Unwrapped travel

So what do you do with 24 hours in Bangkok when you’re stuck up the Sukhumvit/Siam Square part of town? Sam was recently in that very situation and here’s her take on 24 hours in Bangkok. Enjoy!

Making a customised version of your website, tailored specifically for mobile phones is a challenge. This morning I had the misfortune to come across one of the worst I’ve seen — and from people who certainly have the resources to be doing a far better job. Accor Hotels.

How to do it wrong

I wanted a simple bit of information — the telephone number for the Lombok Novotel — so I picked up my iPhone (as I planned to call them from it) and Googled “novotel lombok“.

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 1

Bingo! Pretty much just what I was looking for. So I clicked on the number 1 result for “Lombok Novotel“. The result however, wasn’t quite what I expected. After being redirected through a couple of domains, I ended up at an advert for an iPhone app.

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 2

The app sounds kind of interesting, but all I wanted was the phone number, so I opted for “No”… thinking I’d get the hotel page for the Novotel on Lombok. But no, instead I got a hotel promotion page for two hotels, one in Berlin and one in Prague.

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 3

As neither Berlin nor Prague are all that close to Lombok in Indonesia this was … unexpected. It seems that the app had totally forgotten what I arrived looking for and I was going to have to start from scratch. So I scrolled down a little and got the search prompt. Given it was a search, I just typed in Lombok.

Exhibit 4

Exhibit 4

Fool that I am, I didn’t notice the asterisk next to the “Check-in” field (afterall I didn’t want to check-in, I just wanted a phone number). Likewise I didn’t bother with the other fields. You know where this is going right?

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 5

Yup. I had to enter a date of arrival (even though I didn’t have one). So I did.

Exhibit 6

Exhibit 6

Fingers crossed!

Exhibit 7

Exhibit 7

Finally! This is the hotel whose number I’m looking for. Of course the telephone number isn’t displayed, so I risked a click on the hotel’s name.

Exhibit 8

Exhibit 8

Eureka!

So just seven screens from the initial Google page I was able to find the telephone number of the Novotel Hotel on Lombok, which, should you care to know, is (+62) 370 653 333.

To add to the misery, there doesn’t appear to be a way to override the Accor website’s mobile detection, so even though I really wanted to, there was no way for me to access the “traditional” website on my phone.

This is extremely poor usability to round out what was a thoroughly crappy user experience. Accor could and most definitely should be doing far better.

How to do it right

In comparison, if I clicked on the Google page on my laptop I was taken to this page.

Exhibit 9

Exhibit 9

And there you go, (a bit blurry I know) the phone number for the Novotel on Lombok. One Click! Fancy that! Google really does work wonders sometimes!

I recently did a mountain bike ride from Kintamani to Ubud in Bali with a couple of friends and wrote the story up here for Travelfish. Mountain biking in Bali. Enjoy

Yes, on a bit of a Bali burn at the moment. More info on Travelfish for the port town of Gilimanuk and the remote Christian communities of Blimbingsari and Palasari.

Enjoy!

We’ve just added another section to our growing Bali coverage, this time for Kuta in Bali. We’ve got more Kuta coverage coming, but thought we’d get this much up as quick as we could to help you with your planning. You can see the full Kuta travel guide here.

When you think of Singapore and shopping, don’t think of Orchard Road’s swanky mainstream designers, repetitive chain stores and cookie-cutter coffee houses. Nestled between busy North Bridge and Ophir Roads instead you’ll find Haji Lane, Singapore’s fashionista haven, offering quirky boutiques, vintage and local fashion, unusual homewares, and offbeat little cafes and restaurants…. read the full story on Travelfish.

Regular Travelfish readers will be aware that we have, for a long time recommended the Australian-based World Nomads for travellers travel insurance needs. We think they’re a great company who are very focused on what independent travellers need.

That said, their rates have been inching up, and over on the Travelfish forum there has been a long-running Q&A session about travel insurance rates at World Nomads. In order to get some perspective from the World Nomads side of things I got in touch with Katrina Greeves who is the Product Marketing Manager there, and ran some questions by her about what was the reasoning behind these changes in price. My questions in bold.

