Privacy, cost and space are the key reasons why renting a luxury holiday villa in the paradise island of Bali, Indonesia, can be a superior experience to booking a hotel for an overseas holiday. ™ By their very nature, hotels are often located near airports, in the centre of busy commercial areas, or surrounded by noisy nightclubs and restaurants. When you book a hotel room, you have to expect there will be many other travellers nearby. You may be there to see the sights but you can also expect to see many other sightseers too. Hotels often have internal bars, nightclubs and crowded pool areas, all which tend to generate noise and interfere with your privacy. Too often there can be late-night poolside parties at Bali hotels that are not likely to encourage you to get a relaxing sleep. Villas, however, are often built in spectacular seafront areas, or tucked away in mountain regions with sensational views, perhaps even amidst rural Bali village areas. Many villas have their own private swimming pools, where you can 'skinny dip' to your heart's content, if you want, in complete privacy and peace. When you rent a villa for a holiday you almost certainly have the whole house and gardens for your own use, usually with plenty of getaway corners where you can find peace or bury yourself in a good book. Villas have their own large kitchens so you can avoid the need to go out to expensive restaurants, or even cook you own meals. Many villas in Bali have their own in-house employed help staff who can even cook you personalized meals, if you are not the cooking type. Hotel rooms generally have only one bathroom. Villas often have an en suite bathroom off every bedroom, meaning much greater privacy, space and choice. Hotel rooms generally have a bar fridge where you strictly pay per item you consume. Villas have a full-size fridge and even a freezer which you can pack with the precise groceries, snacks or cold refreshments that you prefer. Depending whether you are prepared to pay for a suite, hotel rooms, particularly in Bali, tend to be designed to accommodate as many people as possible in the one building. Some even have specially designed (small) furniture that attempts to make a small room look bigger. Let's just say that most mid-level hotels are designed for as many people as they can get to pay. Space is at a premium. By renting a villa for your holiday - and many have four bedrooms or more, you can expect to pay up to 50% less, per square foot, than you would in the average hotel. Because they are often in high-density, high-demand commercial areas, hotels have to charge higher prices to ensure they cover their high rental overheads. In hotels, you are likely to have to queue at a reception desk to get them to arrange any tours, trips or extra services. You may even discover that most of the best food is gone if you are too late for breakfast. Breakfast hours are tightly restricted in a hotel, because they must cater for many more people. In a villa, however, you have your own house staff dedicated to your personal service. You can sleep in and have breakfast whenever you like. Villa helpers can produce meals for you at your whim and can go shopping for the precise ingredients that you prefer. They can do daily cleaning, laundry and can organize transport, car or motorbike rentals and book daily tours for you. No queues, no crowds, fewer hassles and no time wasting. Despite these reasons, the official figures for Bali show that more than 70% of international tourists who visit stay in hotels, while only 16.4% stay in Bali villas. Most are missing out on the unique villa experience. There are many reasons why booking your holiday in Bali in a luxury villa kiralık villa is far preferable to once again restricting yourself to a hotel room. It's been said that once a traveller stays in a villa for a vacation, they will never again want to subject themselves to the traditional hotel experience. The next time you plan a Bali holiday, why not consider the Villa option? You will be pleasantly surprised at the difference from a hotel experience. You've decided to rent a villa, cottage or cabin for a summer vacation. Where do you look for one that is going to give you the idyllic time you and your family need? How do you know that the description you read on a web site or in an advertisement is accurate, or really gives the information you need before you part with your money? Here are a few tips to help you read between the lines and understand what the owner or agency is really telling you about the property you are interested in. Vacation homes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are downright rustic, perhaps no more than a cabin to change in and sleep in at night, whilst others have more facilities and comforts than you have at home. Never forget though, that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', and the place the owner has loved since childhood that holds a wealth of memories for him, might not match your dream of an idyllic vacation. And, bear in mind that although you would like to spend the majority of your vacation on the dock and in the water, sometimes the weather can be very unkind and you may need to move indoors to escape the elements. So what should you look out for in an advertisement, or on a vacation rentals website: o Descriptions that seem unnecessarily vague - this lets the owner or agency off any accusation of misrepresentation o Smoking permitted - means the owners smoke and the place will probably have the all-pervading odor of stale tobacco, particularly the beds. o Pets welcome - the owners probably have dogs, so will every renter in the summer, so to feel at home, you'll at least need a Shitzu, if not a brace of Golden Retrievers. o Use of expressions such as: 'Traditional cottage furnishings' - usually means green and yellow furniture previously enjoyed by a decade of domestic pets and the occasional rodent, orange threadbare carpet sporting a range of unidentifiable stains, and beds that would not have been out of place in a Victorian workhouse. o 'Rustic' - as above but with little or no inside plumbing o 'Short walk to the beach' - probably indicates you will need to take your hiking boots, and a bell to ward off bears along the way. o 'The waterfront is a 'bit' weedy' - there is no waterfront, at least there may be some in the far distance after you navigate the marsh in your canoe. This is probably a bit unfair - I too would tell my guests if there was a little weed at the waterfront, or if the beach was not right off the deck. However, be aware that vacation homes may not be all they seem from a web advert, or from a description given to you over the phone. The best way of satisfying yourself that you are really getting what your family wants is to get a testimonial from a previous renter, so ask the owner or agent where you can see these. If the place is as good as it is advertised, they will not have a problem with sharing that with you.
