This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Breakfast at the Grand Hyatt.
The display was pretty shabby, but the omelette was excellent and the rest was decent enough. You don’t see much mango or durian in Bali. I’d really been looking forward to them before the trip, but all they had was mangosteen.
Bintang beer.
I drank an insane amount of this on this trip. It’s probably the reason my belly got quite a bit bigger. Diet! Diet!
Traditional Balinese meal
Everything else was just so-so, but the meat was really bad. Bad enough that I could understand how vegetarians feel (why would anyone need to eat meat?). It’s a place that caters to Japanese tourists, so it also seemed slightly adjusted to Japanese tastes.
Lobster
We went to a restaurant in Sanur for lobster. The lobster itself was tasty, but it left me wanting more. If you’re going to eat it anyway, two or three would have been nice.. (not that complaints like that fly when you’re not the one paying) Also, I was surprised that Sanur turned out to be a busy, built-up area. There were quite a few hotels and tourist businesses too. I’d heard rumors that it was a high-crime area, but it’s definitely nowhere near that bad.
The photo didn’t come out well, but these are chicken skewers (satay).
Chicken skewers in Bali, unlike the beef or pork, are pretty good. They’re hardly any different from Japanese yakitori. (Though the taste is almost exactly like Japanese yakitori) Wherever you go in Bali, these three dishes, nasi goreng, mie goreng and chicken skewers, were above average. Though it was a little sad to come all the way to Bali and end up eating fried rice, fried noodles and yakitori..
You can watch the dancers perform while eating at your table.
You can even take commemorative photos with them afterwards ^_^
Sumatran black tea, Orange Pekoe
At a coffee shop aimed at tourists, they set out a few coffees and teas as samples to smell, and this Orange Pekoe had a really lovely aroma. A soft, fresh scent that would suit a quiet, relaxed weekend. I can’t drink caffeine, so I don’t know how it tastes.. anyway, I bought one to bring home as a gift.
Somen I had at a Japanese restaurant I went to with some Japanese people.
Food in tourist spots is expensive and bad as a rule -_-; and this place didn’t stray far from that expectation either: a bit pricey and not all that tasty.
But..
The waitress was cute. The Japanese mindset.. maybe it’s not so different from the Korean one.. hmm..
Ku De Ta, the lounge bar we went to in the middle of the night.
Anywhere in Bali, just tell a taxi driver “Ku De Ta” and they’ll take you there.
You can lie back on a lounger and gaze at the sky, or roll around with the person next to you. The atmosphere is simply a work of art, no need to say more..
This is what the beach looks like.
The waves break nonstop. Those waves are no joke.
A glass of mineral water ^_^;
It’s outdoors, so there are quite a lot of mosquitoes; come prepared. This place was really great, but personally I think the Salsa Bar, the shabby bar attached to the Grand Hyatt, was far better. It’s because of the direction: on the map, Seminyak and Nusa Dua face in opposite directions. Seminyak faces west, Nusa Dua faces east.. So in Seminyak you can see a gorgeous sunset around dusk, but the moon, which makes a big difference to the night view, rises in the east, so Nusa Dua has the edge when it comes to nighttime atmosphere. I felt this when I went to Kafe Warisan too, and it’s a real shame. When a full moon hangs in the middle of the sky like a chandelier, the quiet, cheerful, romantic mood of the night goes up about twenty times or more.