Christmas and New Years (part 3)

Before our trip, the three of us had all talked to people who had been to Bali before. Everyone had a very different impression of the island. Some described it as a tropical beach paradise, others talked up the art and cultural performances, while some stressed the great hiking on the volcanoes, in the dense forests and over terraced hills where rice farmers wade barefoot through mud. My Australian coworker told me that Kuta was a big holiday destination for Australians and has packed beaches and lots of nightlife. President Obama and Secretary Clinton made a trip to Bali for an East Asia Summit meeting in November. We knew that there are lots of fancy beach resorts. But, we didn’t really know what to expect.

There’s a little bit of everything in Bali and too much to see in a short time, so everyone comes away with a biased perception of what the “real Bali” is. What you hear about Bali depends on whom you talked to and the impression you take away from Bali depends on where you go during your visit.

By the end of our trip we did see much of the southern third of the island and experienced a number of different scenes: urban sprawl in the capital city, Denpasar; crowds of vacationers, mostly Aussies, on Kuta beach; ritzy beach resorts in Seminyak; quiet white sand beaches in Sanur; a black sand beach on a windswept and nearly deserted coast; a surfer haven on the rocky southern coast; rice paddies and rain forests; a sprawling mountainside Hindu temple; the artsy and creative mountain enclave in Ubud; and lots of art and souvenir shops. The art shops were the only constant, other than that every corner of the island seemed to have something unique.

We don’t fit into the spring break crowd of party goers in Kuta, and we couldn’t afford the $500 a night luxury resorts, so we thought the mountain town of Ubud would be a good place to check out first. It’s a small town in the foot hills of the volcanic mountains in the center of the island. We checked out a few hotels and went with a place that had a dozen or so private villas around fields of rice paddies and stayed in the second floor of a deluxe villa. It was only $80 a night but it felt like a place worth $800 a night!

When talking to people about what to see and do in Bali, no one had mentioned the food. We had some spectacular meals in Bali and were blown away by how incredibly fresh and delicious the food was everywhere. It seemed like we couldn’t pick a bad restaurant. Each meal we had was up there among the best ever so each time we went out to eat we had to make a difficult decision about whether we should go back to the last place or a try a new restaurant. We did make repeat visits to two of our favorite restaurants, something that I cannot remember ever doing on another trip, other than eating a hotel’s free breakfast over and over.

The two places we eat at twice were Kafe (the letter ‘c’ is not used in the Indonesian language so many borrowed English words are spelled slightly differently, like “kafe” and “sentral”), and Clear Cafe. The name café implies a limited menu of safe mainstays like soup and sandwiches, but what we found at these places were extensive menus of very local, fresh and healthy food. There were lots of fruit drinks, salad and other healthy fare, and even vegan food, macrobiotic food, and all kinds of pastries, including things I never see in China like raw cakes and pies.

Patrick remarked that a lot of the food we had was better than the average restaurant fare in the Bay Area, which we hold as a high standard and which is a world apart from the food I get in Nanjing. We liked the Kafe so much that we decided try their newly opened Mediterranean restaurant down the street that night and then went back for lunch the next day!

The Christmas dinner we had at the Kafe’s new restaurant was fun. The fixed menu was really tasty and included turkey and we ate while a local band played music on a balcony overhead. The place was pretty empty so it was like a private concert.

We went to bed late on Christmas day with our bellies stuffed and woke up to a view of the sun rising over the rice paddies, followed by breakfast on the balcony. It was like waking up into dream. Best Boxing Day ever!

It was at the Clear Café where we had two of the best salads ever, a goat cheese salad with candied cashew nuts, and a mango and spinach salad. The tuna steak and tacos were excellent, too. The first time we went there we met some nice people who we would run into again later. They also told us that the Oakland-based musician Michael Franti was in town to play a New Year’s Eve concert and that he had eaten at Clear Café earlier that day. Patrick was bummed that we missed him.

Well, we did go back to that place for a second meal, but this time Patrick stayed home because he was feeling under the weather. Mom and I sampled a bunch of dishes, two salads, a lentil curry soup, a veggie sandwich, fruit drinks and a raw mulberry pie. And this time Michael Franti sat down at the table right next to us! You snooze, you lose. You get sick and skip a meal in Bali and you miss eating awesome food in the company of a rock star.

