The taste, feel and look of Bali

We were very hungry when we were finally able to make our way to some restaurants outside our hotel at around 10pm.

We didn’t know then that the dinner was going to cost us millions! Well, it was not too bad a deal since it was Indonesia’s currency Rupiah… Inflation has been very bad. Joel’s rule of thumb that helped us calculate was: 100.000 Rupiah is equal to 10 US Dollars.

We found a very nice restaurant which had a special offer that night: fancy seafood dinner with 4 courses for 2 persons – only 195.000 Rupiah. The waiters and waitresses were very nice and polite. One of them could even speak German pretty well! He also offered to take us around the next day, but we wanted to first have a look at all the different things to do in Bali. After a nice spring roll each, we had soup followed by the main course: fish and king prawns with fried rice and vegetables. It tasted very good but Joel got upset with me for getting full too soon and not being able to eat “enough”. The dessert looked very artistic: half a young coconut filled with fruits and ice cream.

After dinner we went back to the hotel straight away and looked at all the different flyers about day tours around Bali that we had found in the airport. So many interesting places to go, so many nice things to do on this island! It was hard to decide on what to do. The next day we were going to take it easy, sleep in, use the hotel pool and have a look around. Finally, we took sleeping pills and knocked off.

We slept very well and only woke up at about 9am. Since the breakfast buffet was only available until 10am, we immediately went over and were overwhelmed by the beautiful view and our close proximity to the sea. Due to the fact that it was already dark when we arrived, we hadn’t been able to see anything beyond our hotel room. While eating, we saw many people doing water sports: jet skiing, banana boat riding, parasailing, etc. Our beach was not very clean because of this. So, we couldn’t swim there.

After swimming in the pool and showering, we decided to look for a spa. We found a reasonably-priced one nearby and had nice, full-body massages and facial treatments for a total of 1.5 hours. This was my first time at a spa. Very relaxing and refreshing!

Near our hotel we also found some souvenir shops that we explored soon after. We spent thousands buying presents for our friends and for ourselves. :-)

At 5pm we were picked up by a driver from a restaurant located at the east coast of Bali. This restaurant was recommended by Joel’s brother and his wife who had been to Bali twice before. We were welcomed by many nice locals working at the restaurant. First, they gave each of us a beautiful flower typical of the island and stuck them behind our ears. Then, we got a welcome drink and were escorted to the beach where we could sit at a table closest to the sea.

The view of the Indian Ocean was fabulous. The sun was slowly setting. Unfortunately, there were quite some clouds that hindered the full view of the sun going to sleep in the sea. We were a little disappointed and went to order our food. In order to do that, we had to go to the front of the restaurant and look at the seafood they had stored in aquariums – partly still alive. There were different kinds of fish, prawns, lobsters and crabs. We chose a fish and some prawns and decided for sweet and sour preparation – my favourite. When we came back to the beach, we saw a little bit of the sun again, spreading beautiful colours across the sky, changing every moment. We took lots of nice pictures before enjoying the food.

In this post, we have included some of our favourite shots.