The ship docked in Benoa Port, Bali a day and night before we had to actually disembark as some cruise guests were heading straight to the airport; we stayed on board that night, enjoyed a last supper with our dining team, last drinks in the Sunset Bar and checked out leisurely before getting a small coach to our Hotel, our home for the next 2 weeks.

The Hotel is called the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel and appears to be in a “secure resort complex” of several luxury hotels, a shopping centre and medical centre all surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens running up to the beach. Within the complex a taxi anywhere is approximately £2.20 regardless of the number of occupants, a set fee! Brilliant idea.

The beach has a walkway all the way along its 14 kilometres, cutting through the grounds of neighbouring hotels and ending up at a peninsular overlooking an area of sea that’s a surfers paradise, beautiful white sandy beaches, clear aqua blue sea and waves out past the bay.

Part of our beach
The cruise we were on leaving the island

We have several speciality restaurants on site and an open buffet restaurant, food in the restaurants is good but the buffet isn’t to the standards we had become accustomed to on the ship. Our rooms are traditionally Indonesian, lots of wooden furniture and marble or stone floors, comfortable enough. We have views over a tropical duck pond, that turned into a lake when it rained!

Entrance lobby
Hotel pools

It seems very strange to be in 30c humid temperatures and listening to Carols being sung in Indonesian in a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas but that’s what has happened. Half the guests in the Hotel were off the cruise ship, so the Hotel has really gone out of its way to help us feel festive.

We had a gala dinner on the night of the 24th December, lots of fresh fish, salads and soups to start. They cooked a whole roast turkey, tried to recreate stuffing (advertised as Bread pudding), cranberry sauce and then a great big BBQ, steak, chicken, fish, prawns etc. They even made mini apple crumbles and an apple strudel with vanilla sauce!

Juliet, Fiona, Diane
Some of the food!
Yule logs!
Graham, David and Jon, 3 Ninjas
A fun night!
Some of the chefs

Christmas Day started with Carol singers at 9am breakfast, local children sung for nearly an hour without song sheets and all in perfect harmony and timing.

Again dinner was a veritable feast, lots of good BBQ’d fish and meat, salads and desserts.

During the day we took a walk along the seafront, to the end of our peninsular bay where there is a small Buddist temple, beautiful beaches and coves and perfect breakwater for surfing, so we spent an hour or so watching the surfers. A very chilled day!!