Beginning of April 2016-
It's spring break time at IST- which happens to coincide nicely with a Chinese holiday (Tomb Sweeping festival).
We're so lucky. So very, very lucky! We're spending our spring break in Bali.
Actually, you've already seen a few photos from our trip as Ava's scuba diving certification and our family diving trip to Menjangan Island were on the front half of our trip (due to the nature of scuba diving).
We booked a villa at Sumberkima Hill in northern Bali. Naturally the photos on the website made it look gorgeous and stunning.
So, was it really that beautiful???
As you can see, we arrived VERY late at night after a four-hour long drive from the airport in southern Bali (Denpasar). We'll have to wait and see what our private infinity pool looks like tomorrow morning!
I think it's time to enjoy a Bali beer, Bintang, before bedtime:
Delightful & refreshing & super easy to drink!
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Good morning! How about a morning swim?
How gorgeous is this pool????
Walking to the main restaurant for breakfast:
Open air restaurant perched on top of hill and overlooking the beautiful scenery.
Yogurt and fresh fruit.
Time to head down the hill and check in at the dive shop. Lots of paperwork to fill out and sign (especially when you've got someone going through PADI diver training…like Ava). We're at Taman Sari Resort which is located on a lovely stretch of beach.
Nice spot to eat lunch – right next to the beach.
My lunch…nasi goreng (fried rice). Yummy!
The entrance to Taman Sari Resort. Gorgeous blue skies and white clouds:
Back at our villa (We're staying in the big villa…opposite of this small villa in this photo):
We opted to eat dinner at the restaurant at Sumberkima Hill, which overlooks another swimming pool..and the ocean.
The meal was an interesting affair. We were the only people there which I thought would translate to faster service. We learned later that the chef was taking care of his son who was in the hospital. Rather a bummer on two fronts: one for the chef's son and the other is that the food was for a lack of a better term, meh. I'd read great reports and reviews about the restaurant and the food – location is stunning (as you can very well see for yourself) but we weren't given many choices (one salad, one soup, two main courses, and one dessert). I'm glad that we were able to find something that suited our tastes from the minimal menu.
Good night from all of us in Bali! Tomorrow morning we'll go on our first set of dives (right off the shore at Taman Sari Resort).
David, Lynn and little Mumu are here! They're going to stay in the smaller villa. Mark is scooting Mumu around the pool.
We've hired a small private boat via Sumberkima Hill to take us out for some snorkeling and walking on a private white sand beach (we originally thought we'd be snorkeling off of the white sand beach but instead it was snorkeling just of the boat).
Lynn, Mumu and David on the boat ride out to the snorkeling location:
Snorkeling was fun but we did start to notice lots of small jellyfish floating in the water. After getting stung repeatedly I was done with snorkeling for the day. Ouch!
So we're at "white sand" beach (a super tiny island only accessible at high tide):
The "white" beach was beachcomber's dream! Purple urchins, unusually shaped sand dollars, shells, and lots of red coral. Annika, Ava,and I had loads of fun collecting armloads of shells!
Little Mumu is enjoying the beach too!
Along with the sand dollars, sea urchins, and coral we also saw LOADS of garbage strewn about the entire beach. Yuck! We learned later that the garbage came on the current from Java (when it rains on Java the trash is flushed out to sea and into this part of Bali. Not so nice!). These are remnants from flip-flop manufacturing process:
We've decided that we are done with the beach. Time to head back to shore. Check out this bucket of fish:
Normally Sumberkima Hill offers their own cooking classes but as I mentioned above their chef wasn't available during the week we were staying in Bali. Thankfully they were able to arrange a cooking class through another chef (just down the street from TamanSari resort). You know how we love cooking classes so how could we pass up this opportunity?
The man with the blue apron is our instructor and chef.
Lynn's job…keeping Mumu happy and entertained while we cook:
I shredded an entire coconut. We used the coconut meat for several different dishes.
It took several of us to pound the curry paste into submission:
The ladies making little packets of chicken curry paste wrapped in banana leaves to be steamed. They did a much better job than I did making those packets. Best to leave it to the experts!
Our table with all of the lovely dishes we prepared:
Wee little Mumu….
Thank you to all the chefs – big and small – that helped prepare this wonderful meal!
I need the help of the others to remember the names of all the dishes we cooked and ate. There were so many! There was certainly a lot of similarities between other southeast Asian dishes and Balinese dishes but I do remember that the curry was cooked a little differently than we've made in Thailand (we cooked this with chicken stock whereas the Thai curry was cooked in coconut milk).
We left completely stuffed! An excellent evening with wonderful company!