About Panorama/Gray Tours

Panorama/Gray (PG) Tours’ headquarters is located in Sanur Beach which is about a 10 minute drive from Tuban . They greeted us at the airport with their very colorful bandanas and matching shirts; a vibrant mix of yellows, reds and blues. There were minor complications as we heard that some of the roads leading out of the airport had been blocked by rioters. The entire wait was a bit over an hour after landing. Not nearly soon enough, we were being shown to a small van that we boarded with another couple from South Africa.

This is when it gets hilarious or frustrating, depending on your level of fatigue. Remember, it takes 21 hours of flying to get here from New York, plus a 5 hour layover in Singapore, and a 90 minute stop in Frankfurt. As the driver made his way out of the airport, the guide turned to us and started speaking. I looked at him intently as I tried to decipher his English; Chuck had completely given up at the onset, convinced that we were being kidnapped somewhere. It’s good that the literature we received from them was printed in English. I want to thank the planners of the airport or the architects of the Bali Hai, whichever came first, for having made the distance between the two less than 10 minutes.

The next day, we had a call from a PG agent who was downstairs in our hotel’s lobby. She wanted to explain the whole tour thing to both of us, so down we went. There were 3 full day tours, and 2 half-day tours. You could actually pick and choose the tours and the days to go; they had so many people enlisted that it was not difficult to accommodate the requests. You had to be punctual; a mini air conditioned bus would always pick us up at the hotel and bring us to the office where people from the various hotels would converge, pick their tours and language preferences and would be assigned a bus number. I thought that was actually well done.

They offer complimentary coffee and tea to all the participants. The buses are fairly large and air conditioned which is nothing short of a blessing. The heat in Bali can get pretty brutal. You don’t get the same guide everyday, but some are more glib and give more information than others. If you select a tour, make sure it includes the following areas: Bedugul – Mengwi Temple, Pacung for lunch with wonderful view of rice terraces, Alas Kedaton with famed Monkey Forest and Tanah Lot with sea temple and snake cave; Kintamani – Barong dance in Batubulan, Celuk for silver, Ubud for artists; Besakih, biggest temple in Bali – Mas for wood carving, and batik weaving, Klungung – region of royalty with temple to name a few.