Day 2
We awoke to what was to be 15 days of near perfect weather. It rained just once in that time for a whole 2 minutes. Young Josh was still feeling slightly off so we downed some brekkie had a quick swim and tootled off to Hardys Supermarket on the shuttle. We changed some coin at Kodak with no problems and fitted a ProXL SIM card to a mobile.
Then we ambled down to the beach esplanade and decided on the Spirit Café for lunch. T'was a good feed with good portion sizes. (Must remember to order ½ portions for the kids) Our traditional Balinese fare consisted of a chicken schnitzel sandwiches and hotdogs. I decided that a traditional restaurant stubbie holder would make an adequate souvenir. Then we swung into Tootsies fixed price shop at Sindu market for some haggle free purchases.
Yes, you guessed it; we had our list of handy hints from the forum.
We grabbed a few essentials back at Hardys and then spent the afternoon trying to take the white sheen of our pale skin lounging around at SPPS.
We decided on the Bonsai Restaurant for tea as we have never gone wrong there. In fact we didn't go wrong at any eatery the whole trip. We washed down our honey chicken and satays with some light refreshments and watched a small fireworks show on the beach.
We called our favourite Sanur Taxi driver Nyoman who happily transported us back to our digs. In what is a ritual I paid him $3 instead of $2 for the fare. The kids think he is great and he was overwhelmed to receive a backpack of Aussie clothes for his young son Donnie. It truly amazes me how some people in the service industry with a basic education are so bilingual. Nyoman for example is self taught and speaks reasonably good English with a grasp on Japanese, Dutch, Russian, German and who knows what else. (smarter than your average bear)
I'm obviously an ignorant tourist. I continually mispronounce Nyoman and stress the 'y' and stuff up other words such as lumpia and jepun. Which damn well should be spelt loompia and jepoon. That's spring rolls and frangipani (I think). I vowed on this trip not to be such an ignoramus of a tourist.
So there we sat in our air-conditioned apartment watching Australia Network TV, sipping our duty free and munching on Pringles. I thought AHH this is the life. What possibly could go wrong?