As majority of Australians do, we went to Bali. It was me, my parents and my younger brother and sister (8 and 6 years old at the time). I was about 12 years old and for our first trip ‘overseas’ as a family. It was 2002, the year of the Bali Bombings.
The first impressions of a foreign country still sit with me – the smell as soon as you stepped outside of the airport hit you straight in the face. I can still smell the mixture of stale sweat and hot air.
We stayed at The Jayakarta Hotel which (as kids, we made note of this) had about five different pools – paradise! The hotel was opposite Legian beach where as soon as you step out of the hotel you get the calls from the local Balinese selling their goods from the beach.
As these memories are going back quite a number of years, all I remember is swimming, a lot, and getting driven around to various sites. We went to places like Uluwatu (great surfing and lots of hermit crabs to play with on the beach), Nusa Lembongan, Ubud and Seminyak. Waterbom Park is great for the family and well, everyone!!
On one of the day trips we did up through Ubud, we were on a bus with a few other tourists and I recall the tour guide explaining how they still enjoy cooking and eating the occasional dog and/or cat. He then went on to describe to us how they actually killed the animals and that, in fact, ‘black’ dogs tasted the best. This was followed up by the bus driver actually swerving the bus to hit a dog.
The things you remember as a kid..
I enjoyed our first family trip overseas and little did I know that Bali would again be my next trip over the waters, albeit quite a few years later..
Some fun facts and info about Indonesia can be found here.
