Day 10, Aug 9 2011 Last day!

Domino's Pizza delivery scooters! we NEED THESE!

The  last photo of the beach and ocean from the resort

Us, getting ready to head out!

We're sad that we're leaving Bali behind, but excited to be on our way to Hong Kong. We spent the morning trying unsuccessfully to exchange money back from Rupiah to HKD. Oh well, we'll just have to do it in HK. We had a nice breakfast, I made a fried egg sandwich, Lisa had an omelet. We made sure everything was ready to go, and spent out last few hours out on the beach and watched the people.

Now we're sitting in the lobby waiting for our transit to the airport.
See you in Hong Kong

Aug 8 - Day 9 We missed a few

Spicy Papaya Soup from Bumbu Bali

Our Lunch at Bumbu Bali

Pork in sweet soy sauce! num!

There is a Bubba Gump Theme restaurant in Kuta, the surfer hang out city

Hey everyone!

Ok so we're behind a few days, its only because we were having so much fun seeing new things and exploring that we pass out about 6 pm every night!

We will finish the blog mostly during the flight home as we have 16 hours in which to do so.

Next stop Hong Kong! loads of photos. We're planning on not sleeping and seeing everything we can in 36 ish hours!

- James

Aug 3 - Day 4 – Get Lost!

In the village...

James was hungry. We barely got pictures...

A seat for the gods.

More village...

Still more village,,,

Mmmmmm,,,delicious, delicious pig!

There was more food, but it was so tempting, we forgot to get pictures when it arrived!

NOTE: Sorry our updates have been so sparse! We've just been so busy having a good time! We'll slowly be filling in the rest soon!

Okay, so we kinda got lost today...but only a little! Our day started off pretty normally – breakfast and relaxing by the pool – I even made friends with a really friendly tourist from Japan, who was vacationing with her husband. Our waiter buddy was working the pool bar today and we got to talking about things to do. He suggested that we go explore the traditional village that the hotel advertises daily walking tours to, as it has a whole tropical bird display. Sounded like a plan to us! We’d missed the tour already, but that didn’t bother us – we were sure we could find it. So after a final swim, we headed out in search of adventure...or at least a village.

We made it to one end of the main street when we realised we had walked in the wrong direction. Oh well. Time to find our own village! Actually that part was pretty simple. We turned down the lane and walked through the village that was located at the end. We got to see some activity at the local temple as it prepared for a religious performance. We also saw a dock for a lot of local fishing boats. The locals that we ran into were very friendly, and it was very refreshing to not be surrounded by tourists and tours. The village was very calm and everyone seemed quite laid back, even when working. It was a really great atmosphere. The only problem we had was finding a way back to the main road – the village itself was built like a maze, and we ended up in a dead end more than once. But we found our way back eventually (obviously) and set out to look for a place to eat lunch.

Upon recommendation, we decided to try a restaurant called “Cardemon”. We were greeted with a free cocktail, some peanuts and prawn crackers – a pretty good start we thought. They had an extensive menu, like most of the places around here, but unlike most places, they carried a much larger selection of Balinese dishes. We had some incredible braised beef and crème fresh wraps to start (not particularly Balinese, but man! The meat was so tender and the wraps were made fresh! So good!). For a main, James had braised pork belly and homemade pork sausage and green apple salad and I had the suckling pig (babi guling)  and homemade pork sausage served on braised lentils with a long bean salad. Everything was cooked beautifully, from the rustic and spicy sausage, to the ultra crisp skin on the pork, to the sweet and spicy salads. This was one of the best meals we had to date!  We followed the meal with a super moist chocolate torte slice served with ridiculously thin almond cookies. This place certainly lived up to the recommendation (Thanks for that, Krish!)

 After that little bit of fabulous, we headed back to the hotel for a swim and a drink in the pool (Our waiter-now-bartender buddy fixed up his own rendition of a mojito made with lychee and strawberries! Yum!), and a little bit of relaxing for the evening to get us ready for another day of adventure tomorrow!

-  Lisa

Day 3 – Not Exciting Material to Write About

What 1 million 620 thousand Rupiah looks like.

The multi-tiered fish pond out side the breakfast place

The pool from the beach.

Low tide, it goes out a long way.

More low tide

Pool!

Tree at the pool.

Bird kite, they recently had a festival.

The front of the Aston Bali resort.

Okay, this is going to be a short entry, ‘because we spend most of the day lounging pool side. But seriously, look at the weather in the pictures. Can you blame us?

