Returning to Club Med Bali - Wearing Bikinis for the First Time

One thing struck me this trip, Bali does not have good tasting water.

Possibly my biggest struggle during the entire trip.
To people who says water doesn't have taste.
I said BULL.

Do not tell me there is no taste in mineral water. I hate mineral water. They're so difficult to ingest.
But nothing hits me harder than horrible tap water. I even have this description that goes:"this water tastes tappy." It's like water that goes through age-old pipe system that quite possibly has rust in them which end up in the water, and no amount of lemon slices can mask that taste.

I was staying in Club Med Bali for 4 days and they were serving either tap water or bad tasting bottled water throughout the compound. I even took an uber out to a supermarket and, to my horror, found nothing decent to drink, perhaps the best option would be Evian water (ugh, mineral water).

Note: my preferred water is always reversed osmosis water, or at best, a good quality distilled water.
Maybe I'm a water snob. Is there such a term?

SO I survived mainly on soda water and tolerated through bottled water during my stay. Haha.

I know it's a bit late but for the first time in my life, I wore a bikini out in the open.
I wore bikinis before, but they're always underneath a cover-up dress, or when I was forced to back in my pageant days. And it wasn't until recent years that I started wearing bikinis under dresses and not until this trip, that I wore bikinis on its own to swim.

A lot of it has to do my (lack of) confidence growing up. But that's another story.

I still haven't got to the point where I could wear bikinis and walk around, I'm not sure if I could ever do that. Too much of my Asian modesty resides in me, lol. (what rubbish, modesty has nothing to do with Asians, oops).

I loved the fact that Club Med Bali extended their facilities, now there's a bigger adult-only pool and a fancier deck restaurant where people can enjoy course-to-course meal instead of sitting at a buffet at the main restaurant. It has very fancy decor and water feature too. Food exceeded expectation when being produced at that volume every single meal. There were certain dishes that I did enjoy tremendously, not so for most of them. And truth be told, the food can get pretty mundane after a while. And they were severely lacking in the dessert department, unlike my first trip here years ago when I remembered the dessert being a-ma-zing. Especially the macaroons (have to give it to the French). However I didn't even see a single macaroons this entire trip. sobs.

So on the last day I wanted to go out and hit up a cafe and to my distress, all the good worthy-to-visit artisan cafes are all located in the northern side of Bali, with a majority surrounding the Ubud region. Which meant it was at least 45-min drive, even with the new highway, to get to any of them (30mins to the closest). And it was Melasti festival, where every villager in Bali (according to my Balinese friend) will go to the sea and bring with them all of their temple sacred artefacts and tools to wash for purification while offering to Baruna, gods of the sea, right before the Balinese New Year (which is on Wednesday). Which meant most roads will be blocked by hordes and hordes of prayers walking to the beach.

In the end it was decided that we depart for the airport early and try to change up our flight to an earlier one (since it was business class); which we managed and left Bali three hours earlier than the intended schedule.

Oh funny story insert: while waiting for my flight at the premier lounge inside the airport, which was pretty packed by the time, I was seated next to this young Russian lady with the grumpiest face. Then her partner showed up with plates of food and seated across her who happened to be this old, fairly large (ok, fine, he was fat) Indian man. And immediately the words 'sugar daddy' rang in my mind. Ok fine, maybe I shouldn't be so judgemental.
After a while, I stood up to look for water to drink (oh the struggle) and he smiled at my bf and asked, in front of his lady: "she's pretty (referring to my empty seat), where did you get get from?"

wtf lolol. Remind me never to question my own judgement.
At least now I know why the Russian has a sour-puss face.


Pre-flight ootd


on flight - Business Class seats (not everyday I get to sit in Business class, so a selfie is well deserved here).


























the green band on my wrist is the ticket to all the unlimited booze and access to adult-only pools. take that teenagers.