South Bali: swim, sun and surf

Villa Suar’s pool and bale. Bali luxury!

Me attempting to surf

Duncan looking a lot cooler than me at surfing

Us at the surf school

The group enjoying the awesome pool

Sunset at Rock Bar

My friends and I went to Bali after a hectic one week in East Java. When we reached Bali, all we wanted was to relax. We hit North Bali first (this is a story for another day!), and slowly made our way to South Bali. I wanted to stay in a villa, as I find it more social than a hotel, especially with 8 people travelling together. After a long and ardous research (if I say so myself), I found Villa Suar, and I’m so glad I did!

The villa is owned by an Australian, and even though you can book the villa online, I found it really easy to go directly to him. This gives you a chance to do a bit of bargaining as well!

We stayed in Villa Suar 2 – it has 5 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, with private pool and an amazing team of staff. The rates include breakfast, but you can order other meals and pay extra. It’s definitely worth it. We went with a seafood and suckling pig spread on our last night there, the chef and his team slaved in the kitchen since 2 pm, and you can definitely taste their hard work. Everything was amazing, ingredients were really fresh and the meal came to £25 per person! They even decorated the dining room with garlands to make the ambiance felt more ‘authentic’ Balinese.

As much as we loved the villa, we did venture out. We took surfing lessons with Santai Surf School (they offer pick up and drop off service and they’re very good), went out for drinks and enjoyed sunset at Rock Bar and experienced the night life at La Favela. I thoroughly enjoyed surfing and I always love Rock Bar. The night life experience was a bit odd for me.. when we were there, all the local girls are working girls, except for my cousin and I. As we were there with European men (our friends, not randoms we picked up on the street!), this made us look like working girls. But this didn’t ruin our night as we took turns buying drinks and shots! 🙂

Seminyak itself is quite a lovely area in Bali, I’d like to call it the posh village of Bali. Kuta is the touristy one, Canggu is the quiet one and Ubud is the artsy one. Seminyak is filled with high-end shops, western restaurants, luxury villas and hotels. Its beaches are less crowded than those in Kuta, so it’s a lot more chilled out and just as pretty. Highly recommended!