We woke up and went down for a breakfast of beef in black pepper sauce, a sticky rice cake thing that was covered in coconut and brown sugar sauce, and homemade papaya jam on toast.  We headed to the pool, where the resort entertainment facilitator had just come down to introduce a water aerobics class. Of course I had to jump in – any excuse to look like a goof, am I right? Whatever, you can laugh, but I had fun jumping around, joining in with our instructor whenever he felt it necessary to “Woo!” and so on. James and I swam for a bit afterwards and went back for some lounging.

We had lunch poolside and made friend with one of the waiters – a guy who normally worked at the Kuta Aston resort, but was doing a training stint at ours. He let us know where all the places to party were in Kuta, so a good friend to have. We both gave Nasi Goreng and Nasi Lampur another try. The Hotel has some pretty good chefs, as we definitely enjoyed our meal more this time around.

Back to the pool for more lounging and swimming, a perfect way for us to spent the rest of this gorgeous afternoon. We dried off and grabbed the camera. We explored the hotel and the street for some more pictures, then headed across the street for some dinner. We ate at “Coco Bar and Seafood” listening to some live performers. They played a collection of western and eastern pop songs – they even threw in some Canadian content with some Neil Young! We ate a chilli dish and a seafood curry. Of course we were served the obligatory “garlic bread” when we sat down. The food was surprisingly good – they had a charcoal grill in the dining room that all the meat was grilled on, so the aroma was amazing. And once again, we sat outdoors, still amazed that we were actually in Bali, and looking forward to what adventures tomorrow will bring.

-          

-L-Lisa

Day 1 - Crabs and Pork Rind

Yup, that is the ACTUAL colour of that sky. 

James likes this table, therfore he took a picture of it.

Some musicians playing a bamboo version of a gamelon. They play nightly in our lobby.

The pool.

Our hotel.

Low tide

This ship is stationed outside our hotel. 

A view of the beach.

James wanted a nice picture of me. Silly boy...

James and Bintang: a winning combination.

The street outside the hotel. 

They played Neil!

Chili Chicken (I forgot the real name).

Seafood Curry (also forgot the name of this dish. Batting 1000).

After an excellent rest in our comfortable room, we were ready to tackle the day! We started off with our complimentary breakfast , which was, much to our dismay, a vey western style buffet. At least the food was good, and we did find a few non-eggs-and-bacon dishes to try out. We dined outdoors which definitely made up for it!

Once we finished, we decided to go explore the beach. We walked along the boardwalk that connects all the hotels that line the beach – and there certainly were a lot of them. It was still quite early and we watched all the vendors set up their stalls, ready for excited tourists to purchase  sarongs, temporary tattoos (those stalls were everywhere), massages, tours, rides on banana boats, and tonnes of other things to buy and activities to participate in. We walked out along a paved jetty and discovered some little crabs playing along the rocks.

It was really windy, but  the temperature was just perfect. We went back, grabbed our bikinis and hit the beach – well the pool actually – we didn’t really see anyone swimming in the beach, and it looked a little sketchy.   We people-watched and sunned ourselves as much as the equatorial sun would allow, until we decided to go exploring and find a place for lunch.

Crossing the street was a bit of an adventure because of the lack of road-rules, but we managed. The street was lined with restaurants, spas and tour-stalls, with people happily announcing to us that they were selling their wares, and yes, we would like some.  They were pleasant when we refused, so it wasn’t so bad.

We found an alley that had a whole bunch of little hole-in-the-wall eateries – I don’t really want to call them restaurants – more like more permanent food stalls. We elected to try this one place that was lined with bamboo walls, lizards crawling up the posts and had a pretty little water-feature in the back. We ate some delicious mixed-meat skewers served with a sticky-spicy sauce and some rice, and chased it was some bottles of Bintang. We grabbed a bag of fried pork rinds for dessert too! The whole meal cost about $10 – very worth the price!

We explored a little further, then returned to the hotel to cool off a bit.  By the time we got back, we saw that the tide had gone out quite far. The obvious response to this was “let’s walk out to the water’s edge!” So we did. The neat thing about our walk was the number of tide pools we found. We saw live star fish and little crabs. When we happened across a sea urchin hiding in one o the pools, we kind of lost our nerve, and headed back (see, they were really difficult to see, and we didn’t want to step on any accidently. Yes, we are fully aware of how cowardly this is. I’m cool with that label.)

