Day 4

Friday 23/10/09

Today we went to Waterbom Park which is a park full of pools and slides for the kids and poolside bars for the adults.

Despite being in Bali, which as I seem to recall is part of Indonesia, the entrance price was in US dollars... about $100 US dollars just to get in... and you can't take any food or drink in with you... everything has to be purchased inside the park including bottled water.

They have a really good system in place to make it easier to deal with purchasing the necessary bits and pieces so you don't have to carry cash around all day. You pay a $5 bond and get a waterproof velcro wristband with it's own barcode that you load up with whatever amount you want and then when you want to purchase something, they just scan the barcode and deduct the amount from your credit. At the end of the day, you get any unused credit back as cash as well as the $5 bond. If you run out of money during the day, you can top it up at several places throughout the park. The other good thing is that we only got two wristbands, one for each adult, so the kids couldn't go off spending money willy-nilly... nasty aren't we?

Elle and I parked ourselves at the poolside bar and sent all the boys off to explore while we checked out all the 'tourists'. Apparently I didn't count as a tourist because I was wearing clothing/bathers that covered all the necessary bits, was the correct size and wasn't fluorescent. As my dad used to say: "the sights you see when you haven't got a gun!"

Elle was a lot gamer than me and went on a slide called the boomerang. You come down a near-vertical slide, then up a near-vertical wall, then back down the wall and off the end of the slide into the pool. I had great fun checking out the eye candy watching the people on the slide and their reactions.

I did put sunscreen on the boys and myself 5 times during the course of the day, but we still managed to get quite sunburned. At least we weren't glowing red like most of the other tourists... just a shade below nuclear explosion. Thank heavens for aloe vera gel!

After we'd all turned into bright red prunes and the boys were starting to argue amongst themselves, we left the park and went to one of Elle's local supermarkets called Makro. This place really was a 'super' market, selling everything from TVs to packets of chips to fresh fish to a side of beef. They even sold real Australian Tim Tams as well as the nasty local imitation version. Most things were sold in bulk lots like the caterer's pack (10L) of mocha ice cream that Mitchell pleaded to be allowed to buy.

Alex went mad buying boxes of rolls of Mentos lollies and Oreos and probably would have bought the whole shelf full if I'd let him... which of course I didn't!! Andrew wanted apples and grapes, which don't grow in Bali, so the prices were very high compared to the local fruit. Elle just about fainted when I paid 24,000rp for 6 apples (which works out to be about AU$2.80) and then nearly had a heart attack when I told her it was still cheaper than the same apples at home.

After stocking up on some other little bits and pieces, we headed back to Elle's place where we had a chat while the boys played Yu-Gi-Oh again. When they started squabbling amongst themselves, we hailed a taxi and went back to the hotel.