April/May is always a bit of a flurry for us as end of April marks our anniversary and TT’s birthday falls a few days after in the beginning of May. It’s definitely one of the more expensive parts of our(my) year!
After such a relaxing time in Phuket, we were off again, this time to Bali to celebrate our anniversary!
While we’ve settled in nicely to Singapore, everything has been so new and each day full of new experiences, friends, and food, that we almost feel like time has absolutely flown! Recently, we’ve been more conscious of slowing down and appreciating our lives, blessings, and most of all, each other! I mean, we are on the adventure of a lifetime! Sharing with all of you reading the blog, of course, but mostly just ourselves. Our circle is definitely starting to expand but for almost six months, it has basically been just the two of us together at all times – which has been a hilarious struggle on some days and the absolute best on others.
It is basically just having a built in best friend to explore, eat, and watch Netflix with, and who also conveniently makes me breakfast every morning. <3
There have definitely been stressful moments and I’m sure the fact that Asian beds are much smaller than American sizes so TT’s feet hang off the end and our nights rest have been pretty less than ideal have done nothing to help the situation. But all in all, it’s been amazing and I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.
SO off we went to Bali to celebrate our babel romance and keep the #activecouple hashtag alive.
We had booked a 6am flight so woke to our alarms at 3am and as I laid there snoozing, I heard TT groan.
“Our flight’s been cancelled,” he said.
Now, a cancelled flight is never ideal but it really is much less than ideal when it’s 3am. Despite it all, TT powered through, sitting on the couch makin’ aRrAngEmeNtS while I snoozed next to him. An hour later and we were rebooked on a different flight (my hero!) We finished getting ready and headed to the airport.
Two and a half hours later and we landed in hot and muggy beautiful Bali. We bypassed the people selling overly expensive SIM cards in the airport opting instead to find them in town, and we haggled our taxi fare down by half before getting into the back seat of the cab and settling own for our 45 minute ride to Uluwatu.
It was about halfway in that we realized we hadn’t taken a screenshot of the hotel address and with no SIM cards, had no way of looking up the actual destination. We kept pointing to the general area of the non-downloaded map where we knew the hotel was and urging our driver to keep circling as we all kept our eyes peeled for signs. This did not go over well – I truly thought the driver was going to leave us in the middle of the street! While I couldn’t understand him, I knew he was cursing us to everyone we slowed down to ask for directions. Finally, we resorted to flagging down a girl on the sidewalk asking if she had internet and if we could borrow her phone. By the grace of God, this worked and we pulled into De Sapphire hotel hot and THRILLED to be out of that taxi experience.
De Sapphire sits right on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Uluwatu is very cliffy, with its gorgeous views taken in from up high rather than on the beach. It’s also known for its incredible surfing, ranked #4 in the world for surf spots! It’s a bit more low-key than other parts of Bali but absolutely stunning and a bit less done up – think no street lamps, extremely casual local open air eateries, and tons of smiling locals.
While the entire De Sapphire hotel is made up of gorgeous villas, the front desk was kind enough to upgrade us to the grand master suite, sitting us in our own two story villa right on the edge of the cliff completely separated from the rest of the villas.
We dropped our stuff and laid by the pool for a bit enjoying some local Bintang Radlers before getting ready to head to Omnia beach club.
Omnia (ugh almost wish it were Vegas) is a new beach club that opened in Uluwatu in January. It is owned by the same group that runs Hakkasan and Wet Republic in Las Vegas and melds relaxing beachside restaurant with bopping seaside dance club. Pretty much a perfect pairing, if you ask me.
The entire complex is massive with the restaurant laid out Tao-style on a staircase above the dayclub. There is a DJ booth, multiple bar setups, and the most insane infinity pool that looks out at the vast Indian Ocean. It’s pretty crazy, actually. There is literally nothing else to be seen except for the ocean. you can pay extra for VIP daybeds but being only 2 people, we didn’t. We spent the night dancing around to Matoma exploring all of the different nooks and crannies and taking as many pictures as we could.
You can definitely tell that the space is owned by someone in the nightlife industry. It has all the goods. Yet, there are definite differences between Omnia and its older, more established Vegas dayclub cousins. While some were going crazy, others were laying on their daybeds, taking in the sun. Families dined in the restaurant and there were even a few kids in the pool at the start of the evening. I am always a fan of sun, dancing, and infinity pools so this was a great experience. 10/10 would recommend but don’t go there looking for a quiet beach hideaway!
Day 1 – check!
