Planning for this trip started last October, just a few days after my return from a trip to Bali with my husband & kids. My girlfriend rode past on her bike while I was watering the garden & stopped to chat about my holiday. She was keen for a trip with some girlfriends and I thought 'great idea' can I come too? Visions of myself sleeping in and having all 'Me' time were just too good to be true. So there the plan was hatched, just 4 or so of us, but in a few weeks time we had 8 more girls coming. Of course there had to be regular 'Bali meetings' to discuss our plans (our husbands just thought it was an excuse to have drinks). 

The night before the flight I get to bed early but here I am awake at 11pm, can't get back to sleep for what seems like forever, so up I get & use my iPad for the next hour or so. Back to bed at 1pm, great... now I only have about 4 hours of sleep to go before the alarm goes off. Lucky my husband also set his alarm as the kids has been playing with my phone & had turned the sound down - just imagine missing the alarm! I was the designated driver picking up 4 girls on the way to the airport. So off we go to Brisbane airport, all excited about our trip. 

At the airport we meet up with another friend travelling from Melbourne. We are a little disappointed at check-in as most of us cannot sit together because everyone else on the flight has already done a web check-in. After some breakfast & some duty free shopping our flight is ready to board. All the girls get up to board straight away & 3 of us decide to wait until the line is shorter. When we eventually line up there is a problem with the scanning of boarding passes, so we sit back for what feels like 45 mins while they try to sort it out. Finally we board the flight. This is the smallest plane I've ever seen for an international flight. The seating was 3 + 3 (like a domestic flight) instead of the usual 3 + 4 + 3. This was also the first time I'd flown Virgin to Bali. Although the plane was nice & new, I was quite surprised to find there was no inflight service - bugger, I was looking forward to a movie with no interruptions (last trip I spent most of the flight putting the earplugs back in my daughter's ears, missing parts of my movie). The food was very average, no hot meals, just sandwiches and wraps.  If you waited another few hours you could order a pie!  What happened to the little meals with all the containers where you got a hot dish, side salad, desert plus cheese & crackers?  

Finally we land.  It's not as humid as last September & we seem to be the only plane that has landed, so we breeze through customs and in no time have our luggage.

This is the first trip in a while that I had booked through a travel agent - I usually book flights direct with the airline and direct with the hotel - but since all the other girls had booked through an agency I did the same.  They had organized a transport company to pick us up and we were greeted with frangipani garlands & big smiles.

We arrive at the Puri Raja Hotel late afternoon and after check-in, take our bags to our rooms then we go looking for our 4 other girlfriends who had arrived 2 days prior.  We meet up with them and they looked so relaxed while we are still running a hundred miles an hour with our senses overloaded.  A few of us decided to check out the beachfront, so we walked out onto the path and went next door to Mozzarella by the Sea & tried some of their 2 for 1 cocktails.  At this stage we also met up with 2 other ladies who had arrived the day prior and were staying at the Pullman - they couldn't get into the Puri Raja because it was full.  Was lovely catching up with them and watching the sunset while having a few drinks.  We tried to book a table for 12 for the Saturday night as I'd read they had a good Beatles cover band playing.  Unfortunately they couldn't fit us in - so we booked for dinner tomorrow night.

The others were keen for an early dinner but we were just settling in, so the 5 of us opted to have dinner a bit later.  After a shower we walked down the beachfront path to Jl Melasti and met up with the Pullman girls.  One of the girls suggested dinner at Lemongrass Thai but as I'd eaten Thai takeaway the night before I was keen to try some Indonesian.  We walked next door to Gosha and I ordered my beloved mie goreng and had my first cold Bintang for the trip.  The meal was ok but nothing special and the service pretty slow.  We were pretty tired after dinner, so we walked back to our hotel.  We couldn't find the others so decided to call it a night...