Priscilla Chan

Saturday morning, we started our journey to Permuteran to do some diving at the nearby Menjangan Island, at the NW tip of Bali. We ended up staying at Adi Assri – a pretty posh beach resort with 2 pools, bar, restaurant spa and private villas. All the bathrooms in this place were outside – you could catch a tan doing #2 (not that I did). Because we booked 2 dives for the next day, we decided to take it pretty easy Sat night. One of the locals told us about a night market that was happening about 6km away from our resort so we headed there after dinner. We were definitely the only foreigners there! The moment we drove up, people were gawking at us like we were some freakshow attraction. The night market consisted of a bunch of food stalls, clothing stalls and a few sketchy amusement rides that were manually operated. After sampling a few of the wares, we discovered a gambling ‘lane’ at the back of this market. There were a few different games set up with people gambling cash or packs of cigarettes. There were even little kids gambling! Not exactly the safest place to be and I probably made it worse by snapping photos of everyone. Definitely had to stay pretty close to Rollan.

On Sunday, we headed out with our dive company (Yos Diving) to Menjangan Island (about a 30 min boat rode). There was actually another Canadian in our dive group (from Toronto though – booo) which was cool because he was the 1^st Canadian tourist I’ve met in Bali. The diving was amazing – we saw a few sea turtles which was the highlight for me! After our 2 dives, we booked it to Singaraja which is at the very north of the island. After eating at KuFC (good fried chicken) we checked into a hotel and headed out to watch the Italy vs. New Zealand game in an Yamaha parking lot with a bunch of locals. It’s pretty fun how everyone gets together randomly like this.

This past week was pretty relaxed. Our activities includes: watching A-team (great, corny movie), eating at Sushi Tei (great space, amazing(!) green tea ice-cream), consuming a few $0.70 meals at Nikmat, eating at Warung Italia (not bad), and checking out the 1 year club anniversary of RedSquare/88’s (wack, lots of people but no one dancing/drinking).

We also headed to Denpasar one day to explore. We ate amazing fried chicken at Ayam Goreng Kalasan and checked out Pura Jagatnatha and Museum Negeri Propinsi Bali. It’s always nice to balance good eating with culture learning.

On Friday night, we met up for dinner with some of Rollan’s jujitsu friends at Sayakana for some sashimi and fish burritos (really good). I felt positively tiny next to these 2 guys – both were easily over 250lbs and about 5”10 – 6”3. One of them sat next to me and I furtively compared my head to his bulging bicep – same size! Afterward, we went to Black Dog – a bar owned by a pro Indo surfer just off of Legian. This place was happening – so fun. Cheap drinks, great band, great DJ, great vibe. It sort of reminded me of a hipster Royal. We were ordering drinks at the bar when I realized that we were ordering from Tippi Jabrik (said owner of bar) who is randomly featured in my Lonely Planet guidebook! Tippi’s sister, Luna, who is one of Indo’s most famous actresses/models is currently involved in the biggest sex scandal to hit Indo in recent years. Too bad I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he thought of that whole situation. I also have a really embarrassing moment with Tippi – if you ask me really nicely I’ll tell you.