After our Ubud homestay B&B proved intolerable, we quickly used its excellent wifi to hop onto hotels.com. There, we were lucky enough to find a resort that met our basic needs: air conditioning and an available room for two nights--New Year's Eve and Day--that might well have proven difficult to book.
Wanting no hurt feelings, we told our hosts, Wayan and Noman, "We like you, really. Your home is lovely. Your grandchild and roosters couldn't be more charming. But we are old and need air conditioning in order to sleep." More important, we assured them that we would not demand a refund for the pittance they had charged. In return, they seemed content enough to be free of such unreasonable requests as asking Wayan for a fresh towel when his hands were covered with mud from an ongoing re-sodding project. Noman, a sturdy little Balinese woman, hauled our massive suitcase to the curb, and Wayan drove us free of charge to the new hotel in his well-air-conditioned van. At that point, I wouldn't have minded sleeping in it.
Far outside of the downtown area, on the nearly vertical road to the Monkey Forest, The Sungu Hotel and Resort features traditional Balinese architecture and a wide-open garden layout. We felt certain that this would be a pleasant and refreshing stay.
Hotels.com reservations always go smoothly. Within seconds we had received an email confirmation, with reservation number, and the full payment was immediately extracted from our bank account.
"Reservation for Wade," I announced at the front desk.
The desk clerk perused a printout from the back office. Then he uttered words that strike fear into the heart of even the most seasoned traveler. "No reservation here," he said. The last time I'd heard these words was when we booked a hotel for a Rolling Stones concert in Foxboro, MA; backtracked down the highway to find a different place to stay; and then had to retrace our steps through dense concert-going traffic to get there on time. It had worked out then, I thought, but it was a bit stressful.
"Oh, we just made the reservation an hour ago," I chirped. "Perhaps it's a bit late coming in."
"Wade?" And he consulted the same printout again. "No have reservation."
"But I received a confirmation email from hotels.com," I insisted. "And the money has been taken out of our account. Maybe you could go online and see if it has arrived."
"No reservation," he repeated.
I tried a different tack. "Do you have a room for tonight?"
"Yes."
This was progress.
"But no reservation," he went on.
Now I was getting testy. "Do you have Internet here?"
"Yes, have Internet."
"Well, is it working?"
"Haha. Yes, working."
"Perhaps you could check to see if the reservation has come in, then?"
"No reservation. No."
"Look, I can prove that we have a reservation!" I cried. I pulled out my laptop, set it up on the check-in desk, and asked for the wifi code. There was the confirmation email, still in my inbox.
"See? This says we are confirmed. And I can open our bank account to show you that the money has been withdrawn!"
"We no have reservation."
At least this guy is consistent. Sensing trouble, his manager approached me and managed to explain that, without their own archaic system's recognizing the reservation, they simply could not let us in. He suggested that I sit down and wait on an unyielding piece of rough-hewn wooden furniture in the lobby.
Not one to sit and wait indefinitely, I solicited Bill's help. I knew what he was thinking, and so do you. Nevertheless, he proposed the elegant solution "Look, we pay cash now; you let us in room; then you give us cash back when reservation come in."
Cash broke the deadlock. The manager turned on his hospitality switch in the blink of an eye. "Please have seat, and we bring you welcome drink!"
The wooden bench didn't seem quite so unyielding with a frozen towel and a honeydew melon/Sprite concoction in hand.
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The Sungu was not without its continuing rough spots. As I've said, it has an open layout, which means that it is set in a meandering garden, emerald-green and covered in the same moss that engulfs every surface in Bali as soon as it is placed there.
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| View from bedroom. Note complimentary New Year's horns on credenza.  |
There were open pools everywhere, even outside our bedroom window and in our bathroom, which was open to the air and featured a heavenly outdoor shower with a large resident snail.
All this openness and greenery meant two things. First, our nostrils could never escape the pervasive odor of mold. And, second, the threat of mosquito infestation called for all-out combative measures. Our largely outdoor bath had a locking door separating it from the sleeping area. (Though it probably locked less because of mosquitoes than because intruders have been known to climb over its wall.) A mosquito coil, matches, and an offer of help with lighting it were among the hotel's basic services.
The bed was romantically swathed in mosquito netting, which the staff offered to help us undo if necessary.
And another odor periodically wafted throughout the resort grounds: mosquito spray, which at least carried the pleasant, anise-like scent of Thai basil. Given all this, not a single mosquito survived to enter the cracks in our room door or the door from the bath.
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New Year's Eve is apparently as big a deal in Ubud as it is in Florida. In other words, we spent the evening in a war zone, comforted only by the staff's assurances that all festivities would end promptly at midnight, because that was the law.
It all began at around 8 o'clock with a few local firecrackers, and continued on into full-sized, call-and-response mortar rounds bursting and fizzing directly over the tall, bamboo ceiling of our room. That everything didn't catch alight is a wonder. But it was, indeed, all over shortly after midnight.
The next morning, we took turns surprising each other and waking the neighbors by blasting the New Year's horns without warning.
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