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A battery leak in a flashlight is not too bad. You simply clean the contacts and all is well, but a battery leak in an electronic device usually spells doom for the device. The fluid that comes out of the battery is corrosive and will normally cause damage to the sensitive circuitry in an electronic device. ™ There is hope! Did you know that most battery company's actually Guarantee that their battery will not leak and damage your electronic device? The next time you buy a set of batteries, look on the package for a guarantee. If it does not have a guarantee, I would stay away from those batteries. NOTE: I have only seen this type of guarantee on standard size Alkaline batteries: AA, C, D, and a few watch batteries. I'm not sure if re-chargeable batteries leak and I'm not sure if they offer this type of guarantee. When batteries leak, if the item is not that expensive, most people will simply throw the item away and buy a new item, but what about bigger ticket items like a digital camera? Battery leaks are not covered by the camera warranty, and having someone clean the battery leak could void your camera warranty. This is the where battery guarantees come into play. For example, I had an $80 dive light in which the batteries leaked. I thought this was really strange because I changed the batteries weekly. TIP: Never go night diving with old batteries. I sent the dive light to the battery company and I received a new light (newer model) and new batteries. Example two, my friend had an old camera winder which was damaged by leaking batteries. We sent the winder to the company and in a few weeks the battery company sent a check to buy a new winder and of course new batteries. The obvious drawback to the guarantee is you have to pay to ship your item to the company, and you will be without the item for a while (4-6 weeks). Also, it is the company's discretion to repair or replace the item. For me, it's a hassle to send the item to the battery company if a replacement can be purchased for less than $20. Do's and Don'ts: 1. Do make sure the battery company offers a guarantee on their batteries and read the terms of the guarantee. 1. Don't mix and match batteries? This will increase your chances of experiencing a leak and this will void the guarantee. 2. Don't leave batteries in electronic devices for extended periods of time. 3. Don't expose electronic devices to excessive heat, as heat will cause a leak and possibly worse, an explosion. Whenever possible, buy rechargeable batteries. They can be used over and over again, but they need to be used, and over time they will begin to lose their ability to hold a charge. Don't expect a rechargeable battery to hold a charge after sitting in your desk drawer for two months. You will be able to recharge the battery, but the charge will not last as long. Don't throw that thing away just because the batteries leaked in it! Check if the battery company has a guarantee! A chronograph watch is a watch that has additional features to a watch that just tells the time and perhaps the date; it is a complicated watch, this is because the extra features are called Best Watch Winder complications. These additional features are often some type of stopwatch timing ability that is facilitated by the presence of sub dials on the main watch face. The extra functions of chronograph watches are operated with push buttons located next to the winder, depending on the design and manufacturer there maybe between one and four of these push buttons. These complications or extra functions may number as high as ten or more, but these are usually on very expensive mechanical watches. These types of chronograph wristwatches are more about showing off the skills of the designers and craftsmen who build them, rather than about making functions that anyone would want to use very much. Also these types of chronograph watches are only built in limited numbers for avid watch collectors and rich ones at that, they can cost literally millions of dollars! Digital watches have made it possible for even cheap chronograph watches to have many functions and be accurate to a few second per month, but chronograph watches are often bought as much for their appearance as for their function, or at least it becomes a secondary consideration after style. Although chronograph watches may be a chronometers the two terms should not be confused as they are not interchangeable. A chronometer could be a watch, although not necessarily as it could be any timepiece, that has design features that make it very accurate at keeping time regardless of external conditions. Getting greater accuracy for clocks and watches has been a challenge since the first mechanical clocks were produced in the 16th century, then accuracy was so poor, errors of plus or minus hours per day made them more novelty items than timekeepers. It wasn't until 1657 when the balance spring was added to the balance wheel that things took a big leap forward with regard to accuracy. With mechanical parts made of metal, temperature changes were a particular problem, as changes caused by expansion and contraction of the parts, particularly the balance wheel, caused the mechanism to run faster or slower. To overcome these problems designs were changed and in the mechanism Watch Winder itself accuracy was improved by the use of metals that were stable through a range of temperatures. You will also find that some chronometers have protection against the effect of magnetic fields. The use of bi-metallic balance springs, where metals having two different coefficients of thermal expansion are used to keep the force of the spring even through a range of temperatures, was pioneered by John Harrison. Harrison was the English clockmaker whose life's work was the development of the first real marine chronometer. John Harrison's drive to produce a chronometer was the problem of "longitude" that made navigation at sea so difficult and the prize to solve it, as in the film of that name made in the year 2000. So basically any type of watch may be a chronometer, but a chronograph watch isn't always a chronometer, but they could be one and the same thing! |
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