Sanur

We were attracted to Sanur by its reputation as a quiet place to stay, so much so that it has gained the nickname “Snore”. After a hectic three days in which we had covered a huge distance from Jogyakarta we were in need of some rest, and after the place we had stayed the previous night were quite excited to stay in a proper guesthouse with luxuries such as a toilet and the absence of the smell of fish. Our chosen guesthouse is worthy of mention due to the fact that the central courtyard around which the rooms are situated was full of trees along with a large number of the owner's aware-winning songbirds. If I'm going to be woken up early in the morning by birds then I prefer them to be award winning songbirds!

There is very little to be said about Sanur to be honest. It has a long and unremarkable beach with some choppy water that's not great for swimming. The beach is lined with smart looking resorts but to be frank if I had booked a beach resort in Bali I would have been extremely disappointed to find myself in Sanur. It's not that its a bad place by any means, but if you're looking for a beach resort there are many better options in Indonesia.

Normally we wouldn't have stayed in Sanur for more than a night; however the previous three days had been extremely tiring and we had plenty of admin that needed to be sorted out before we moved on - boring things like laundry, sending a package of souvenirs home, a post-dengue fever follow-up for Monique, buying some suitable beach clothes etc – so we ended up staying for 4 nights.

One of the perks of Sanur is that the variety of available food was much greater than most other places in Indonesia, so some proper pizza and great gelato was a welcome change to the rotation of fried rice, fried noodles and (for me) satay chicken that we had been mostly eating so far. We also managed to meet up with our Dutch friends from the Bromo/Ijen trip for dinner one night.

Before leaving we took advantage of the very cheap massages available, and enjoyed a very good Balinese massage (a relaxing oil massage which also includes some elements of Thai massage which we both love) to get us into the relaxing mood ready for spending the next week or so at the beach. We also did a spot of souvenir shopping to top up the package we were sending home to be heavy enough to send by sea, and couldn't resist buying a few things from a shop with a very apt name:

Sanur was far from the most memorable stop on our trip, however it was certainly a relaxing one, and a decent stop-off on the way to the Gili Islands.