Bali – the Island of the Gods
How does a dream vacation sound like to you? Soaking up some rays whilst lying on a hammock between palm trees with a refreshing cool drink in your hand that overlooks the infinity pool at an amazing Bali vacation resort villa and then frolicking along the beach listening to the crystal blue waters crash — or, sitting behind your working desk counting down to the days till the end of this year and cashing in on a huge bonus?
What if you could do both – as in “working” whislt on an amazing and beautiful beachfront resort?
That’s exactly what happened recently. My company flew all of us down to La Joya Resort at Balangan Beach in Bali for a work retreat for the long weekend – almost all expenses paid! Jealous aren’t you? 
As we arrived in Bali for my first ever vacation in Indonesia, I was really excited as my company had kept the location of the resort a secret – all we knew was that we were going somewhere really nice in Bali. However, as our bus wound through the pitch dark, my workmates and my confidence in this “beautiful resort” waned as it almost felt like we were part of a scene of some horror movie especially we moved through the jungle as the tree leaves brushed against the side of the hopefully somewhat sturdy sides of the bus.
Much to our relief, as we arrived at the resort it reminded me of a scene from a reality TV show like The Bachelor or something as we dropped our bags near the entrance before heading to the open air hotel restaurant where our ‘hosts’ gave us a wine glass full of watermelon juice before showing us to our rooms. And boy, what a room it was. My room was on the upper part of a double storey looking hut building called Villa Gajah. It was strongly Balinese themed complete with incense sticks for your daily meditation.
Instead of boring corporate style meetings, we had personal growth sessions led by my bosses and guest speakers such as Sean Stephenson who are well-known in the personal development field. We had all of our meetings in the Private Villa which was enormous – there were about 4-5 double beds, private jacuzzi, swimming pool area complete with a hammock hanging inbetween 2 palm trees, and private access to Balangan Beach.
The food at the resort was pretty expensive but very tasty. The resort is owned by a French couple where the husband of the duo is the Chef. The night I arrived, I ordered what I thought was going to be a boring old nasi goreng (fried rice) but it turned out to be a really interesting nasi goreng with a prawn cracker that tasted more like a interestingly beautiful mix of Indonesian-Arabic-French cuisine.
Food presentation at the resort restaurant was always king and varied daily even if you ordered the same dish. One of the dishes I ordered was a Grilled Mahi-Mahi. The beautifully grilled mahi-mahi was laying like a king on a bed of slightly undercooked roast potatoes and surrounded with blanched brocolli and carrots.
The food was pretty expensive as you can imagine at a nice resort, and as we had to pay for our own lunch and dinner so sometimes some of my colleagues and I tried to go out to different eateries around if we had time. One night for dinner we went to a neighbouring hotel where the food was half the price but still tasted really nice. I ordered a curry and rice. Like in Australia, the rice and the curry came on separate plates which is much unlike Malaysia where it’s generally served on one plate. I was expecting the curry to be a slightly thick and spicy curry but instead it was the total opposite!
In the day time, for lunch some of my workmates and I went to a restaurant beach hut but the food was soooo slow, we didn’t get our food until over 1 hours time. I happened to order a burger that day, and after 1.5 hours (when we told them we had to go) they finally told me that their oven had broken down! I was so annoyed because they didn’t tell us it had broken down, otherwise we could have eaten something else. Instead, I got to eat some greasy chips that they had prepared as part of the meal. Yum. :p
On my last day, I laid on the hammock next to the private pool and had a Dreamland. The Dreamland (RP$25,000) was a refreshing fruit chiller with strawberry, pineapple, and I think either coconut or youghurt – or both.
Now that’s what I call a good working life, don’t you think? Hopefully jetsetting to a beautiful resort will become a hit trend for business retreats. After all – who wouldn’t wat to go to Bali, “The Island of the Gods” to recharge themselves for the working year ahead?
i have to ask people who goes to bali once a year- they are presently live in ballajura