Once we decided this trip would be based around Amanwana, we knew a Bali stopover was inevitable. Amandari seemed like a great choice to complement our Amanwana beach experience and it was only an hour’s drive from the airport. We opted for the 3-night Classic Bali package with a complementary activity each day. We also mentioned to the GM, Liv that this was our 10th Aman property/stay and she was kind enough to upgrade us.

Service

Upon arrival at the Bali airport, we were escorted through immigration by one of the airport’s VIP visa-on-arrival officials. Once in the hands of the Aman representative, we were welcomed back to the island of Bali and thanked for our continued Aman patronage. Once we got to the resort, it was more of the same…lots of “welcomes”, especially “welcome back”s. We kept having to explain that we hadn’t actually stayed at Dari before, but had enjoyed dinner there while staying at Amankila. At any rate, everyone was incredibly friendly throughout the course of our stay and service was fantastic. We missed meeting Liv, however. She was off-property for most of our stay and we never got a chance to properly thank her for the lovely room!

Decor and Room

We stayed in a duplex pool suite (#15), the layout of which we really enjoyed. The top floor bedroom had a four-poster bed and small powder room (which kept us from tumbling down the spiral staircase in the middle of the night). The downstairs featured a big open living area that got even bigger when we opened the sliding doors to the outside patio, dining bale, and large edgeless pool that appeared to hang directly over the Ayung River gorge. The view was nearly panoramic as this was a corner suite with the gorge to one side and the rice terraces to the other. And I loved how the Balinese jasmine was everywhere. I really miss that smell when I’m home from our Indonesian vacations.

Most of you know that Dari closed for 3 months for a 20th anniversary refresh. Overall, the resort looked wonderful and was meticulously maintained. But there were still a few areas where we could tell the property’s age. Some of the wood paneling in our room was dinged up. And our upstairs bathroom looked like it hadn’t been updated at all which left things feeling a bit like a tree house - rustic, but fun.

Dining

The food was good. But I didn’t have anything as spectacular as I did on our dinner here 6 years ago – the babi guling. It serves me right. I gave up babi guling once I figured out what “babi” meant. I’m such a girl that way.

Activities

For our Amandari stay, we opted to do only what was included in our package…this was meant to be a jetlag stop after all. We started with a Balinese massage on our first afternoon. The next morning we did the Ayung River trek which amounted to some pretty serious hiking up and down the humid gorge. Interestingly, much of the way was paved with concrete steps which had to be grueling work to complete. We ended up at our guide’s village and got to see his home and his wife’s batik business before having breakfast in a bale overlooking the gorge. On our last day, we went to the Bali Bird & Reptile Park. This is a much better facility than we expected with lots of personal attention. They are successfully breeding the bali starlings and they are the only operation that has been able to breed the birds of paradise. Speaking of birds, did I mention the profusion of birds at Amandari? Many of them liked to use our pool as their own personal birdbath. If we return, we would strongly consider doing the ornithologist-guided bird trek. I guess we’re bird people now.

Issues

There were a couple of issues during our stay. For anyone who has done an offsite Aman meal experience you know that everything is set up before your arrival. Well, it seems our trekking guide and our driver had a miscommunication about which bale was being used that morning. The result was that our breakfast was setup at the wrong bale. They worked together to quickly correct the situation and we weren’t waiting longer than 10 minutes. They apologized profusely and we were so exhausted we didn’t really give it a second thought.

On a lighter note, while reviewing our final bill, we noticed they had our address wrong. Since this was not an address or state we had ever lived in and Mr. Ericka has a very common name, we were left to assume they had him confused with someone else of the same name. Maybe this was why we were being so profusely welcomed back; that we were being confused with a regular Dari guest or a more serious Amanjunkie like paul2, bearbrick, deer, or zigzag? LOL.