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the chance to answer some of these tricky questions posed the Travelfish community. We really appreciate the feedback – your community’s suggestions will help make our travel insurance better.

What has changed with how World Nomad’s organises its country brackets?
The price for travel insurance always changes depending on your country of residence and where you are going. We’ve recently made some changes just for residents of the UK and Ireland, which has affected the price of our policies if you’re going to S.E. Asia. For residents of the other 140+ countries we cover, our country brackets remain the same.

What brought about that change?
When lots of people from the UK and Ireland run into trouble in SE Asia and make a claim on their insurance, eventually, the pricing for everyone else is affected. Unfortunately, this is what has happened over the past 6 months with WorldNomads.com travel insurance, and that’s why S.E and Eastern Asia has been bundled into the same region as the USA, Canada, The Caribbean and Japan for the time being.

So, what you’re saying is, the rates are going up because a lot of Brits claim on their travel insurance – but isn’t that the whole point of having travel insurance?

Actually the main reason people should consider travel insurance is to provide help if they get sick or injured when travelling. Not everyone needs to make a claim, but the costs involved in helping those that do can be substantial. When you consider that it can cost up to $200 000+ for emergency medical expenses if you’re seriously injured, the cost you’ve paid for your insurance is probably the last thing on your mind.

Let’s be straight: In this case, our insurance underwriters for UK and Irish residents have been required to pay out claims in excess of premiums earned and so need to increase our pricing to cover those losses.

To explain, we work with multiple underwriters around the world who price risk (a.k.a travel insurance) differently. Our prices can change depending on a number of different factors:

a) the number of claims made from travellers in a particular region;

b) the amount that is paid out to help people when they get sick, injured or have their belongings stolen; and

c) the number of travellers going to a particular region, their age and how long they’re travelling.

Roughly what kind of increase in price for a traveller heading to SEA for three months does this equate to?
This is a tricky question to answer as there a lot of factors which change a travel insurance quote including: if you’ve bought a policy with World Nomads before, your country of residence, what adventure activities you’ll do and if you need extra cover for your laptop or other high value items. For a single, UK traveller, going to S.E Asia for 3 months and who’s not a World Nomads member, the base premium price increased by £32.65.

Other rates, especially for French travellers, seem unusually high – is this for the same reason?
The short answer is yes, over the past 12 months we’ve had to increase our prices for European residents.

Some people in the Travelfish community have noticed that our product for European residents is similar to other insurance providers. While we can not comment on why their prices are different, how they service their customers or pay their claims, we aim to provide the best value product, 24/7 travel assistance when things go wrong, and useful travel advice to keep our customers travelling safely.

World Nomads have a great brand, closely associated with backpackers and independent travel and they’re the first insurer many backpackers think of when they look for travel insurance. But the new rates make WorldNomads significantly more expensive than other insurance providers. What advice can you give to travellers who are trying to decide between WorldNomads and one of the other cheaper providers?

Yes, World Nomads travel insurance was built for independent and adventurous travellers. We don’t promise to be the cheapest, yet we’ll always add value where we can – like the flexibility to buy travel insurance and claim online (even while travelling), up-to-date travel safety advice, free language guides or offering travellers the chance to donate to community development projects through our Footprints program.

At WorldNomads.com, we’ll continue to choose insurers and emergency assistance partners that can support our customers globally, when they need it most. By all means, choose a travel insurance provider to suite your personal requirements. Whether it’s the price or the knowledge that you’re buying from a reputable company who’ll help you when things go wrong, just remember that insurance policies do differ and can change, and you should read the fine print to make sure you know what’s covered (and not). Our team is always ready to help answer your questions too – askus@worldnomads.com

Thanks Katrina for taking the time to answer the above.

They say that a picture says a thousand words so I won’t waffle on about the about chart (bigger version here), other than to say it represents the rather precipitous fall in daily hotel reservations through Travelfish via one of our affiliate partners.

This is all reservation enquiries, so doesn’t take into account cancellations — meaning the fall is actually considerably worse than what the above illustrates. I should also note the airport shutdowns instigated by the yellow shirts had an equally destructive effect on reservations — I just don’t have time right now to make two charts!

