Our Favourite Little Hotel

the sign that says it all

Call me a stick in the mud, but I find it hard to justify picking any other hotel in Ubud other than our beloved Tegal Sari, when 500000 Rp or SGD $89.30 gets us a super deluxe room with all mod cons (okay, not quite all, since the Tegal Sari rooms are devoid of the evil goggle box but we never miss it when we're there), access to a lovely stone-bottomed pool, great views of padi fields, pretty comfortable rooms, and wonderful service to boot. Sure, there are more luxurious hotels or quainter ones set in traditional family compounds, and one day we will get round to trying some of these, but for now, we haven't gotten enough of it yet.

the quintessential Tegal Sari breakfast

This time round, we were unable to get our favourite, Room No.11, but this gave us an opportunity to check out the "new" rooms that Tegal Sari had built on the other end of the padi fields, particularly one of the rooms upstairs; we had never stayed in one before. And as a sign of the hotel's continuing popularity, we had to make do with a downstairs room for the first night.

the porch of No. 21

No.21 resembled the other downstairs rooms we had stayed in. No. 22, our room upstairs, was a nice surprise.

inside No. 22

I hadn't noticed the description of the room when I made the booking - super deluxe wooden room. The floor and the walls were all done up in dark wood, giving it a cosy, more luxurious feel.

No. 22's balcony

Then there was the balcony which, as expected, was more private than the porch downstairs.

check out the thatched roof!

The thatched roof added a more rustic touch to the whole setting.

our neighbours - a scaly-breasted munia

Every morning, we were awakened by what HM called the chirping roof. The only downside of all this proximity to bird life was the "renovation" debris.

evidence

The birds were in nest-building mode, and from what we could see, our roof was prime property. The problem was the birds would sometimes overestimate their strength and pick up a little more than they could carry, and on route back to the roof, deposit something or other on our porch. Still, it was fun watching the birds zooming in and out, flying in to pick up whatever they had dropped, from the other side of the glass doors separating our room from the balcony, especially since, alas, we were faced with barren fields.

no padi, no ducks