United SFO to Singapore to Bali

One cannot prepare for any 17 hour flight--you just gotta go with the flow, catch as much sleep as you can, and hopefully you can tough it out at the destination particularly once you lose a day crossing the International Date Line, leaving late on the 18th, and finally arriving in Bali on the 20th.  Here is the laundry list of movies I knocked off on both flights:

• The Holdovers: meh
• Wolf of Wall Street: excellent
• Ron Burgundy, Anchorman: not my kind of humor
• Blade Runner 20-something: confusing
• Drive (more Ryan Phillope): meh
• Barbie: very clever and funny

The Singapore airport, where we had a significant layover, is quite the stimulant, despite spending most of our time in the Singapore Airlines lounge.  EVERY terminal, and there were several, had multiple copies of luxury designer shops, and all were very busy.  Somebody's economy is booming...

The two-hour flight to Bali/Denpasar was perfect for watching Barbie, and we got picked up by the resort van at Denpasar.  We were arriving two days before our tour started, so we stayed at different resort than the one for our tour.  Imagine our surprise when we were led to our "room" which was a James Bond-like walled compound with our own POOL!  Needless to say, since we figured we'd see the sights of Bali on the tour, we only left our compound for the lovely meals at the resort!

Our very own pool, nice, right!?

I took a good dose of Melatonin (which works for me, not Janet, she prefers Excedrin PM, but, whatever works when you're halfway around the world) and got a great night's sleep in the bungalow in our compound.  And, if you can swing it, arrive a day or two before any tour or cruise starts to allow for any flight (or other) delays.  It'll save you stressing...

After that good night's sleep, we headed down to the incredible buffet breakfast, which turned out to be a (wonderful) recurring theme on the entire trip: selections of several Asian and European cuisines of "typical breakfasts."  After fog of the long flight cleared with some coffee, I found out we were at the Amarterra Villas Resort Bali Musa Dua, a Marriott Autograph Collection in a "one bedroom pool villa."  Gotta love those Marriott points!

With our "villa," we didn't feel the need to venture out anywhere beyond our resort, so it was a lazy day getting used to the time change, and the heat and humidity...it rarely got below 90 degrees the whole trip, but you just figure you're going to sweat...just go with it and don't complain!  We spent most of the day reading; I'm on a serial killer kick, finishing the Mindhunter book that was the basis of the fantastic Netflix series.  It was very quiet at the resort; there were not many people at the meals, just a few couples at both meals and no kids running around.  This villa was on par with two other fantastic stays: our Innsbruck hotel on the Mercedes 2014 European purchase trip, and our Bora Bora overwater bungalow on our 35th anniversary trip.

Feb 22: Bummer...we had to check out!  But we were on our way to our hotel for the Bali portion of our tour.  A word about "taking a tour:" normally we are independent travelers, eschewing cruises and tours for getting a rental car and winging it (with some hotel reservations) around western Europe.  We've since taken a couple of small ship cruises (Windstar and Uniworld--no Princess or Carnival for us...how elitist!) but since this was our first foray to Southeast Asia, we took a chance to go on this tour.  This trip came about in our usual method: over coffee first thing in the morning.  Janet was opening her mail and said, "hey, this brochure from Mills Alumni Association haas an interesting trip, four SEAsian countries (Bali (Indonesia), Singapore, Bangkok (Thailand) and Siem Rea[/Angkor Wat (Cambodia)).  We could not pull together such a wide-spread itinerary on our own, so let them do it.  It turns out the tour was put together by AHI Travel, who markets trips to various colleges and universities alumni associations--this trip had a 28 traveler maximum, but our tour only had 14 plus a guide.  And only 3 from Mills (and me a plus-one).

Our transfer from the Amarterra took a while...traffic in Bali is insane, with scooters outnumbering cars 10 to 1, but there were still tons or cars and lorries between us and our next resort: the Jimberan Puri Belmont Hotel.  Again, we were led to a walled compound as our "room" but, alas, no personal pool!  Bummer.  But, again, a walled villa with a very spacious room and courtyard.  At check-in, we were advised not to drink the tap water, or brush your teeth with it, hence relieving my "hippy guilt" for using bottled water.

As we made our way to the restaurant that evening for the "orientation" meeting, this older man rushed to me and enthusiastically introduced himself as Bill and then proceeded to tell me his life story--worked at Wilkes Bashford in the City, and he was the "personal shopper for Willie Brown" among other world-wide accomplishments, but now living the Fa-Boo lifestyle in Palm Springs--not that there is anything wrong with that.  Well, I thought to myself, he's no Millsie so he's just staying at the resort too and we won't have to put up with his pomposity very long...WRONG!  He was in our group...ugh.  This being our first "group" tour, and with the group so small, one oddball can mess with the group dynamic.  The upshot of it, he seemed to wear on most of us, so we all pretty much kept our distance--he in the front of the bus monopolizing the guide's time, many of ou in the back tuning him out.

We met the rest of our group, and our overall guide (more like a corrdinator of all things for the trip), a lovely Florentine, Chiara.  For each city/country we were in, there would be a local guide, so Chiara was more of a project manager than a tour guide.  Our guide for Bali was a middle-aged gent named Pitha, and he accompanied us all throughout Bali, even seeing us off at the airport.

For those that I can remember, the group consisted of an older gay couple from the East Coast (who also found Bill overbearing and over the top), two women from New Orleans (one of whom we didn't see for the first few days as the flight had affected her), a Millsie from Pinole traveling alone, another Millsie from Washington state with her Professor Hubby, a Manhattanite Korean mother-daughter (mom was a pistol!) and another retired couple...well, that goes without saying, but as I remember all of us were retired.

Feb 23: Day 1 of the Tour: We had another great buffet breakfast at this resort (no wonder it was a plus-10-pound trip!) and we were quite surprised when this huge 50-person bus pulled up for today's touring.  At least it gave us the "Bill Buffer."  But navigating that beast through the incredible traffic and tiny roads in Bali was for a driver better than I.