Given that matters are sizing up for another meltdown around October/November this year (ie just in time for the peak tourist season) it is difficult to understate just how damaging all this is to the Thai economy. While it is clear Thailand has very serious societal issues that do need to be addressed, crucifying the travel and tourism industries seems hardly to be the way forward.

Who would have thought six years ago (when we started Travelfish.org) that today Indonesia would be seeing relatively progressive economic development accompanied by encouraging signs on the tourism side of things, while Thailand would be actively working to reinvent itself into the region’s new basketcase.

I’ll start this entry with a confession.

Late last week I stole my wife’s dinner.

Balangan from the clifftop

She’d cooked up a beef casserole in the slow-cooker and had a bowl of it before heading across to Kuta for some shopping. I ate later, and, assuming she had had her fill, after putting aside some for the kids’ lunch the next day, I ate the rest of it.

I won’t repeat the exchange of text messages as Sam drove home from Kuta, though let’s just say her first message noted she’d bought some bread for soaking up the beef sauce… and it was all kinda downhill from there.

As it turned out, I did Sam a huge favour. The beef was bad and it gave me a bout of food poisoning worse than anything I have experienced since India. It laid me out, emptied me out and nothing, not even water, stayed down.

Beach umbrellas, late afternoon

So what’s one to do in a situation like that? Head to the beach for a night I say. So Saturday morning off we headed to one of Bali’s best strips of sand, Balangan Beach.

Balangan is one of Bali’s lesser known beaches, but it is all the better for it. It’s basically the next beach of any size between what used to be known as Dreamland (now fittingly referred to as “New Kuta”) and the Ayana Resort (and Jimbaran after it). The beach is down a steep staircase (easy to climb when not carrying two wet children) and an assortment of warungs and cheap homestay/shacks are set up along the eastern end of the beach. Slightly to the west of centre is a temple and after that there is nothing — just sand.

People walking along Balangan Beach

At hightide there is some good swimming to be had — though bear in mind, as a surf beach, you’ll need to keep a close eye on any rugrats. At low tide a rocky base breaks the surface, making much of it crummy for swimming but ideal for pond watching, shell collecting and of course, as the tide drops, dam-building — my favourite.

And let me state unequivocally: The biggest threat to the Three Gorges Dam is not silt build-up but rather the arrival of a 50-metre tall two-year-old boy who just “wants to help”.

The western headland, note fishermen at top

If you start building lots of dams — or sand castles — you’ll note another of Balangan’s special features. The grains of sand are, by and large, perfectly spherical. They immediately brought couscous to mind, and I’ve never ever seen sand quite like it.

The sun sets more or less directly offshore and the vista is spectacular.

Looking east from the headland

So down on the beach, the basic procedure is surf, swim, sand castle- or dam-build and eat and drink to your heart’s content, then take in the sunset and get ready to repeat the procedure the next day.

Accommodation basically falls into two categories — cheap and basic backpacker digs down on the beach and more flashpacker-midrange stuff up above the beach on the cliff.

As for us it was just a one nighter and as I had a stolen dodgy beef to make up for, we decided to splurge and opted for the decidedly salubrious La Joya (The Jewel).

The nautilus shell motif that welcomes all to La Joya

Set on an undulating plot, the bulk of the accommodation is spacious freestanding bungalows (some with outdoor bathroom), each with their own little fenced-in garden (great for containing kids!) and lawn. A larger two-storey building has more hotel-style rooms along with a very large private villa with its own pool. Two infinity swimming pools and a spacious restaurant fill out the property.

Gardens are simply gorgeous. Lovingly tended and with a glorious mix of colours, you find your way though them via a network of lawn pathways with the occassional subtle signage helping to point you in the right direction. Lots of shade.

Garden pathways

Our room, a Deluxe Bungalow (Room #14 1,501,830 rp inc tax, service but before KITAS discount), certainly wasn’t cheap. The bungalow was quite spacious, easily fitting a double bed and a daybed (which we used as the kids’ bed) and came with separate toilet and shower rooms. Airy and bright, with a slight Moorish tone and excellent lighting through the evening, it was a room I could comfortably spend a few days in (ed: I could take a few weeks. Just in case you were wondering about a birthday pressie).

