Disadvantage of a good deal

Unfortunately there are disadvantages to getting really good deals.

There's often a good reason for someone discounting. In our case right now we're only the second ever tenants so we're a test case (it's not a smooth operation).

Although you might get a good deal on accommodation, there are always other costs as part of a stay and those will be full price and way out of budget (Hotel mini bar anyone?). In our current example, the villa is extremely remote and we have no transport (we're not about to go full Balinese and take Darcy around on a moped) so food options are: the staff or self catering. The former is a "reasonable" price for someone doing your shopping, cooking for you in your own home and then washing up, we did it once (which was fantastic) but not at all possible twice a day for a week. The latter involves a cab ride to some shops half an hour away. Unfortunately the staff control the choice of cab so we got royally ripped off for our trip to the supermarket. With a more appropriate budget we would probably have shrugged these costs off - ah well.

Going shopping in non tourist areas of different countries is always interesting to see what's different? what do you recognise?

Ali and I have been on a low carb/low sugar diet for a few months (so plenty of meat, full fat anything and lots of veg). As soon as we walked into our supermarket in Bali it was clear our diet was going to have to change at least for this week. The smell of the fresh food area and particularly the meat counter made you want to gag, so we picked up the overpriced, OK looking vegetables that were on offer, a week's worth of snacks and a 5 kilo bag of rice!

In the end to compliment our veg and rice diet we've engaged the staff to source and prepare some chicken skewers (which are delicious) - I won't be asking where they got them from though.