Bali Honeymoon - Day 1 (Review of Unagi Villas)

Hi everyone! I just came back from my 3 days honeymoon in the beautiful island Bali. As you have reading my previous post excited about my Bali honeymoon trip, here you have it! My full post of my Bali experience for the first day! Hubby and I went to Aman Jaya bus stop early morning around 4am to catch our bus at 4.30am. We took YoYo bus from Aman Jaya. We had bought our bus tickets from YoYo website 3 months before. The price of the tickets were about RM160+ for 2 pax from Ipoh to-and-fro KLIA2. We took Air Asia flight to Bali (Denpasar) so we had to take out bus to KLIA2.

Disclaimer: All the pictures are our own pictures taken with our phones and they are ORIGINAL pictures of the villas and the places we have been to. We only edited the photos to add blog watermark and enhance the brightness and colors.

This is us- sleepy as it's 4am in the morning.

We arrived at KLIA2 around 8.30am and waited for our flight at 10.50am

Holiday starts

Here's KLIA2 - my first time here (macam katak bawah tempurung)

We proceeded check in via Self Check-in Kiosk

Check-in procedure was quick (abotu 5 min?). We had to wait for 1 hour ++ before the flight. So we headed to Shilin Taiwan Snack for my Meesua and Crispy XXL chicken

Shilin Mee Sua - RM9.50

Crispy XXL chicken - RM9.50

We flew at 10.50am via Air Asia and it took about 3 hours to reach Denpasar (Bali) air port. So sit back and relax..

We're flying to Bali!

Someone was pretty excited about the Honeymoon trip

We reached Ngurah Rai Air Port at Denpasar, Bali around 2.00pm. 

Look at this interesting decoration at airport. I think it's made from rattan?

We quickly headed to the arrival hall to meet our driver. Yes, Unagi Villas provides complimentary pick-up or transfer to airport. You got to pick either direction for this complimentary service. But, some other packages from this villa include both ways. Ours, we are only entitled for one way and we asked for a pick-up.

Unagi Villas' Avanza that brings us to and fro airport and to Tanah Lot

This is how the airport looks like. Very Balinese feel. I love all the 'temples' at the airport. Never seen anything like this before.

Our Unagi Villas driver - Mr. Juli

Our lovely driver was Mr. Juli from Unagi Villas. He is a cute driver, very friendly and chatty driver. He made us feel so welcomed to Bali and he brought us to have our lunch first before going back to the villa. For your information, we had booked for 3D2N stay in Unagi Villas, Canggu, Bali. You can see HERE for more information about the room rates and the villa itself. We were hungry and Juli brought us to eat some local food at a restaurant. We had no idea what to order and just picked from the pictures in the menu.

Corn and egg 

Sambal petai and crispy anchovies

Fried tempeh with sambal

The cost of the lunch was expensive for the food we had; IDR 155,000 (about RM50++) for 2 pax. We did not even order any drinks for we can forsee the bill would be expensive. Yep! We were right.

We then headed to the villa straight. It was about 45 minutes drive from airport to our villa as the traffic in Bali was terrible! Dangerous and not smooth at all. This is the downside of holiday in Bali. Travelling from one place to another took a long time due to heavy and terrible traffic. Imagine, there's no traffice light, and when there are traffice lights, both directions are green at the same time and all cars and scooters were moving at the same time and against each other. So, all jammed at the centre of the cross junction. In addition, scooter riders rode dangerously all the time (both local and tourists).

Well, this post is also to share our thoughts of this villa. We were given a 3 bedroom villa as requested to have complete privacy for our honeymoon. The 2 bedroom  villa is private too but guests can be seen from outside the villa when people pass by the wall. We reached the villa about 3.30pm.

How the villas look like from outside. Colorful flowers

Ready to go inside?

Upon stepping inside, you will see a mini garden with step stones to walk to the side of the villa

Beautiful from outside

 Ready to go inside?

We are awed when we went inside the villa. I hope you all too. I could not find any full review of this new villa. Unagi Villas only started their operation in August 2015 (very new) and we could not find any proper review, only reviews from Tripadvisor, Booking.com and Expedia. So I need to write proper review of this villa. Here's what inside the villa:

We have a spaceous living room but without any air-cond or fan at this are

There's a flat screen TV with a lot of TV channels. Will not be bored in the villa as there's also free complimentary WIFI connection at this area. NOTE: WIFI signal was weak in the room. Living room and pool area were the placed with strongest WIFI 

After passing by the living room, here comes the pool area. This area is the most fascinating place of the villa besides the comfortable bed. The water in the pool is clean. Clear blue! Beside the pool are 4 deck chairs for sun bathing (not for us!) Clean towels were placed on the deck chairs for guests use after swimming. How thoughtful!

