Day 2 - Seminyak and Kuta 水明漾與庫塔一日行

The result of 20 hours of flight, swimming in the afternoon sun, and a wonderful 'in-villa Balinese massage' (Eddy even started snoring because it felt so good) , we had to force ourselves up from our private massage bed for our in villa dinner (which was good, btw), though we kind of sent the food down our throats and crawled to bed.

We woke up real early the next day. The beauty of early morning sun was something we hadn't enjoyed in ages! After we ordered a Balinese and an American breakfast with mango juice, strawberry juice and coffee, we jumped in the pool for a morning swim. Soon the bell rang, and our cook came to make breakfast for us. Yes, that's right! after all, this is paradise! :)

Breakfast proved to be as wonderful as I've read on the travel forums. The sweet and spicy Balinese mie goreng (fried noodles) turned out to be the best of the whole trip (as I think back now), the juices were tropical as they should be, and the Bali coffee will surely wake you if you were still half asleep ;)

二十小時的飛行加上昨天玩水一下午又享受了雙人按摩後太舒服的結果是幾乎閉著眼把送進villa的美食草草吞下肚, 晚上九點不到兩人就癱軟在美麗浪漫的公主床裡一覺到天明.

天才剛亮的六點多兩個人就醒了. 很久沒享受到清晨的感覺, 倆人興奮的討論早餐要吃甚麼. 決定先來一份美式一份巴里式早餐(Mie Goreng), 加上芒果汁, 草莓汁及咖啡. 不一會兒廚師就來按門鈴了.
沒錯! 廚師是到你villa來料理早餐的, 不然就不叫天堂了:) 今天的早餐是超美味的一餐 (日後證實不知為何villa第一次早餐都會特別棒). 那甜中帶辣又口感超棒的印尼炒麵(Mie Goreng), 簡直讓人欲罷不能! 果汁也很香濃, 果然印證了我在小記上讀過千遍的傳說. 真是百聞不如一'吃'啊 :)


After breakfast we spend some more time at the pool and took a little nap before we set out to discover Seminyak and Kuta. Our plan is to stroll south along Seminyak beach (5 min walk from our villa) until we hit Kuta. The weather was super hot, you're about half wet as soon as you step out onto the road. Roads are fairly small in Bali, and not very well maintained. We found some cows in a field right before we hit the beach. It's an interesting phenomena to see cows, villas, farm land and five star beach resorts all together.

The beach was interesting too. Very pretty near where we live (Northern Seminyak), but as you approach Kuta beach, the sand starts getting dirtier, and hawkers start approaching you from out of nowhere. Kuta streets are very small and narrow. Overall, it kind of feels like Taiwan 20 years ago.

After a couple of hours of walking, we're already starving and the few juices that we found were not cold!! How do people even drink that in a 35 degree weather like this?! We're starting to miss our villa already :) Wish that pool was in front of us! Finally we found the famous Poppies restaurant, hidden in this tiny little road that didn't seem like a road. Poppies has a really romantic environment with lush tropical garden and cute fish pond in a hidden environment, but we thought the food was just ok and a bit overpriced.

After lunch we set out for Matahari - Bali's supermarket/Mall type of place. This one in Kuta is a popular and touristic one, almost every shop owner speak fairly good English. We tried to look for phone chips but it didn't work, so we gave up, and started looking for avocado smoothy instead. We found it in the restaurant next to Matahari. I believe the owner is Taiwanese. The smoothie was thick and tasty and they put chocolate in it. It was the best drink in Kuta so far.

We walked around in Matahari for the afternoon and didn't really find anything interesting. We were mostly just looking around to see what Bali has to offer. One thing I noticed was that they have a lot of sex symbol toys and sculptures everywhere. Very odd for a conservative place like Bali, I must say.

Finally it was night time and as we wandered back to a packed, seemingly popular restaurant that we had discovered earlier while strolling the streets. We then found out it was the popular and famous Made's Warung (warung means store, stand or restaurant in indonesian), I was happy because I did research on it and they supposedly had very good and cheap food - which they did have, indeed. This is a relaxing restaurant that encourages you to share tables with strangers and meet new friends while you're dining. We ordered Nasi Campur - a rice dish with 5, 6 different sides like curry and peanuts and vegie and fish to go with rice. They also had spare ribs in young papaya that turned out to be my most favorite dish.

After dinner we had no more energy to walk back, so we used the restaurant phone to call our villa, and they came to pick us up - what service eh?! :) They served us our afternoon tea eventhough it was 9pm, and we
played in the pool first before enjoying a nice bubble bath in the huge outdoor bathtub, with chilled champagne and the stars above us...

Life is gooood.....

吃過美味的早餐, 玩玩水又在池邊躺椅上睡回籠覺後才慢吞吞的出門. 兩人決定放棄免費的專車, 要慢慢沿海散步到庫塔去. 雖然有點遠, 又熱, 巴里的路又小又沒維修, 我們仍決定這是最佳城市探險方式. 不然如何看的到路邊田裡的牛寶寶望著對面的別墅, 緊臨著五星級海濱飯店, 中間夾雜著矮屋, 還有無所不在的大小廟宇呢!! 水明漾的海邊蠻幽靜, 也乾淨, 越往庫塔沙灘便越髒亂, 小販也多許多不時來跟著你. 我們走走停停約兩小時到庫塔市中心, 喝了很多現打果汁都差強人意, 主要都不冰, 等我們找到網上出名的Poppies Restaurant 以快餓扁了. 庭園式的Poppies 很美, 滿園綠綠的花樹加上小池塘營造出很棒又羅曼蒂克的氣氛, 不過食物倒是差強人意沒啥特別, 價格也蠻'觀光'的. 一至認為ok罷了.

吃玩後又晃到太陽百貨(Matahari, 巴里的百貨公司). 聽說附近有好喝的酪梨汁, 找很久才找到. 果然又冰又濃又好喝. 終於有心情逛街了 :) 太陽百貨還不錯逛, 後悔沒買一組超可愛木雕牛家庭. 最特別是很多男性特徵樣子的雕塑, 在保守的巴里顯得蠻怪的.

逛到晚上去中午經過時很多人的餐廳才發現它就是我想去的Made's Warung. 它以隨意的氣氛, 平易近人的價位及鼓勵併桌交朋友的方式出名, 果然不讓人失望. 它的青木瓜排骨湯讓我現在想到還會流口水呢!!

吃完飯打電話請villa來載我們, 因為走不回去了. 有人隨時服侍的感覺還真棒呢:) 回家後villa又送上下午茶, 我們又和星星夜游一會才到大浴缸裡喝香檳洗泡沫澡, 唉, 還是老話一句, 人間天堂啊...