We woke up nice and early to wish my parents a happy Chinese New Year. My mother answered the skype call in a happy mood. The parents are coping well. Tick! Elliot and Lara were laughing and running around, Jonah immediately ran away to hide, in fear that I might come back and pick him up. The children are coping well. Tick! With that done, we strolled down for breakfast by the pool. To our surprise, it was an a la carte breakfast and NOT a buffet.
It was at this point that I decided to stop logging my daily caloric intake. I had been doing this religiously for the past 2 weeks with My Fitness Pal (an iphone app for those who are not familiar), partly as part of my iphone discovery and partly to improve my fitness. I wanted to savour my water melon joice, eggs benedict, fresh fruit, muesli and yoghurt without guilt!
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| Breakfast by the pool |
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| First course |
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| Second course. Eggs Benedict...one of my favourites |
It was then off to start our first full day in Bali. We were picked up by Ipung, our driver, which my cousin had kindly organised on our behalf. The car, driver and petrol only costed us $40 per day for 10 hours. After a brief stop to exchange currency, we started supplier hunting. We had a spreadsheet of shops to visit from our current builder. Ipung was on a mission to get us to many as possible in the one day. We visited specialist stone shops, copper and brassware, timber furniture, homewares and textiles with more to come.
We gave poor Ipung another list to fulfil, this time a list full of recommendations for meals. Lunch was at a beachside restaurant called
Potato Head. This very funky "beach club" was certainly visually quite appealing. The facilities included an infinity edged pool over looking the ocean that the guests were free to use.The pool had Malcolm's dream feature...a swim up bar. They also had the most amazing list of cocktails! The food was also quite good.
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| Our lunch venue |
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| An impressive exterior of windows |
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| Walk through a narrow path |
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| To be greeted by this view! If only it weren't so cloudy, hazy and windy! |
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| The pool and sunbed area |
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| A very delicious Disco Daquiri |
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| Malcolm's philly cheese steak |
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| Very ordinary looking but amazingly tasty club sandwich. That sauce is something special! |
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| Standing on the other side of the "windows" |
We had some time to swim and relax in our villa, as well as watch a movie before heading out for a seafood dinner at Jimbaran. It was a shame that we never did get to eat on the beach or see the sunset as planned due to the strong winds. However, this didn't matter. The food was just to die for. Malcolm and I had never eaten so much for a very long time. We are determined to do a cooking class so we can prepare it back home. With very full stomachs, we rolled back to the car and went back to the villa. Tomorrow...Ubud!
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| Rambutans and mangosteens...food I haven't had for a while! |
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| The most that we saw of the sun over the past 2 days and the closest that we came to a sunset this evening |
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| Instead of sitting on one of those tables... |
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| We got a view of this! |
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| Our restaurant looked close from the beach! |
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| Crab. Apologies for the very dark photos. My fingers were too greasy and sticky with sauce to change the settings on my camera! |
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| Prawns |
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| Fish |
