Having Breakfast at 8.40 is super busy. There are far too many beautiful people staying here for my liking. Again there is too much choice and we do our best to try a bit of a few different things - waffles, eggs, pancakes with delicious vanilla custard and strawberries. Yum.
After breakfast its off to Rudi the Money changer who sits in a little glass box next door to the hotel. Emily loves changing her own pocket money, as her $100 becomes over a million Rupiah.
As is typical in Bali, the Money Changer has multiple lines of business so I get my Bali Sim recharged here at the same time.
We catch the obligatory Blue Bird to Bintang supermarket at a cost of about $1.30 and purchase a kite for Emily (40k) and multiple air fresheners for me (as always, about 1/5th the cost of at home so I'm buying a year's worth). We buy cheap medicines and toiletries at the chemist next door and Hoppy and I get a massage while Emily sits and watches. The masseuse loves having an audience to talk to and asks Emily lots of questions.
By now we were getting hot and needed another Blue Bird however each one that came past was full. Over the past few years we are noticing that at certain times of the day it is almost impossible to find an available Blue Bird, and I've had enough dodgy Taxis in Bali to try to make an effort to get a Blue Bird wherever possible.
However, its hot, I have a child who is rapidly losing patience and I need a cab, so we grab the first one to slow down and toot at us. We jump in and ask for the meter to go on. He says yes, but there is no meter. I say fine, you can have 1.50 which is more than it cost us to get to Bintang from our hotel, but he wants minimum $5. I now notice that while this did resemble a real taxi, it is most likely not an actual taxi so I tell him to pull over if he won't be reasonable and we all pile out. We wait another 30 seconds and get a nice genuine taxi who does use the meter and he gets a reasonable tip. Times like this I'm glad I'm not a first timer or I would be intimidated by this kind of thing.
We arrive back at the UPaasha to see Katt having a chat with an Australian couple who have just delivered both hers and my Portable Hard Drives loaded with our requested Movies and TV shows. After many years of accumulating what feels like thousands of DVD's it is nice to finally have them in a format we can watch on our Ipads or just plug into the TV. I plan to throw out a lot of discs when I get home.
Thankfully trusting that my Hard Drive was actually collected and returned has worked out, and we are thrilled to see the range of items we have and the lovely Australian Expat couple now living in Bali who arranged it all for us. The cost is about 50 cents per movie, with freebies on top of that. They give us some info about what living in Bali is really like and make us want to move there even more than before.
Its time for a swim to cool down and after about an hour I leave Hoppy and Emily to eat by the pool while I meet Katt across the road at Ginger Moon. They do a delicious Beef Rendang Pizza and a Passionfruit Mojito that is just perfect. Some of their meals can be a bit hit and miss, but the pizza is excellent even if you do end up with lots of stringy bits of beef in your teeth. Service was terribly slow, although they were not busy at 2pm in the afternoon. Just working on Bali time I guess.
By the time we finish lunch its about 3pm and I head back to the pool to see Emily. Hoppy pulls me aside and tells me that Emily has made some new friends, 2 little girls and their parents who she has been playing with for the past 2 hours. I'm instructed not to tell Emily that she's been talking the ear off Steve Jacobs, the Today Show weather man, until the family leave the hotel, mainly because Emily would be so star struck she couldn't keep it to herself. When I tell her the next day who she was talking to she is just beside herself.
We still have time for a quick nap before dinner, and I get a call from Katt saying that her eyes have virtually shut after a couple of days of ongoing irritation and she is going to have to get a doctor to take a look at them before dinner. We call to check up on her before collecting her for dinner with Emily acting as the Guide Dog to help Katt get in and out of the taxi.
Dinner is at Jemme, which none of us can agree how to pronounce (the Taxi driver says 'Gem-meee'), and Katt has kindly made the reservation under Emily's name, so when we arrive at what looks to Emily like a super fancy restaurant, her name is written in silver on a frangipani leaf and she feels very special. Its enough to actually get her in the mood to order a proper meal (a half roast chicken with veggies and gravy) instead of a kids type meal. Her meal looks lovely but still she cannot be convinced to eat cheesy cauliflower, or broccoli or the 3 different gravies on offer. The chicken she does make an attempt at. I have a chilli Prawn risotto which was very nice, Hoppy has a steak and Katt has a seafood chowder. Deserts are the highlight for us - Emily has a gooey chocolate pudding with vanilla ice cream, Katt and I have a lemon tart and Hoppy drools over the Apple and Macadamia spring rolls with cinnamon sugar and raspberry coulis. All delicious. Prices are very reasonable and this is a lovely special occasion type restaurant . The Security Guards out the front hail a Blue Bird for us and we are back to the hotel in no time.