Suckling Pig - Babi Guling - Breeze
We had a few lunches at Breeze as its so convenient, opposite SuriWathi. We asked Desak one day if she could arrange suckling pig for us. She explained, dinner for 8 with roast veggies would be 800,000rp. We planned to invite others to join our group and share the costs but didn't get around to it. Desak had Miss Piggy delivered on Wednesday for our feast that night. The piglet is cooked elsewhere and delivered when ordered. They placed her at the head of our table and carved her up. Roast potatoes, pumpkin, mini corn cobs, beans/carrots, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, gravy and garlic bread. Fit for kings and queens!
Barry and Shirley also called in for dinner so Barry shared our delicacy too. Leftovers went to some staff and we asked Desak to take a plate over to Tom Cruise. Aaaaah, cannot do! Tom is Muslim, tch tch, we had forgotten. Desak served him a plate of vegetables and he was pleased. The remainder went over to SuriWathi staff and they loved it! Pork isn't now, nor has ever been, my choice of meat, but as tender pork goes, it was nice and T & D & B all loved it. I was able to scrape off practically ever ounce of fat.
It ended up being extra good that we had not shared the costs and were able to share the meal with local friends!
If you are interested in ordering a suckling pig for a group, call in and see Desak, have a look at our pics on the wall of the feast if you're interested, pay her a deposit and enjoy.
(Note, credit card facilities are not available at Breeze)
SuriWathi Hotel, Legian
This is the 4th holiday we have spent at SW.
Situated in Jl Sahadewa (Garlic Lane) towards the Jl Padma end, opposite old Indo National, now Breeze restaurant. Balinese family owned and run. They also own and run Legends.
8 deluxe rooms, 10 superior, 4 standard and 32 basic rooms. Bath towels are thin but relatively new, soap is provided, no tea making facilities, tv with local channels, can arrange dvd player.
The deluxe rooms are large and spacious, fittings are most adequate, huge bathroom, good sized patio. Pool is adequate size. 8 pool sun lounges on fixed semi reclinging slant. The included breakfast is basic but most adequate, fruit juice, sliced fruit platter, 2 slices toast, butter and jam, bottomless cups of tea or coffee. You can add anything from the menu, eg eggs, bacon etc, pancakes. I enjoyed the lightest nicest banana pancakes in Bali at SuriWathi!
Meals at other times offer club sandwiches, Mie and Nasi Goreng, 2 pizzas plus a few other selections, basic, but rarely was there a soul there eating after sunset.
Staff are all lovely and I remember most by name, as they do mine.
Davey the driver is great for day trips and airport pickups and drop off. He is very reasonable with cost.
Beware if you use Gusti, who is older. We heard a couple of stories about extra exorbinate charges for trips! Get a quote first from Gusti if you choose to travel with him.
Cup of very sweet tea.
We were sitting out on our balcony one morning and Trevor offered to make a cup of tea. Denise and Bob had just boiled their kettle, so Trevor added some more water and made our tea from a new packet of tea bags. Denise then topped up her cuppa too. I thought mine tasted very sweet and checked that TB had not added sugar. Nope his tasted the same. I thought possibly the tea bags had been pre sweetened, unusual, but possible. I gave Denise a taste and she said hers tasted very sweet too. Hmm, now this was strange! Had TB used lemonade by mistake, bottles are similar to our glass water bottles. Nope, Oh I know, he used the last of our contreau liquor! Ho hum, I rest my case! If you want a job done properly....
Legends
Fun night at Legends on Sunday 17th to celebrate Johns 5th year in remission and Gerry and Pauls 40th wedding anniversary. (Joan had booked a Bali Hai sunset cruise but it was cancelled and suggested we go another night. Joan and John were at the end of their holiday so couldn't reschedule. Lucky Joan hadn't prepaid the fares as we had planned she would, as, can you imagine her trying to get the money back for 11 fares?) Joans twin John got up on stage and sang an Elvis song really well. He's done it before, great voice, the moves and didn't miss a beat. Another fellow who sings on cruise ships sang a Robbie Williams number and let me tell you he was ‘almost' as good as the real Robbie! Antoni sang a few along with the Yellow band. Fun night and those who got grumpy or tired went back to bed earlier!
I stayed chatting with Kermy, Felicia from Bali Stone and Kim. When I was leaving Felicia gave me her card and a 7000 to 1 handy conversion card. (I must admit my seven times tables are pretty goof these days) Kim from Cairns also handed over her card. Next morning I was checking my purse and noticed Kim had OAM after her name, I was intrigued. When we visited Bali Stone showroom a day or so later we met Kim again and I asked her what she had done to deserve the honour of the OAM. Kim was in Bali Oct 02 and was at the hospital within an hour of the attack. Kim spent time finding missing relatives and sitting with injured victims. I have since done a ‘google' and read a number of stories relating to her tireless efforts. Kim was also in Bali Oct 05 and sped to the hospital once again after the 2nd attack. Kim commented to me, that not bad for the one considered the black sheep in the family! Not bad alright..... a huge effort and honoured accordingly.
