Last Days in Bali

I'd tried to arrange our short time in Bali such that we would have the last day and half pretty free to do what we wanted.  We woke up Tuesday morning, lounged around and had breakfast and decided to spend the early part of our day in Seminyak.  Seminyak is a really busy town full of stores, vendors, restaurants and bars.  It's kind of tourist central, but we knew we wanted to do some shopping and this was a great central spot to do so.

Unlike Yogyakarta, which is a predominantly Muslim community, Bali is predominantly Hindu.  You find these small offerings on doorsteps and driveways of nearly every home.

We took a Grab into town and browsed around the stores.  We actually ended up walking down a side street that dumped us back at the Motel Mexicola, the restaurant recommended to us on our first night by our Grab driver.  Unfortunately, that night the restaurant had been crazy busy and we'd ended up at Shirmp Is, which I wrote about in my first Bali post.

What we didn't realize that first night was that we'd been right across the street from the entrance to Petitenget Beach.  So, we wandered over to the beach, found a huge swing, and took some fun pictures since we'd spent an unbelievably tiny amount of time at the beach during our time in Bali.

Connecting with the Indian Ocean

After a light lunch at Motel Mexicola we finished up shopping.  The hot item in Bali right now is a woven rattan purse.  At first, I didn't like them at all, but somewhere in between buying them for friends and an order from home that came in while we were in Bali they grew on me.  What's unbelievable (or not really given the manipulative nature of capitalism) is that the vendors here are negotiating to get a price of about $10 a bag.  Meanwhile, Nordstrom's and Anthropologie are selling identical bags, likely made by folks in Indonesia, for $100+.

The rattan bag I bought for myself.  Most are natural brown in color, but I found this one and it was a bit unique

Our last dinner in Bali was a whirlwind of multiple reservations.  Kisik Restaurant and Bar had been recommended by a friend, but I realized on Sunday or Monday that it was about an hour drive from our villa and we didn't want to spend so much of our last day in transit to and from dinner.  Then Yande suggested Jimbaran Seafood.  I made a reservation there and then realized it was in the exact same town as Kisik!  I googled sunset dinners in Kuta and found Breeze at The Semaya, a resort in Seminyak.  This was much closer to our villa and still promised a beach front, sunset view.

The Semaya

Our meal was phenomenal.  We started off with delicious cocktails and a crab cocunut salad that was made for us table side.  Landry had seafood paella and I had spaghetti with crab.  All the while we were watching an amazing, beautiful sunset.  It was an ideal way to spend our last night in Bali.

Couldn't decide if I liked the photo that focused on the drinks or the sunset, so I posted both!

I think this is the first time I've been to a restaurant that served me an "amuse bouche"

Coconut crab salad, mixed table side for us.  Amazing!

Post sunset view

Since we were already in Seminyak we decided to walk around town a bit more before heading back to the villa for the night.  I'd been told about fish spas, where you can pay to stick your feet in a tank of fish for 20 minutes and they'll eat all the dead skin off of your feet.  We found one as we were wandering around and decided to do it.  It took me five minutes just to hover my foot above the tank.  I was so grossed out by the idea, but I'll try just about anything when I'm traveling at least once, so I did finally get my feet in the tank.  It basically just feels like your feet are vibrating for the most part, unless you look down and see a bunch of fish swarming around, so I just tried to keep my eyes up and my mind distracted.  I actually video called Amare to show him what we were doing and he thought it was a funny way to clean your feet.

Fish spa!

   

There are a bunch of places in Bali with funny, ironic names

Grilled street corn, so good!

Wednesday morning we woke up before breakfast arrived and got our bags together so that we could enjoy our final few hours by the pool before heading off to the airport.  Bali has certainly lived up to all of the hype and despite the crazy long flight it takes to get here I cannot wait to come back.

Fresh fruit for our last breakfast

I could do this every day

Last views of Bali from the airport

I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of the traditional and uber modern architecture at the airport.

It seems like there's a huge commitment to maintaining green spaces everywhere possible.  This is a photo of the airport parking garage.

Obligatory sad face plane picture.

Stay tuned for my final post, showing more of the Changi Airport in Singapore!