Our last 15 days have been spent living a more normal life than what felt like being on vacation for the time while Sarah was here. We have lived in the Seminyak part of Bali for this period of time. The southern tip of the island of Bali seems to hold the largest population on the island and Seminyak is one of those cities. It sits on the southwestern edge of the island, a little north of the airport. To recap our time here, this journal entry is grouped by the types of activities we have been doing instead of a day-by-day journal.
Groceries: Let’s start with one of the first things we do anywhere we go and that is the grocery store. We made a few trips to the grocery store during our stay and the Frestive location about a 15-minute walk from our villa was great – lots to choose from and a nice open feel. It wasn’t quite as “luxurious” as the store we went to in Alexandria, Egypt, but it was excellent. We picked up breakfasts of either bananas and yogurt with blueberries or eggs and toast with bananas; we ate Greek salads for lunch many of the days here; and we had two dinners at home. The first one was steaks with broccoli and potatoes and Bintang beers (one was orange and honey and the other was a red wine flavor that was much better than we anticipated).
Our second dinner at home was spaghetti with red wine Black Velvet by Saba Bay, which is local to Bali. We didn’t buy any, but they have Haagen Dazs in the grocery store (not uncommon around the world). The cost for a pint is what is remarkable to me, and I think it is the most expensive I have ever seen – 400,000 Indonesian Rupiahs, which is roughly $23 for a pint. I usually see it for closer to $10 for a pint.
Meals: Instead of commenting on how good each meal was, it’s best to say that the food across Indonesia has been outstanding. I guess that the ingredients are generally less processed than in the US, although there are certainly plenty of processed options and junk food available. But overall, the food is outstanding. The other notable aspect of eating out is the service – the service at restaurants and anywhere offering services (lodging, massages, etc.) is at a very high level. It seems like they recognize how important that is in areas that are reliant on tourism dollars and they aren’t going to mess that up. Over the last couple of weeks, we had sushi at Shichirin Japanese Restaurant right around the corner from our villa. The Forge was a great spot for Friday night beers (we shared three beers Island Pilsner, Island Pale Ale and Bremen Terang) along with wings, fish n chips, chocolate cake, and a Guinness with our picture in the foamy head (see below). Guinness Draught is new to Indonesia, so there is a lot of promotion for it. The Forge is also known for their TVs to watch Australian Rules Football and Rugby (and I am sure plenty of other sports).
Bloom was a great spot for a Saturday morning breakfast. I had eggs benedict and Sandy had French toast with fresh juices.
Sun Shooters is a fun outdoor spot two minutes from our villa. It reminds me a little bit of Daiquiri Deck on Siesta Key. We enjoyed Bintang Radlers (this is a lemon-flavored low-alcohol beer produced by one of Indonesia’s largest breweries). We also had chicken nasi goreng, a burger, and shared a brownie. We went back a second time and we both had chicken nasi goreng and very tart lime juice – I think we both expected it to be sweetened somehow, but no – it was straight lime juice. Nui is the restaurant from which we had food delivered our first night in Seminyak and we ended up going to the restaurant twice to get chicken wraps and protein smoothies. Sanje Restaurant was perfect for a sunset dinner overlooking the beach – and we enjoyed Bintang Radlers, ceviche, crispy lasagna, and chicken stroganoff.
Babi Guling is a traditional dish in Bali and restaurants throughout our area specialize in the dish. We learned it originally as cochinillo in Spain. It is roast suckling pig. Warung Babi Guling Pak Malen is well-known amongst the locals and that is where we went for lunch one day. We had spicy pork varieties along with the crispy skin and then we got mint chocolate ice cream bars afterward to cool our mouths down.
South + East Brewing was another great option for Friday night beer flights overlooking the rice fields. For dinner, we had wings and a cheeseburger.
We enjoyed two desserts one day at two different bakeries and they were right up there almost with Your Brownie Guy in Tirana, Albania. We had chocolate chip cookies at Raia and shared a brownie at Bali Brownies.
Warung Kelor is quite close to our villa and we enjoyed breakfast there one of the days: orange juice, full English breakfast, shared pancakes, avocado toast with spinach, peas, broccoli, and poached eggs with hash browns. There were more wings to be tried at The GOAT: I had wings (they said they were made with Frank’s hot sauce, but I didn’t pick up that flavor at all) and Sandy had veggie noodles. We drank Bintang Radlers – I guess those must be our favorite Indonesian beers.
The day we went out to Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park, we had lunch at Jendala Bali there. It’s a beautiful restaurant overlooking southern Bali and I had Balinese Pizza (with chicken and chili sauce) and Sandy had mie goreng – a local dish made with fried noodles and shrimp in this case.
The highlight of our meals here was our anniversary dinner at Ultimo. This was recommended by our friend, Jason, and since we would be traveling on our anniversary, we chose to celebrate a few days early. Ultimo is located on Eat Street and they have a cool sitting area that has ascending benches and tables overlooking the activity on the street. We started there with a bottle of Balinese wine (Hatten Aga Red) and then moved up to the restaurant for dinner.
