JBR Pt2 - Viva Las Vegas
Up early at the crack of dawn as always and particularly on the first morning, I dare not wake the other half, was warned the night before of fire and brimstone if I made noise, sneaked out quietly. Still too dark to go walking, last time I went too early I was accosted every 100 meters by girls on scooters offering me a ride home (yeah right) or transvestites offering unmentionables for 20K. Sat down at the KP restaurant and enjoyed the free wifi until the sun rose, the only time the wifi was really good other times it was frustrating slow. Off on my walk up towards Seminyak , the dogs seem to be a bit more aggressive this time round had to fend one off in Jalan 66 with my backpack. Same thing happen later on in the trip.
With Sleeping Beauty now awake we head down to breakfast, the KP Breakfast is adequate with the usual couple of Asian dishes, bacon, sausages, ect. and egg station. It always good on the first day but by the of your stay it can get a bit monotonous, we bought an avocado from Bingtang to have with our toast for something different.
As mentioned in my first post friends were joining us on Sunday so Wambolib wanted to get out of the way a few things before they arrive, on the agenda was a ring to be made by a goldsmith in Denpensar. About twelve years ago we bought some old and broken pieces of jewellery that we had melted down and made into a bangle, the wife was very happy with the quality and workmanship. The jeweller that we used was very honest, he weighed and melted the gold in front of us and even returned a pea size piece of gold that was left over, however we had lost his details .
Last year colleagues of ours had ring made from a goldsmith in Denpensar. The ring had a lot of detail , workmanship was excellent and extremely cheap. They gave us his card and we thought we would use him this time round.
We gave him a call but wasn't available until the afternoon, since we were going to Denpensar anyway I suggested that we hit Ramanyana dept store, yes I suggested it, I like shopping here as they have a great selection of jeans, just about half the 2nd floor is dedicated to jeanery, all sorts of styles, weights and really cheap, I payed between 90-210k Rp . Ok they're not designer brands but I think they're better quality. There's also a couple of guys in the back corner of the store that measure cut and hem the jeans for you while you wait, all 60 seconds of it. Wambolib is just amazed on how fast these guys are and they do it for a couple of bucks AUS. The store also has a great range of business attire and shoes at a reasonable prices. Whilst I was trying on various jeans Wambolib was trolling for things for our son and she found some jocks with my name on them, 'you've got have some of these' she shrieks , 'nah they never have my size' trying to discourage her as it wasn't exactly mine name but what they called me when I was a kid, 'yeh they've got XL' and proceeds to take them out of the packet with the shop assistant. 'Look they're huge, they'll fit and you need to get rid of some of those threads you are hanging on to' needless to say I now have half a dozen new jocks with my name on them..
I left Wambolib in her glory checking out shoes bras and things whilst I went across the road to Telkomsel to get a micro SIM for my ipad, according the Telkomsel website I could get a 'Simpati Freedom micro-sim' for 5k and get 50meg gratis for 7 days after sending the activation code, then I could top it up for 50k for 30 days. Tried to get it in Legian but no one had heard of it. The guy in the front of Bingtang wanted 75k for a standard Simpati micro sim and the 50k for the data. Seemed like the staff at Denpensar head office hadn't heard of either as I had to point it out to them on the web site, 'oh no we no have, maybe only Jakarta', they suggested I buy a Telkomsel Flash sim for 10k with 50k of data for 30 days, 60k all up, done deal. They activated, setup and tested it before I left the store.. happy with that.
Back to Ramanyana to check out the damaged, could believe it, not even a scratch , Wambolib was overwhelmed with everything that she could buy anything. I put on my sympathy face and ushered her out to grab a taxi to the jeweller. Damm sunglass hawkers got her as I was trying to get a taxi, 6 pairs of sunnies later we were off to the jewellers.
The Taxi driver stopped at the top of the street where the Jeweller was situated and both Wambolib and I looked down the short narrow street and then we turned to each other and said 'this is the same street'. What a coincidence, this was the same jeweller that we had used 12 years ago that our friends had used last year. The name of the store is Permata Dewata Jewellery, it's on 6 Kalimantan Road , which after doing a search has been mention on this forum before and recently. The shop isn't your average jewellery store, the walls are adorned with life size posters of Elvis , the owner Burhan reminds me of Chong from Cheech and Chong , you know the tall one. He must be the Elvis fan as he even has a tattoo of Elvis on his arm, he's a really nice guy. With all the surrounding bling and Elvis on the walls I felt like breaking into a rendition of Viva Las Vegas.
Wambolib shows a picture on her phone of the ring she wants made that she had taken from a magazine but Burhan needed a hardcopy for his goldsmith, after some unsuccessful technology attempts to get him a copy of the picture we got him to look it up on the web, luckily for us the designers web site had a detailed picture of the ring. Burhan said the ring was no problem to make and we would only need 15 grams of our gold which we thought was miniscule for the size of the ring and would only cost 600K of which he supplies the Cubic Zocnias . He said nothing about the white gold section and I suspect for that price he supplied white gold weight for weight in exchange for ours. Burhan said it would be ready in a 4 days and he would deliver it to the hotel. Wambolib could hardly contain herself.
Taxi back to Legian was slow as it was late afternoon, no lounging by the pool today, was also getting peckish and all we had with us were some Kacang Pedas ( spicy peanuts), that will have to do for now .
Wambolib has some Perth friends (4 Bali Virgins ) in Bali during our stay and thought we will catch-up for dinner, not the adventurous type so there goes eating local, we decided to go to Nirvana's . We have been coming to Nirvanas for some years now and have become good friends Nyoman, part owner, it was also Thursday night so Lisa would be performing her fire dance routine.
Nirvana's has great food (western/Indo) at good prices, Wambolib say's they make the best Margarita's, staff are always attentive and service is excellent. On arrival your given a refresher towel, complimentary Margarita shooters and spring roll entre . Our friends loved it and a good time was had by all, particularly Wambolib ( one too many margaritas )who showed her skills with Lisa's Hula hoop ..... swing those hips baby.
OH NO....2am and I wake cold shivering and stomach cramps, I think to myself those bloody Kecang Pedas , as I was eating them out of my hands I was thinking I should of used the hand sanitiser , several visits to the bathroom and then into the armoury , panadol, gastrostop and some general antibiotics just in case. Woke feeling better than I thought I would but still not able to eat breakfast. It was going to be a slow day ..........