As I left the restaurant, I went to pay our bill (Denise Bob Trevor and I always split the bill and either Miss Kitty ever so generously picks up the tab, or one pays cash the other credit card etc.) and handed over my credit card. The others had left and I didn't have enough cash. The credit card machine wasn't working so I said, no problems, I would pay another day! We were just staying across the road at the hotel owned by same family. Wednesday I remembered and the staff were very very relieved to see me and take our money for our sizeable bill!
Echo Beach at Canggu
We asked Davey the driver from SW to take us on an adventure one afternoon and try and find Echo Beach for a sea food feast for dinner. We had seen the signs to Echo beach on our drive to Tabanan. The road in from the main road is really really bumpy with heaps of pot holes. Many substantial villas and lots of late afternoon surfers riding the waves. There are 3 or 4 restaurants build on the end of the road, beachfront, a real estate sales room and maybe offices and shop for supplies.
We ordered prawns, fish and calamari to be bbq'd over coals over the open drum. Yum, salads and bread etc were serve yourself. Quite a few families also ate at The Beach House. We watched the sunset and the lights back to the south along the Seminyak, Legian, Kuta, Tuban coast lit up the coastline. Such a shame to see the large white Discovery building scar the scenery by being odd man out!
I saw advertised that the Beach House is also located on Gili Trawangan and we see advertisements along Nepean Highway from Mordialloc, very similar characters and colours! Since the owners are from Australia and UK, I wonder if they have a restaurant in Chelsea, Victoria as well.
Tegal Sari.
We have previously stayed in the Super deluxe rooms 8, 12, 23 and 24. This time we had booked rooms 20 and 22, upstairs new rooms. Our room 22 was superb. Nothing more, nothing less!
Spoke to Nyoman from reception the other day and commented on their top class well trained staff.
He said, ‘we work as a team, we are a family!' Gee you sense that! Every member of staff, reception, room cleaning, pool towels delivery people, food service personal, absolutely without fail, every member of staff is polite, calm, gentle, reliable and positive. They have a policy also, that no member of staff may smoke on the Tegal Sari property, isn't that nice, especially for us non-smokers.
I find sheets on most beds in Bali are really smooth and crisp and white. At Tegal Sari the bed sheets seem extra smooth, must be higher quality. Gee they are fantastic to slip the body into!
The new Villa at TS should be completed within a month, its being painted now.
It has 2 bedrooms, one upstairs, one down. A small but good size pool. Lovely large lounge and upstairs open area. Should be wonderful to rent. Entrance will be via Monkey Forest road.
We had breakfast delivered to our balcony each day. I had banana crepes, with juice and tea. Trevor ordered scrambled eggs one morning then plain crepes with palm sugar syrup next 2.
Bobs birthday.
I had emailed Tegal Sari before our trip and arranged for them to have made a special birthday cake for Bob.
On the Sunday morning after breakfast we arranged for Made Ardana, a local recommended driver to collect us and take us to the top of the Tegallalang strip and we walked and weaved our way back down to almost the Ubud roundabout statue. We guessed about 5km. As we bought bits and pieces here and there Made loaded up the van. I bought some 1.2m umbul umbul, Bali flags with poles in packets for 15000, then some more in another shop without the poles for 7000. He didn't understand any English but keyed 7000 into the calculator. I tried to indicate I only wanted the flags, no poles. I said ok, and showed him 5 fingers (I wanted to buy 5). He shook his head, no 7000, I nodded and once again said ok, showed him 5. He eventually offered 6500 (I wasn't bargaining) and I finally got the message that yes I would buy 5 flags. I paid him the 7000 and they did come with the already bent poles, which I might add made it safely home. Oh phew! Bought more flags gurther down on the left heading to Ubud for 6000, no poles.
We had lunch around the pool at Tegal Sari and once we had finished we could hear, ‘happy burtday to you' from voices along the path. The staff arrived with Bobs cake and he was thrilled.
Later we got ‘frocked up' and went to teraZo for dinner. It's a lovely ‘Cucina Italiano' influenced restaurant. We sat out the front alongside the fountain. We enjoyed another delicious meal and had prearranged a tirimasu for dessert, decorated specially for Bob. Bob was surprised and pleased once again!