We enjoyed spinach mushroom ravioli as an appetizer, tiny focaccia bread, Australian strip sirloin with smoked beef-wrapped asparagus and mashed potatoes, filet mignon with mashed potatoes and spinach, shared lava cake and vanilla gelato. My steak was one of the best I have had eating out in a long time. They asked if we were celebrating anything and when we said our anniversary, Sari (our server) got excited. A little later, they played Looks Like We Made It by Shania Twain and brought a second dessert, the staff sang and took a video; they also took pictures telling me what I should do for posing, Sandy started crying and Sari was super sweet telling Sandy not to cry and then talked with us quite a while about living here – the cost of this meal was equivalent to half of her monthly salary (the total cost was $130). It was one of the most memorable anniversary dinners we have had.
To round out our dining out experiences, we walked to Temple Bar Bali for a Guinness and Kura Kura Lager on our last night and toasted a wonderful stay in Seminyak.
Starbucks time: We had two opportunities for Sandy Starbucks time while in Seminyak. Our first time, we chose the Starbucks Reserve, which is the largest Starbucks in Southeast Asia. I had cappuccino and Sandy had hot chocolate because they don’t have the chai tea latte that she likes from the US. Our second time, we walked over to Jivva Koffie and spent several hours. While we worked on various things including the all-important beer order for our upcoming trip to see friends in Indiana for the Indy 500, we had cappuccino and detox tea, French toast, grilled pineapple, scrambled eggs, pineapple juice, smoothie bowl, Caesar salad, and avocado salad.
Workouts: All the good eating and drinking made it even more important to keep up with our usual workout routines. We bought gym memberships at a nice gym five minutes from our villa for $42 each and did our weight workouts and many of our cardio workouts there. We also did beach runs at Seminyak Beach and Jerman Beach to Seminyak. The heat and humidity are stifling, which is why many of our cardio workouts were done inside the air-conditioned gym.
Massages: We ended up getting four massages each over our couple of weeks in Seminyak. The first massage was at Lima and then we moved to The Radha Massage because it was quite a bit closer to our villa. The Balinese massages are wonderful and the cost for each 90-minute massage was roughly $12 and that includes the tip. We found ourselves questioning why we weren’t getting them every day. After one of our 20,000-step days, we indulged in 30-minute foot massages that cost $6.50 each.
Sightseeing: The plans for our time here (and the rest of our time in Indonesia) didn’t call for much sightseeing. We visited two malls – the smaller Seminyak Square mall and then the larger Trans Studio Mall. At the larger mall, we walked around and then Sandy took one for the team and had a chocolate chip cookie so we could sit for a while at the bakery. We got tickets to a movie and had movie popcorn. The movie we saw was an Indonesian movie that translates roughly to Dad, Where is this Headed? – it had English subtitles and was quite a good story. Our big tourist attraction for the time here was a visit to Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park. The centerpiece of the park is the Garuda Wisnu statue, which is the fourth largest statue in the world. It comes in at 400 feet tall and by comparison, the Statue of Liberty is 300 feet tall from the ground to the top of the torch.
We were more impressed with the cultural park than we expected. It is still under construction, but they have beautiful landscaping and areas to walk around and many cultural performances throughout the day. The performance we watched demonstrated two kinds of Balinese dancing. The eyes of the dancers were disturbing to me for some reason. They kept the same facial expressions but the way they moved their eyes was piercing when they would look right at you.
Home living: The last category for these couple of weeks is what we have been doing around our villa, which we love. The staff is friendly and takes care of anything we need quickly (which isn’t much). Sandy did laundry a couple of times in the washer that is available to all four units. We made good use of the private pool we have for our individual villa.
We worked on upcoming travel logistics. I finished the book I was reading on Indonesia that is called Indonesia, Etc. and then started reading the Bible. Sandy spent her reading time re-reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. The NHL playoffs started and so I watched the first two games of the Lightning versus Canadiens series. They split the first two games and the 12-hour time change means I am able to watch the games live, although I have to be up at 7am to do so. We aren’t Netflix subscribers, but the villa offers access to it, so we have watched quite a few shows that are on our list on Netflix along with our normal entertainment options. Here is a list of the movies we have watched at home while here: Don’t Die, Tik Tik Boom, Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga, Good Grief, The Greatest Night in Pop, Eat Pray Love, and The Year of Living Dangerously. We have also watched House of Guinness, Queen’s Gambit, some Olympics that we have recorded, Brian and Carrie on YouTube, Amazing Race, and Frasier. We had postcards to send, and the stamp process was not as easy as it should have been. The first post office we went to did not have enough stamps and the second one didn’t have any stamps. We then took a Grab car for a 25-minute ride each way, to a third post office where we were finally successful. I went to the barber close to our villa for a quick haircut for $7.50. Lastly, I tried hard to find a pickleball game in Bali and using the Liga Tennis app I was able to find open play toward the end of our stay in the Sanur area. There was a group of ten and we had competitive games. John from Australia was my partner a few times – he is 86 years young and in very good shape. He is an inspiration like Vince at my home court in Sarasota.
That is what we have been up to with our time in Seminyak. Great stay here and it’s a lifestyle that I think we could both get used to. But it’s time to mosey east to a new Indonesian location.
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