Double-width glass doors opened out onto our private yard with terrace seating. It was comfortably, but not totally, private.

It wasn’t all perfect though. One of the soft terrace seats had two nail heads sticking out (a hazard for the kids) so we asked for it to be replaced. We ended up with upright chairs from the restaurant, which were not the most comfortable to lounge around in. The glass doors, once locked, could easily be forced open from outside — both Samantha and myself broke in this way when we forgot our keys, so it’s difficult to say whether this is a plus or a minus. Lastly, while La Joya has some of the best water pressure I’ve experienced anywhere in Asia, the taps were fitted backwards (or the water pipes connected wrong or something) so when I turned on the cold water in the basin, I got scalding hot. Not good. And while it was a bonus for us, the lack of TV may bother some (it should be clear on the web site this is the case, we think).

Our (already messy) room

But overall these were fairly minor things. The room was stylish and comfortable, clean and very well looked after (save the terrace chair), the air-con was cool enough to freeze Walt Disney and the kids loved their little zone.

The restaurant overlooks one of the pools and is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Western food is excellent and competitively priced for the standard, while the Indonesian fare isn’t so great and struck us as overpriced. The muzak was just awful. For the first time in my life I got up and asked restaurant staff if they could change the music (we were the only ones in the restaurant at the time — maybe the muzak was why!).

The restaurant pool

My crusted tuna salad (sliced rare tuna with julienne mango, in lime coriander with mixed lettuce finished with orange zest black vinegar) would, at 65,000 rp, certainly break a backpacker budget, but for this standard of resort, the price was more than reasonable. There are cheaper places to eat, both down the road and on the beach itself, so you don’t feel trapped with a lack of other options. Service was prompt, polite and very friendly. We found the mostly female staff to be exceedingly helpful and friendly with our kids — so much so we’d recommend this place for families on that strength alone.

Tuna for lunch

However, a couple of things should be noted by those travelling with children, starting with the very prominent rat poison traps positioned by the two main entrances to the restaurant. With bright red arrows indicating their position and holes just big enough for a childs arm, these are an accident waiting to happen (unless there is no bait there during the day?). They should, at least, be obscured or better positioned, so while still obvious to a rat they are less so to a three-year old. Also around the restaurant we saw plugs hanging out of sockets and a junction box sitting beside a water feature. Neither outright dangerous, and not an issue for adults, but for kids, this kind of thing can really be better done.

Now a word on internet. I think it is outrageous that any property, anywhere in the world, charging over $100 a night charges a surcharge for WiFi access. If you can’t supply WiFi for free, then don’t offer it.

La Joya offers WiFi access, at a surcharge of 100,000 rp for 24 hours. I think it is an unacceptable charge, but we were told of the price upfront over the telephone, and we decided to grin and bear it. When we went in the early afternoon to ask about sorting out our access, we were told that only the manager could connect us, and she was down in Kuta “for a couple of hours”. Throughout the afternoon I wandered back to reception asking after WiFi, but the manager still wasn’t back. In the end it wasn’t till evening, after our dinner, that I returned to reception and managed to get the manager to hook us in.

Stylish coffee for breakie

At no stage was I offered an “Oh, I’m sorry for the inconvenience” by the manager — even though she was sitting across the pathway from me. I didn’t need — nor want — a grovelling apology, but I think it’s a pretty base level of service to apologise to a guest when they’ve been inconvenienced for the last eight hours. And though I was only in the resort for another perhaps 18 hours, half of those sleeping, they still charged me for the full 24 hours internet access.

Two things spring to mind concerning this. Firstly, train your staff to connect a guest to the router. Secondly, if you don’t see the inconveniencing of a guest for eight hours to be worthy of an apology or at least the gesture of a nominal discount, then I think you’re in the wrong trade.

