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Published: February 1st 2011
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My Heaven
Finally, after a year of European cheesy, creamy, heavy foods! Lots of people know that Bali is the island of the gods, especially after Julia Robert's movie 'Eat Pray Love' emphasized that. This time I'll just write about one beach on the island, Kuta, which probably is not the most beautiful beach there (considering the gorgeous Dreamland beach), but is definitely my favorite. Kiki and I had the chance to spend summer break in Indonesia last year, and that was my chance of going home after a year of living abroad. We flew from Zagreb directly to Bali (without heading to my hometown first) with two stopovers in Istanbul and Singapore. We did visit some stuff in Istanbul during the transit time, but I will write that on special section for Istanbul. Upon arrival, we took a cab from Denpasar airport to our hotel (after 24 hours of flight, you just want to take a cab!). We booked the hotel months before, considering Bali is very crowded in peak season. We stayed in Yulia Beach Inn that is located just around 100m from Kuta Beach. It was no more than 30 euros per night for a double room, complimented with breakfast, and our room was facing the swimming pool. We arrived
Mystical Bali
The Hindu ceremony in Kuta every day around sunset quite late though, so we just stopped by KFC to grab dinner, and rushed to the hotel to rest from flying exhaustion.
We were there for the beach, so we rushed to the beach first thing in the morning. Kuta is miles and miles of white sandy beach. It was such a relief for me. The whole year I was spending my time in French Riviera, where the beaches are not sandy and wavy. Just pebbles and quiet water. Coming home that provides me right away with smooth sandy and wavy beach was heaven! Kiki was so excited to finally realize his obsession: surfing. He rented a surfing board without taking any surfing class, and I rented a body board. He was trying to surf the whole day, while I was just combining lying down, swimming, body boarding, and mocking to him. The waves were very good for surfing that day, although during the day there was this hour when the sky was so cloudy, and the rain fell a bit, and it get sunny again. We were mostly underwater all the time, so we thought there was no way we could get sun burnt. We didn't put any
Kiki with The Musicians
The live musicians played few songs just for us in front of our table by the sea suncream to Kiki, neither to me, because I am Asian, I thought I could be more sun proof. We tried lots of foods sold around the beach, mostly my favorite things, and mostly the foods Kiki had never eaten before. We ate 'rujak manis', plate of sliced tropical fruits served with sweet-spicy sauce made of peanuts, soy sauce, and tamarind; we ate fresh whole pineapple; we ate 'dawet', little sweet flour dumplings in a drink made of coconut milk and palm sugar; we ate the whole coconut from the tree; and all those exotic stuff. That was the first time for Kiki to try tropical fruits like dragon fruit, star fruit, mangosteen, jack fruit, and snake fruit. We stayed until it got dark because sunset in Kuta is always amazing. Luckily, there was a traditional ceremony in the end of the day that we witnessed, the Hindu ceremony. The beach was just so magical, beautiful sunset, the traditional atmosphere, the palm trees, the wind, the sand, I believe the Gods were also there.
We found ourselves totally burnt when we got to the hotel. It hurt so much I couldn't put on clothes. The worst part for me was around the back, because the whole day I was body boarding. Kiki's was even worse. Despite the burn, we decided to go out that night. I mean, we were in damn Bali, and there was Hard Rock cafe inside Hard Rock hotel, and we wouldn't hang out? So we crashed the Hard Rock and got nice cocktails there. We had an amazing night. Oh I missed something, we had dinner before that, and it was one of the most amazing dinner in my life. Are you familiar with Forrest Gump? You must know Bubba. In the end of the movie, Bubba was opening his own shrimp restaurant, that was called Bubba Gump. In reality, this Bubba Gump does exist, based on the movie. They have only few restaurants over the world, mostly in the States and Philippines. But they've got one in Bali. So we had an amazing dinner there. I ate some warm salad with shrimps and mango, and Kiki had grilled gigantic shrimps over his rice. For sure, we had the best beer in the world: Bintang, produced in Indonesia.
We stayed in Kuta for few more days, but we spent those days visiting some other places outside Kuta, like Uluwatu, which I will write some other time in different section. What I have to add more here is that the following night we had another amazing candle light dinner on the beach, in Jimbaran, few minutes from Kuta. It was a restaurant on the beach, so the tables are set on the sand, few meters from the soft wavy sea, where you can have your feet in the warm sand while eating fresh seafood and listening to traditional live music. Just amazing!
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