Sentimental Journey: Bali Revisited

When the Sea Princess anchored off the port of Benoa, we initially thought that we would not bother going ashore, as we had just visited Bali a year or two ago.

The ship had announced that their plans to charter a 300 seat tender to take passengers to the port had fallen through, and they would be using the lifeboats as tender instead.  At 100 heads per lifeboat, we thought that would take ages.

A little later though, they announced that they had secured another 300 seater tender to transport passengers ashore in addition to the lifeboats.

I then suggested to Grandma C that we go ashore and take a taxi to re-visit the hotel we honeymooned at way back in 1971.

The beachfront entrance to the hotel is pretty much the same.

The hotel was at Sanur Beach, and we were delighted to find that it had not changed very much.

The garden paths have been paved by now and the gardens look more professionally tended.

The chalets have been updated and look more modern.

And they now have a swimming pool, which they didn't when we were here 46 years ago.

The dining hall still sits in the same spot, though they call it a restaurant now, and we decided to have our lunch there.

How did 46 years go by so quickly?

Grandma C had sambal udang ...

... and I had satay.

What we used to do during our honeymoon, was to have dinner at our hotel, and then take a walk to a nearby 5 star hotel to have coffee.

We decided that we'd do the same after lunch and walk there for our coffee.

From memory, I thought that the 5 star hotel was a Hyatt Hotel, but when we got there, we found that the place had changed vastly, and nothing was recognisable.

We did have our coffee and I spoke to the waiter who told me that it was never the Hyatt Hotel, and was called the Bali Beach Hotel before suffering a fire in 1993 and then re-emerging in its current form as the Inna Grand Bali Beach Hotel.

I found later, via Google, that the Bali Beach Hotel in our time there, was indeed an Intercontinental and not a Hyatt.

Coffee at the Inna Grand Bali Beach Hotel.

I was curious about the hotel fire of 1993, and after we got home I found this story about the Bali Beach Intercontinental.

In 1962, when the hotel was built, President Sukarno had an active interest in it.  He wanted a room set aside for Nyi Roro Kidul, an Indonesian Goddess of the sea.

Room 327 was set aside for this Goddess, and the story goes, that in the fire of 1993, Room 372 was untouched.  To this day, Room 327 is set aside for this Goddess and remains locked with the original furnishings.

More colourful details of this story can be found in these three websites:

Mystery of Room 327

Fool's Journey

Goddess of Mystic and Mystery  This link also has pictures of the fire, and Room 327.

A view of Sanur Beach

One more thing, the Sanur Beach we saw in 1971 was a black volcanic sand beach.  It is now white, as white sand had been brought in and poured over the black for the tourists.

At the spot where the picture above was taken, we witnessed a Balinese cremation in 1971.  I took a Super 8 movie of that cremation and I reproduce it below.

Balinese Cremation 1971 from i82much on Vimeo.