And this brings me to my final thoughts on La Joya, centred on the staff. We found the local staff to be absolutely exceptional. They were terrific with our kids, they arranged a babysitter for us at very short notice, and we left feeling there was nothing we could have asked of them that they wouldn’t have helped us with. On the other hand we found the foreign staff — namely the manager and owner — to be, well, the mirror image of their staff. That on checkout, as they both stood in the office across from reception, neither felt the need to stroll the five metres across and enquire as to whether we enjoyed our stay, really left me scratching my head.

Leafy gardens

The hotel’s custom is almost all French (the receptionist said 97% French, then Portuguese) and we’re not French, so maybe that was the problem. Or perhaps it was that we brought kids, or that we asked for a KITAS discount. Perhaps they were both just having a really bad couple of days. Who knows?

But overall I left really feeling that they felt they didn’t need our custom — and that is a shame as I would have liked to have said I’d return here, but I probably won’t.

Cliff top fishing

We’ll be returning to Balangan in a couple more weeks to check out a few of the other more backpacker and flashpacker orientated gigs in detail. But if La Joya sounds like your kettle of fish, you can reach them here:

La Joya
http://www.la-joya.com
Jalan Uluwatu Pantai Balangan, Bali
Tel: +62 361 7450501
Mob: +62 818 565 839
informations@La-Joya.com

If you happened to be on Bali this weekend gone and were wondering why there was so much unseasonal rain, I can tell you why — we decided to go away for the weekend.

After our less than successful “around the island” jaunt (return home with screaming kids after two days (and again accompanied by copious rain)) we decided to opt for a far more simple jaunt — head to Sideman, hang out for two nights and return.

Sideman is a valley with (rumoured) views to Gunung Agung (the gobsmacking big volcano you can see from Sanur while quaffing a cheap Bintang or three). I say rumoured because it was shrouded in clouds for most of the time, though we did see a sliver of it at one stage.

Sideman is also famed for its rice terraces — and they really really are stunning. But more on them afterwards.

We took a circuitous route from Sanur as we had to head up to Ubud to pick up some friends who were joining us — if you happen to live in Venice and are wondering where all the tourists are, don’t fret — they haven’t been kidnapped by extra-terrestrials — they’re in Ubud.

And while it will forever escape me why you would fly from Osaka or Frankfurt to buy designer goods in Ubud, others do appear to have figured it out. And while I don’t begrudge them their shopping habits, I do more than begrudge them their big fat tour buses who most certainly should be banned from downtown Ubud (if not Bali).

The upside of all this is if you want to see beautiful Bali without the tour buses, hordes and touts, then head to Sideman — that’s what we did.

We stayed at the Lihat Sawah Guesthouse which, for starters, needs to update the pics on their website — as, like with a lot of the area, they’ve got chillies in the ground rather than rice — and their rooms have, well, aged somewhat. They could also give the bathrooms a serious de-moulding while they’re at it.

Mould and damp aside our room was reasonable, though not cheap. 700,000Rp for a family room (one room with a big double and two kids beds in the main room) with dinner and breakfast included. Dinner was very good,with huge portions of Thai food (courtesy of some Thai chef the kitchen staff worked with long days gone), but breakfast was a cruel joke — so if you’re not partial to Thai food (nor crappy breakfasts) then skip the full board version. There are other eating options around the place. Our friends paid 100-200,000 for a budget room and they rated it pretty well.

One point worth noting about here though are the staff — exceptionally friendly — even if they don’t like to share umbrellas.

The views are terrific — even in the rain — and the guesthouse has quite lovely gardens full of all sorts of critters and insects.

The first afternoon we just sat around mostly, but the next day we grabbed a map (see below) and see off exploring. Like all good maps there was ample opportunity to get lost and, over the next three hours we did exactly that — at least it didn’t rain.

If we’d had more time (and energy), we’d have climbed to the hill top temple opposite the guesthouse and we’d probably take a guided walk (50,000 Rp per hour) to get a bit more info on what we were all tramping through.

It’s a great spot — very low key, there are a few foreign travellers about but a smidgen compared to any of the busier locales. Where we stayed had no pool, but other digs do and we’ll probably check those out as well next time we visit — which will probably be sooner than later.

If you’re looking for a good escape, to see Bali in a really beautiful light, then Sideman might be just what you’re looking for — give it two nights if you can.