Tirta Sari Bungalows

. The staff overall were lovely - it really is a small, old fashioned sort of friendly place and really, really good value for money without feeling you were doing it on the cheap. This is an old fashioned style small hotel with approx 25 individual bungalow/rooms around a courtyard garden and pool in between. Each room has an open air bathroom (just a shower) at the back and a front, covered porch with a day bed and outdoor setting in front. Beautifully clean. There is generous storage and cupboard space in the bedroom (large comfy king size bed with mosquito net) and there are bedside lights (which hotels in Bali in my experience don’t always have). There aren’t any rooms with a preferable outlook really and the gardens are beautiful with the restaurant overlooking the pool. Breakfast is good; a plate of fruit, fruit juice, tea/coffee and a choice of traditional Indonesian breakfasts or 2 eggs with toast, or banana or pineapple pancakes. When the hotel has a larger tour booking they put on a buffet; but no items are labelled so I expected little fried tofu bites and they were chicken and or vegetable! (the homemade Indonesian ‘pastries’ are to die for). Basically the brekkie staff could not be more obliging ; don’t fancy the buffet - they would happily provide eggs cooked how you fancied them. All the food at the restaurant was good and VERY reasonably priced. The stand out was that days catch - we got shown the actual fish on offer and asked which we wanted There is an extremely cheap laundry connected to the hotel - 20.000 rupiah equivalent to $2 Aus $ per kilo wash. Location: The hotel is really conveniently placed down a quiet lane off the busy main road that runs through Pemuteran. Turn right out of the hotel for a wide selection of eating places. Walk through the back gate down the side of the Turtle Hatchery behind the hotel and you get to see the beach (about 50 m all up)where the hotel has 8 lounges for its residents’ use.

On a busy day you could find difficulty with getting a free lounge around the pool. We found the pool was over chlorinated; two of our cossies got a bit miscoloured and I would recommend taking goggles especially if you have kids who will live in the pool. The rather bare communal area does have a fridge though which we helped ourselves to using, as the bedrooms don’t have them. There is no water filter either - you are left two small bottles of water in your room overnight. One or two of the young men at the front desk were a bit dozy, muddling aspects of our booking and the time for our departure pick up. (Take a copy of your booking if you have made any special requests etc) The women on reception were much more reliable. Our only disappointment food-wise was that you could swim up to the pool bar and order iced coffees, fresh juices or a beer, but the restaurant does not offer any European food, so you couldn’t order some chips or a sandwich for a poolside lunch on those days you wanted to veg around the pool. The down side of the cheap laundry was that if they are busy with a lot of people checking out they will say they are too busy to do your laundry (!)on the other hand the first time we used them we got clothes back the same day! Over all a fab place far more positives than negatives and I am mentioning them to provide a useful review