After our adventure on the high seas, dinner was in order. We walked over to one of the restaurants that lined the street outside of our hotel to look at the full colour menus that each one of them posted. They all pretty much served the same thing, so it was a matter of choosing ambience. We decided on one that had a fantastic soundtrack of acoustic guitar renditions of great hits such as “Sweet Child of Mine” by GNR and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. So romantic. All of these restaurants cater to the huge crowd of European and Australian tourists, so they try to provide familiar foods for them, as well as some dishes under a “Taste of Bali” section (every menu we’ve encountered so far has this section). They handed us an appetiser of “garlic bread” – bread with garlic butter brushed on it – as we sat down. We ordered Nasi Goreng (Fried rice with meat and a fried egg on top) and the noodle version of this, Nasi Lampur (I think I spelled that correctly). The food was pretty tasty, but obviously prepared for a tourist’s palette. But sitting outside in an open-air restaurant (they were all out in the open, with a slight overhang covering part of the restaurant), made up for any lack in flavour. Sitting in the cool evening air watching the stars come out was the perfect ending to our day.

Bali HO!

Breakfast of Champions!

James on a Plane!

What a cockpit!

They need toys like this at Pearson...

Make way for Captain James!

HKIA - looking out for our safety...

"No smoking! But if you do and you happen to catch on fire, go here."

HK International Airport

That phone is too cute!

A cool hanger at HKIA (I think...)

GLaDOS was nowhere to be found...

The Concourse at HKIA

Look who we found!

Mountains are always more exciting when it's foggy out...

Huh? We have to wait HOW long?!

Squishy pillow thing is squishy!

Is this our plane?

Why, yes it is!

James thought breakfast on the plane was okay...

I'm not sure I want this...

Look at your ipod? Why?

Okay...Asia is a little is a little further than we thought it was. Whoever said that this is a “small world” has obviously never traveled from Toronto to Indonesia. That was a really long trip. And Cathy Pacific did an excellent job keeping us relatively comfortable. For the flight over to HK we managed to snag seats by the emergency door, meaning we actually had some leg room, so that was a plus. And the food was relatively good, for airplane food.

We made friends with the guy sitting next to us (a good thing to do when you’re going to be sitting next to them for the next 15 ½ hours) – a fellow Torontonian who has been teaching in Kuala Lumpor for a number of years. He gave us a few ideas of where to go in Bali, saying that it was one of his favourite places to visit.  

Now, it was a fifteen-and-a-half hour flight, so suffice to say, nothing really interesting there, so we’ll just skip on ahead.

We arrived at Hong Kong International Airport around 5:30 am Saturday morning (or 5:30 pm Friday evening, Toronto time). What an amazing airport! It’s absolutely massive! The concourse is full of high-end shops (didn’t get something for the Mrs. on your last business trip? Just hit up the Chanel or the Burberry at the airport...). The food court was pretty cool too! We had a breakfast of Brisket Soup and Congee with a couple cans of Asahi beer (hey! Don’t judge! It was 5:30 pm back home!), it truly was the breakfast of champions.

So after five hours of hanging around the architectural marvel that is the HKIA, we boarded our plane for the last leg of the journey.  And now, I’ll let James tell the rest of the story...

We had quite a mix of people with us this time. Most of the people on this flight were from Germany, Austria, and wherever Europe... a few Japanese tourists. Unlike the 15 hour flight, this was packed with no less than 3 different sets of screaming children. And some tourist guide who kept encroaching on Lisa’s space as he slept.  But we new it was worth it 4 short hours later when we finally saw mountains breaking the clouds – we had arrived!

Densapar airport is functional. There was a line to buy the visa, and a very long line to go through customs.  It wasn’t exciting at all. Outside, we were greeted by our contact from Panarama Tours, who had my Name on a paper. I felt kind of important. However the sign said “Mr/s James Barton Fischer” not sure how the “/s” got in there.

Nusa Dua is a little dirtier than expected.  There were quite a few street kids hanging out at intersections, all about 5 or 6 years old, selling something or other.   Large areas between buildings were just piles of rubble and debris. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of road maintenance, or sanity as there are no lanes and everyone just goes wherever, but its collective insanity as everyone merges in and no one gets killed. Everyone honks, but not as a warning to others, but to let you know they’re there.  Not a place I would like to drive in EVER!

Scooters, and small vans/trucks make up most of the vehicles seen. I only saw one sports car and it was a Mitsubishi Evo 3 hiding in a back lot. There is certainly a tuner crowd here as people trick out their little Dihatsu trucks with rims and all sorts of things.

We got to the hotel about 5 pm local time, filled out the paper work, and went to our room and crashed hard. We only had the intention of sleeping for an hour or two. We only were disturbed once, by the hotel giving us a very nice piece of cake to celebrate our honeymoon. We didn’t take a photo because we were half asleep, but it was very tasty. When it was gone, we fell back asleep and slept right through until morning.