 

Beside the swimming pool is also the kitchen and dining area. The design of the villa is very classy, modern and Balinese as at the same time. The kitchen area has a fridge, stove, water kettle, bread toaster, microwave and attached oil exhaust.

 

This is the pathway the villa staff comes in to deliver daily breakfast. Haha.

From the kitchen, you will see the beautiful pool and the entrance to our master bedroom.

Beautiful view?! For us, YES!

These two deck chairs we placed outside the bedroom, beside the swimming pool. Convenient but.. it was not properly maintained. There were many dirt and sand on the deck chairs. I had to brushed it off before sitting on it (the down side of this villa)

From outside our room, you can see this beautiful swimming pool

After putting down the luggage, hubby and I decided to dip into the pool for our afternoon swim.

Expert swimming

The deck chairs and mini garden beside our room

Balinese feel everywhere, even inside the pool!

Our villa is located deep in a village and directly beside a small paddy field. We felt very soothing and relaxed as there were no heavy traffice sound or disturbances from outside. Secluded and private retreat for us! If you prefer to be near to 'happening places' in Bali, you can try to look for villas in Kuta, Ubud or Seminyak. Anyway, there is tooooo many villas in Bali that you can choose from and Canggu is a new attraction now in Bali as it is a secluded area, suitable for people looking to be closer to nature and relaxation.

Beautiful paddy field

Upon arrival, we were served with refreshing cucumber juice and fruit platter. Yumz!

I had forgotten to take pictures of our room! Aiks! But I managed to take pictures of the big bath tub and the toilets. Well, the toilet is very clean!

We did not go anywhere as we were very tired from the travelling and decided to stay in the villa for the night. The sun set around 6.30pm and the sky was dark around 7.00pm. The villa looks beautiful at night too.

Review of UNAGI VILLAS

Ok, overall, the villa is beautiful and perfect for us. To us, this place is fantastic and fascinating in our eyes. Everything was perfect but of course, there are a few areas need to be improved in order to make Unagi Villas stands out more than other villas. Here are the pros and cons we think after the 2 nights stay:

Pros:
1) Beautiful complete villa with living room, kitchen, private pool, deck chairs and garden
2) Air conditioned room with big bath tub and clean toilet
3) Clean living room, pool and bedroom
4) Friendly staff and always attend to our needs
5) Basic kitchen facilities provided - fridge, kettle, toaster and microwave
6) Quiet environment day and night
7) Complimentary breakfast (see Day 2 review for pictures of breakfast), WIFI and airport pick-up/ transfers
8) Shuttle provided to ECHO beach (drop only) 
9) Room service provided (but charges apply if food ordered outside at weird hours)
10) Various TV channels with nice movies
11) DVD and CD library available (never used, so not sure what they actually have)
12) Comfortable beds, sofa and deck chairs
13) Daily room service 
14) Delicious breakfast provided
15) Super friendly staff and driver (Mr. Juli)

Cons:
1) Living room need a fan/ air-cond as during the day, this place is warm and stuffy
2) No cooking utensils like pan or pot in the kitchen
3) Kitchen area not throughly cleaned i.e the plates had stains and tables dirty
4) Green mould beside the pool and bottom of pool has a lot of sands. (not a problem to us though)
5) Deck chairs not properly cleaned - has sand and dirt on it.
6) Overall environment need to be properly maintained - tissues and cigarette buds on the garden floor. 

Overall, we find that this villa just need more thorough maintainance of the pool and the environment. Other places are indeed clean, but those 'minor and negligable' areas often not being paid attention to, and they are the reasons that bring down the impression of the villa. It actually did not bother us much, but we find that this can be improved and it will make other visitors come in feel more impressed! Good job!



Alright, enough review! Let's continue with my blog for the day.
I told hubby that I was hungry around 8.30pm and asked him to go out with me by walking. Unfortunately, it was so dark at night (no street light) and there was dog chasing after us before we walked out pass the villas. So, we turned back. No where to go for that night, we decided to order room service. While waiting for the food to come, we took selfies while waiting for our late dinner.

Here comes the delicious dinner. Yumz. We ordered pizza and salad. End the night with two Bintang Beers!

Yummy pizza with mix salad and Bintang Beer. The cost for the pizza, salad including delivery charges was IDR 110,000 (RM30++). Well, better than eating warung type dishes but expensive (our lunch today) haha!

We ended our night with Bintang beer and a good movie! Good night!

Love, 

Mr. & Mrs. Lee