You hear a lot chit-chat about holiday club memberships and it’s not all good.
Let’s rectify that; we are writing to share our experiences and journey with Karma Group where we have met numerous interesting people, many who we now call friends. Great locations and staff who we have always found helpful and friendly. Our journey started when curiosity got the better of us in Kuta, Bali back in 2011. We opened the card won a prize and off to the presentation meeting; we felt comfortable with the presentation and what was being offered signing up on an entry level program.
In 2012 we decided to take a trip to Goa, India staying at the Haathi Mahal. A quite time of the year and we can say that John Spence truly does support the Crystal Foundation. There were about a 100 or so children being cater for and experiencing a holiday resort for a few days. They were billeted in the common area. We were lucky enough to be invited to watch the children perform a few of their own routines and presented the winner with their spoils. A very touching encounter. It was here that we met with the local club representative and went through our membership and other options, we were offered fractional ownership in a Villa at Kandara but were not in a position to avail ourselves of the opportunity, much the shame. But we did upgrade to T2 Combined as we wanted additional holiday opportunities.
We started looking at our next holiday and spoke to close friends about Karma Group. In 2013 we booked Thailand for two weeks staying at exchange accommodation in the Patong Towers as the Lighthouse was full at the time we wanted our vacation. The accommodation had two bedrooms and our friend’s wife joined us for a week as hubby was away on business. We ticked most of the tourist boxes and had a great time. During our second week we explored heaps of spots on a hired motorbike.
2014 and time to return to Bali, Karma Royal Sanur compact but intimate. Once you’re inside the confines of the premises it’s like tranquil oasis. Here we met other members who live only a few kilometres from us back in WA; we now meet up regularly for lunches, dinner outings and exchange holiday news. While there we went to the main Karma offices at Jimbaran and yes we progressed our membership from ‘time’ to ‘points’ which improved our holiday flexibility.
In 2015 we decided to tick off a holiday vacation on our bucket list – Hawaii. We set the Odyssey booking team the challenge to find us accommodation on Maui and Kauai through the various contacts at the clubs disposal. They also managed to get our friends a great deal at the same resort just outside Lahaina. Maui is a place where Americans holiday and a tad expensive, but has some memorable places to see and things to do. We did the famed road to Hana with an estimated 600 turns and 54 mostly one-lane bridges over approximately 80 kilometres. A visit to Fleetwood’s – Mick Fleetwood’s establishment to experience the Hawaiian sunset ceremony is a must see.
By comparison, Kauai is sleepy and a great place to lounge around and recharge your batteries. It is the film location for Blue Hawaii that featured Elvis Presley.
2016 and a milestone birthday looming – where to next? Bavaria – Karma Alpine Club and Greece - Karma Minoan in Crete. Meanwhile having holidayed with us in Hawaii and Thailand our good friends, on our recommendation, returned to Bali and joined up with the Karma family. They booked in at the same resorts, but we stayed an extra week in Crete. We went in September which is not the Bavarian skiing season (but a good reason to return) and the weather was surprisingly warm; the scenery is absolutely stunning with plenty of things to see and do – even without snow. The club organised a trip to the second oldest beer fest in Rosenheim – what a bash, copious amounts of beer and singing and dancing on the tables to AC/DC’s highway to hell and all perfectly acceptable. We also did a night hike with Bavaria’s equivalent to Bear Grylls and even had time to catch the train to Austria for lunch in the shadows of the castle in Salzburg.
Crete is an interesting place and steeped in history, the locals mostly speak English and love to tell yarns about Greek accomplishments, But a word of warning - the whole island is very mountainous and it takes a lot longer to travel from town to town than you might think. The main highways are great and lit but once you get onto minor roads I would advise extreme caution, especially if you dare to drive at night. We can’t wait for the new Crete resort at Agios Nikolaos to get up and running.
2017 and Karma Cay Tre in Hoi An, Vietnam opened and we were able to grab a “Hot Deal” which was tremendous as it included a number of packages – street food tour, bike ride through the paddy fields where we also got to ride a Buffalo and a cooking class which included collecting the groceries from the local market, a boat trip down the river to a tributary then rowing in a Vietnamese coracle boat to the restaurant for the cooking class – memorable or what!! The staff at the resort are exceptionally gentle in personality and couldn’t do enough to help - we’ll be back for sure. It was on this trip that we revisited Fractional membership, but did not proceed for a number of business reason.
2018 short holiday trip to Bali and meeting with the Karma team at Jimbaran. The fractional programme had been explained to us on a number of previous occasions, but the timing wasn’t quite right. We are thoroughly enjoying our membership and the benefits it offers, however we felt unpressured and changes in circumstances allowed us advance our membership to Fractional.
2019 – We have family and grandchildren coming with on holiday with us for the first time through the club. We’re booked in to 3 bedroom villas at Karma Jimbaran – everyone’s excited!
The Karma slogan being - “We create experiences “to which we say “Yes they Do!”