gleff

Dinner at Mozaic

We had one dinner off-property. With the suggestion of some on Flyertalk, we sought out the most acclaimed restaurant in Bali … Mozaic. It’s in Ubud, and nearly an hour and a half’s drive each way from our hotel, but was a nice experience. On the whole a lovely dinner, with wonderful service (though in a very practiced, memorized Balinese way).


An advance booking is pretty much required, and then the restaurant requires same-day confirmation (and they also maintain a waitlist) so we had the club lounge staff ring them up the morning of our reservation.

And then rather than taking a cab up to Ubud we had a hotel car drive us there, wait, and drive us back. It’s just so impossibly inexpensive (even with the current value of the dollar, and even at a resort) that this sort of luxury ran less than US$50 roundtrip.

Meanwhile, the restaurant offers two different set six course menus and a ‘surprise’ menu where you let them know any preferences and they’ll prepare a variety of items for you, either the same for each person at the table or different. We opted for the surprise menu, and something different for each of us. We only traded dishes once (I don’t like goat cheese but mrs. gleff is rather partial to it).

aSiAnRiCk

Great report and photos gleff!! ^

After reading your comments about IC, I'll check them out on my next visit to DPS.

I'm looking forward to the rest of your report

gleff

It was fantastic, but let me be clear about one thing: I would consider the hotel nice but not 'special' in any way if booked in a regular room. The club experience is an absolute must here, otherwise I'd be just as happy elsewhere.

gleff

One of my pet peeves with travel is the last day in a resort destination. If your flight leaves too early, it’s a hectic morning rushing to get things together and get off to the airport… defeating the very relaxation you’ve been trying to accomplish. But a flight departing in the afternoon inevitably means waiting around and pining, “we have only X hours left” rather than relaxing. So I’ve found it’s helpful when taking a late afternoon flight to book activities during the day.

We decided to book a cooking class over at the Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay roughly next door to the Intercontinental. Monday morning is the Balinese cooking class (other days feature different cuisines, but when in Bali…)

The day started off at 8am in the lobby of the Four Seasons. We took a cab over, INR20,000. Cost for the class was US$90pp.


The class is taught by the hotel’s sous chef, and staff first take you to a local market to see all of the local vegetables, and the local fresh fish catch. Naturally water bottles and cold towels are provided for this lttle hour-long excursion five minutes down the road.


Back at the hotel golf carts take you down to the cooking school kitchen and dining room for a light breakfast, and class begins. It’s hands-on, everyone cooks most everything on the menu for the day, but all the preparation has already been done. Staff provide you pre-measured ingredients for each dish, and clean your station for you.


We made Balinese chicken satay, pickled vegetables, grilled red snapper wrapped in banana leaf and a Balinese pumpkin dessert.


Then it was back to the hotel to pack and off to the airport.

lucky9876coins

Awesome report gleff!^

gleff

And the best flight of the trip is actually yet to come...

f4freeJunior

...and I'm already looking forward to that one! Thanks for writing all this down. A very enjoyable read ^.

Club_IC

Fabulous report gleff - thank you very much.

I am definately going to try to get to Bali sooner rather than later. I unfortunately - due to pressure of work, had to cancel a planned trip there late last year.

gleff

Monday, March 24, 2008

Checked out in the club lounge, and the hotel car was ready for us this time with our bags ready to load into it. A quick drive over to the airport and airport porter’s met us at the curb (there’s very few as aggressive in Bali in search of tips).

This is one of those ‘failure of the last mile’ sorts of moments. The club lounge experience at the Intercontinental Bali – small issues aside – really is quite sublime. They provide you with complimentary transportation back to the airport. I understand they may not be able to leave the vehicle on the curb and come inside, but it seems easy enough to provide an extra staff member who could help you with your bags, through security, and to the checkin gates. Just a suggestion, I guess.


Denpasar Bali, Indonesia (DPS) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK)
5:20 pm Thai Airways 432, Airbus A330-300, Business Class, Seats 11J/11K
Scheduled flight time: 4h 15m

The Denpasar airport has baggage screening immediately as you enter. Once through with your checked bags, you head to the checkin lines. There were makeshift signs indicating Thai Airways checkin, with a single line for business class. After a couple folks were checked in ahead of us, we were processed rather quickly and given lounge invitations. The passes specifically mentioned the Parai Cyber Lounge which is the nearest to gate 8 which is used by Thai, but I believe you can use the Garuda Indonesia lounge as well (confirmed by the lounge attendant there).


No doubt the Garuda lounge would be nicer. The Parai Cyber Lounge appears to advertise itself to any travelers willing to pay a fee, though it was deserted except for another couple on our flight. It has a smoking lounge outdoors, a couple of computers, and wireless internet that requires a password. Rather than writing it down, a gentleman came over to whisper it to me. Very sparse buffet which appeared to have been sitting out longer than I wanted to know. But it was close by the gate…


The flight itself was rather unremarkable, with what I’ve come to regard as rather typical Thai matronly service. Still, a short regional business class flight offered a full enough meal service and amenity kits. The ancient seats on the A330-300 were fairly uncomfortable.


And another instance where SeatGuru doesn’t know what it’s talking about (I’ve found too many of these the past year or so), the plane has empower rather than direct seat power.


Landing at Bangkok was on-time, but we didn’t have a gate and were bussed to the terminal. The wait wasn’t long, though, and we were quickly through immigration. (The last two times I was here I had transit immigration with no line and first class immigration, so this was my first time using the regular line at Suvarnabhumi.

Ok, I just have to call the next part… “One Night in Bangkok.”

aquaguy

Hey there

Wonderful trip report. I just can't figure out how the F award was only 140k, all I get from the LH Mileage calculator is 180k. Or am I missing something here?

Thanks
Cheers
aquaguy

gleff

United Mileage Plus miles.

Gatwick Alan

I clearly need to learn lessons from people like you, ive never had enough miles to worry about, but will have after my current trip. Thank you for your insights.

Really enjoying reading your report, hope you enjoy Thai F

gleff

Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport

With the time change it was about 9pm local time when we got out of the BKK airport. We were heading back to the airport for a morning flight, wanted to get there early enough for the first class spa, and so decided not to head into the city and instead spend the night at the Novotel on the airport grounds.

While the in-room materials describe the walkway from the terminal, that isn’t built yet. Instead there’s a shuttle that runs every 15 minutes. After clearing immigration and customs, there’s a Novotel representative standing by door 4 ready to assist you into the hotel’s van. A quick loop around the airport access roads and you’re at the hotel.

Contra several reports, check-in was a breeze although there were curiously many forms to sign, including one for expedited checkout so I could just drop my key off n the morning and go. Although when I tried to do this they again wanted me to sign several forms. This wasn’t as easy as it should have been!


Still, it’s a nice enough hotel and right at the airport, an A+ for an airport hotel (certainly compared to the others close by, and given my desire to risk any morning traffic) although impossibly expensive for BKK… ~ US$150++ which would buy something much nicer downtown or near the river..


Next up: best flight of the trip, TG F BKK-PEK, and quite frankly this came as a real surprise to me because I haven’t been that impressed with TG’s premium cabins in the past.

OPFlyer

Great trip report--really enjoyed the pics.

aisleorwindow

Fabulous trip report so far ^