We are meeting our friend form school, Diana, in Bali but she was comi a few days after us so we met up with her friends: Matt and Aubrey, Aubrey's mom Tori and Aubrey's younger sister, Eva. After having a cup of coffee with them, we walked to the beach where they had a long waterfront walkway with shops and restaurants. I found the fish pedicure which I have nene wanting to try for awhile now. It was so weird - kinda tickled as the fish ate the dead skin off your feet! We did it for 10 minutes and it only cost $3.00. Everything here is so cheap it is crazy. As we walked along the beach quite a few people tried to give us manis, massages and but stuff from their shops.
For lunch we had some Indonesian food - really good by the way- lots of fried noodles and fried rice and peanut sauce, but different than America but still delicious. I had chicken satay, yum! After lunch we did some relaxing at the beach. Sanur is known for its calm water, in fact I think Sanur even means calm waters. After beach time, we got a half hour massage for $3.00- very relaxing. We walked through town and looked at all the shops and restaurants.
Outside every store, restaurant and home was a little offering to the "evil" which including a basket filled with flowers, incense and some rice. This was performed multiple times a day and while you were not supposed to step on them on purpose, if you stepped on them by accident it was supposed to be good luck. Most of the country was Hindu.
We called it an early night from jet lag and because we only slept a few hours on the plane the night before.
On Friday, we went on a bike trip with Diana's friends: Matt and Aubrey. After a 2 hour drive we arrived at a lookout overseeing an active volcano and the crater lake. We enjoyed breakfast up here which included fried rice, black rice pudding (delicious!), pancakes (really crepes) with banana and chocolate and coffee.
After the lookout we headed to a coffee plantation place where we walked through the gardens (tried some weird fruit) and saw the luwak, an animal that eats, digests and poops out a certain type of coffee bean. They then clean it and roast it into coffee- gross! This coffee sells for over $15 a glass in America. If they only knew it came from poop. We then got to taste a variety of coffees and teas. The local coffees were more of a sludge with the grinds still in the cup. Kinda a tourist trap but still entertaining and necessary morning activity.
We then made it to the start of the bike tour! The tour was 25km downhill. I think I had to peddle less than 1/2 a km of it! We made some stops along the way at the rice paddies (their irrigation system is pretty sophisticated considering they do not use technology. In a nut shell, the rice paddies are tiered and they use gates to block the rain water and redirect the water to other parts of the paddies). We then stopped at a traditional Balinese house. Instead of having everything connected, all of the rooms are individual buildings. The front door has a sign that shows how many females and males live in the structure. Additionally every home has a temple! Last interesting fact was that the youngest child inherits everything.
Our last stop was at a banyan tree- the branches grow from the top and reroot into the ground so that it continuously expands.
After the bike tour, and my almost crash into a motor bike, we enjoyed a lunch buffet of Indonesian food. Yay more fried noodles and chicken satay!
On Saturday, we went surfing! We hired a car to take us to Legian we here there were more waves. We actually got up many times- so much fun but after about 45 minutes we were popes and had taken in a lot of salt water. Unfortunately no documented evidence of getting up since Taryn and I were both surfing at the same time, but it was a lot of fun and my skinned up knees are evidence that I was out there.
After surfing we headed back to the hotel as Diana's flight was scheduled to arrive. Once she got there we went to lunch- yummy chicken fried rice (nasi goreng ayum) was on tap for me - costing $2.00! We the walked around the beach and got an hour massage. We were big spenders this time, $6.50 for an hour. Haha.
For dinner, we headed to the night market- much smaller than I expected. I tried something new- martabak. This was somewhat like a scallion pancake, but more eggs and scallions in a fried dough. It was good, but let's be honest how can you go wrong.
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