For lunch one day we went to a place that is part organic farm, part restaurant. We rode motorbikes a couple kilometers out of town and then walked for 15 minutes on a path through farmland to get to the place. There was an irrigation ditch with a constant stream of water on one or both sides of the path. While walking by a coconut tree, I caught a flash of something moving quickly out of the corner of my eye and I heard a loud thud and a splash and turned around to see that a huge coconut had just fallen and landed in the irrigation ditch. It would really hurt to get hit on the head by falling coconut and it made me wish I hadn’t left my motorbike helmet back with my bike at the start of the footpath. It can be dangerous hiking through palm trees.

The restaurant, Sari Organik, is in a large open air hut with 360 degree views of rice paddies and vegetable plots. Many things on the menu come from the organic farm next door and you can even go and pick vegetables and have them cooked for you. It’s like a vegetarians take on the seafood restaurants where you can pick the live crab or lobster you’d like to eat.

We had to tear ourselves away from all sublime food and stunning scenery in Ubud and see more of the island. So we rented three motorbikes (about $6 dollars a day) and took a day trip further up the mountains. We saw one of the island’s massive volcanoes from afar, but we never got very close to a volcano, at least we could never tell that we were directly on one. The entire island was formed by volcanoes so I guess we were always on land formed by volcanic activity, but we never felt like we were really on a volcano.

We rode to Bali’s largest Hindu temple, built high up on a steep slope. The temple’s stone walls and statues were a dark gray color from all the water they’ve absorbed over the years. Everything was covered in moss and shrouded in a dense fog, giving it a mystical, lost world feel. We felt like Indiana Jones exploring ancient ruins, except instead of fending off bad guys and rival treasure seekers, we had to fend off scam artists trying to tell us “No, temple closed. Must have official guide. Forbidden to enter, must have guide.” Our guidebook said that was one of the scams to look out for, so we knew better.

After a few relaxing days in the mountains, we were ready for some beaches and an area with more activity and nightlife. In Ubud we often went out for dinner around 7 or 8 at night and would walk home at 10 on quiet streets where everything was dark and closed. We found what we were looking for in Seminyak, a beachside neighborhood that has been transformed over the last couple decades from a fishing village to a major destination because of its long sandy beaches and big waves. The beach coast is now lined with huge resorts and the sandy beach and the waves are picture perfect. It turned out to be a great place to learn how to surf and I rented a board and surfed for the first time on New Year’s Day.

This part of Bali had many different things crammed into a small area. There was the ritzy town of Seminyak, with super fancy beachside resorts, street after street of shops and restaurants, mostly high-end boutiques with art, housewares and clothing. We checked out two of the many nice spots along the beach, the W Resort, a large and trendy hotel resort, and the Potato Head Beach Club, which is a huge complex with several restaurants, swimming pools, and a grassy area for lounging around. Both were super slick places that seemed like something out of a movie.

Next door was Kuta, a town that was loud, brash and cheap. Kuta reminded me of the beaches in Malaga that are extremely built up, only instead of British tourists the place was overrun with Australians on their Christmas holiday, which coincides with the summer holiday for students and teachers in Australia.

We enjoyed some fusion cuisine at Café Bali (California rolls, Indonesian style steamed fish with rice, croissants, salad, soup and Moroccan coffee), pizza and pasta at an Italian restaurant, and sandwiches at a deli full of imported cheeses. We also did some shopping and found great gifts in the many shops selling nice looking things for your kitchen, living room, garden, etc.

Patrick left on New Year’s Eve and Mom and I spent our last two days on the other side of the southern end of the island in a much quieter town. We went to one restaurant that we really liked twice and another restaurant that we really, really liked three times! On New Year’s Eve we cut through the fancy Hilton Bali Resort and saw some fireworks from the beach. We also ventured down to the very southern tip of the island and watched some surfers waiting for waves from a bar called The Edge, perched high above the waves on a steep, rocky cliff.

That was our Bali experience. We did lots of fun things, ate great food, picked up some cool gifts and had a blast every day.