On our drive back to Tegal Sari, we noticed Nomads in Jl Raya Ubud, between Market and Jl Hanoman was still full and our Tegal Sari driver said many our their guests enjoy dining there. We made a note for there for the following night.
We booked Nomads for Monday and fortunately so as it was full. Lots of expats and tourists there.
All good and we were each given a frangipani to wear behind our ear. It looked lovely seeing most patrons wearing a flower. Trevor did ask for some tomato sauce and said it was very blazing hot for no chilli! Once the staff realized they had made a mistake they were very apologetic with much embarrassment and laughter by us.
Villa Sentosa, Ubud
Our friends have built a villa on the outskirts of Ubud. We visited again last week. It is two levels. Upstairs is master suite with balcony overlooking the rice paddies. Downstairs are two separate bedroom suites with open air bathrooms. Good size pool, lounge, kitchen, open entertaining with staff quarters. Gee its lovely. I can understand why they feel the need to occupy the villa up to five times a year!
Sanur
We stayed at Vila Shanti again.
Each previous trip to Bali, we have started in Sanur, full of enthusiasm and excitement. This trip we had spent 8 days in Legian, then 3 at Tegal Sari in Ubud to finish up in Sanur. On our drive down south I said to Denise that I wasn't feeling enthusiastic. Firstly we were leaving Tegal Sari and secondly it was the last leg of our trip and heading to a close.
We were shown to our rooms and they ever so kindly had reserved the upstairs first room, overlooking the pool and beachfront, but the room was smaller and we couldn't share the balcony with D & B. We went back to reception and explained we would prefer side by side rooms (not adjoining). We were upgraded again and put in the 2 lovely rooms 38 and 39 as we had last year.
Everything about the hotel suits us well. Beachfront location, nice rooms, fitted well, good patios, restaurant beachfront and lovely selection for breakfast. All staff are quite friendly, but....
We found Sanur to be very windy, but since we have never stayed there in June before, realized that this is typical for the dry season. We ate at Bonsai one night and Bennos for lunch on the sand, but chose inland restaurants for other meals. The meal we had at Bennos was the worst! Yuk, I had fried battered calamari and Trevor had fish and chips. My calamari was as dead as, so tough and terrible batter. Juice was nice though! In Sanur, the staff /shop keepers are still warm happy Balinese, but they don't have the same extra warmth and I expect that is because most other tourists are European, and don't get me wrong or feel offended, but us Aussies are far more outgoing, joking and jovial so staff don't loosen up quite so as they do in the areas where Aussies frequent. Also I am truly ‘bugged' by the pool sun lounge reservers! It is so inconsiderate! Some reserved sun lounges on the beachfront as well as around the pool!
We had booked to stay 3.5 nights and also each wanted to return to Legian to finalise some shopping on Friday, then after late checkout and head to the airport. I suggested to Denise on Thursday that we could choose to follow a plan B and check out of Vila Shanti straight after breakfast on Friday, book a room for the day at SuriWathi in Legian and leave for the airport from there. The decision was unanimous! We checked out, hired a driver to take our luggage, stopped at Sakura for software, (latest versions of Office and Photoshop were 20,000rp each), Bintang SM for supplies and offloaded our luggage into a large deluxe room at SuriWathi. It felt like returning home to be back in SW. ‘Hello Tina, you back'. Gee we made the right choice. Lunch around at Indo National, same good standard and delicious food then our everyday favourite with Desak, Komang and Gede at Breeze for dinner.
We have befriended a massage girl from next door to VS. She is separated from her husband and supports two children. She mentioned one day that she doesn't read anymore as she gets headaches and feels sick if she tries to read. Now I am no health professional but I did think that maybe her eye sight is failing and she needs glasses. I did ask if she had consulted a doctor or optometrist, but she of course said ‘no money'. I then remembered that I had a pair of 2.0 magnifying non prescription glasses in my bag so we gave them to her. You should have seen her when she put on the glasses. It was such a thrill, then quite sad really, but then so funny. She couldn't believe her eyes! The print was so big, so clear, not blurry! She shared the glasses with her other 2 lady friends and they all were shocked how wonderful they were. What a shame that we didn't have time (it was then about 5pm the night before we were leaving at 10am next morning) to take her to the optometrist to have glasses prescribed. Next time we visit I would really like to arrange prescribed lens. I hope we don't cause her any problems with the glasses, I don't expect so.
She also told us one day that there is a German man who ‘haunts' Bonsai café and has given her son money. He is older and slim and I think she said he has a moustache. She was very wild and walked past another day and yelled at him that he is ‘poofeter something'! I did mention him to BloodyRon and he said he would make some enquiries. Massage girl also mentioned one friends son was walking strangely and when questioned found he had been victim of a Swiss man who has since been charged! Disgusting!