Bali Quick Trip

We have a good friend in Hong Kong who happened to have tipsily purchased a three bedroom villa in Bali at a silent auction for a charity ball. This occurred several months ago, and somehow, one by one, all of his friends who were originally planned to accompany him on the trip dropped out, until he no longer had any companions. He was telling me this story, and I was thinking, "Well, I have a very flexible schedule, and I would love a few days in Bali, and I'm not the best company, but I'm sure better than no company at all so...Pick me! Pick me! Luckily this friend is an incredibly generous soul, so he did in fact invite me along. While it was too last minute of a trip for Drew to also go, he whole-heartedly supported me going to have a few relaxing days in the sun at a free villa. Plus, I'm not exactly this friend's type, so no worries there.



We spent 5 days in a gorgeous resort on the very southern coast of Bali, an area known for dramatic cliffs and Indian Ocean views. We had our own three bedroom villa with a private pool, plus access to an incredible beach outfitted with a great bar, cabanas, gorgeous white sand, and crystal blue waters. The resort was perched up on a cliff, so to get down to the beach, you had to take an inclinator. What a funny experience. Essentially, we never left the resort, one because it had everything we needed, including a library to borrow movies, boardgames etc., but also there wasn't much nearby the resort, so getting outside of it would have been a challenge.

The inclinator!

The view from breakfast.

Since we traveled in the off-season, we had the place to ourselves. The restaurants were never full, the lounge chairs were always available, and our secret cocktail spot overlooking the whole resort was always empty, so the mango daiquiris were plentiful.

Ceviche by the beach

Every day consisted of exactly the same thing. We'd get up at 7:45am, go work out from 8-9, have breakfast from 9-10, lay by our pool from 10-2, go down to the beach and layout there while munching on snacks from the bar until 4 or 5, go up to our villa and change, go have dinner at one of the resort restaurants, then go have mango daiquiris at the lookout spot. Now THAT is a routine I could stick to.

Beach time!

Of course, we did shake things up sometimes. One day we went to the spa, for massages and facials. The spa literally perched on the endue of the cliff, so the views were stunning. If only I could look out while having a massage instead of staring down at the masseuses' toes. The resort also tried to spice things up by showing Titanic one night down on the beach under the stars. I'll never let go Jack...

The resort was called Karma Resorts, so there was the K monogram everywhere. I just pretended it stood for Kirchner....

The monkeys were probably the most exciting part. When we first arrived, there was a note on the kitchen table saying, "please keep the doors locked at all times. The monkeys will try to enter the villas searching for fruit and shiny objects." Another sign on the way to breakfast warned us of "Grumpy, fat monkeys beware" Of course, we expected to see them right away, but it wasn't until our third day that I woke up at 6am to the sound of screaming and fighting. I look outside my second story window and see a troupe of 20 monkeys on the wall of the neighboring villa, acting like monkeys do. I race downstairs to our friend's room "They're here! They're here!" His response was full of shock and horror "What!?! INSIDE!!!?? "No, outside, but they're here!" So we race back upstairs and peep out of the window like we are in a horror movie, hoping the monkeys don't notice us. Eventually they move on through the other villas, and that was that! We never saw the troupe again! But imagine if they did get inside one of the villas! Go bananas, go go bananas.....

My bedroom!

Thank you friend for letting me tag along on this wonderful trip!

Birthday Celebrations

Somehow what should have been a very average birthday celebration (I mean it's only 26, not like the big 3-0 that a few special people will be celebrating soon....) has turned into a multi-weekend extravaganza. Two Hong Kong friends here also have birthdays close to mine, so we piggy-backed on several celebrations, and things grew continuously from there. Thanks to my loving husband for putting so much of this together, helping to mask the fact that this is really the first birthday ever I celebrated without my immediate family in some way. But, seeing as Steph and Leah are coming in April, meaning we can all celebrate our March birthdays together in one go, I guess I'm just a lucky girl.

The festivities started with a dinner at a cooked food center in North Point. Cooked food centers are normally very local, family oriented cafeterias attached to a neighborhood wet market. The food is cheap but delicious. The middle of the room is filled with family-style tables, and the shop owners harass you to sit in their section of tables, ensuring you order from their food stall. This food center was a bit different. First, it was packed, and I mean PACKED, with people. Second, a lot of those people were businessmen, out for a company outing. Third, those said businessmen were wasted, prompting them to blast clubbing music and dance provocatively on table (Not kidding). The end result was a really fun, exciting dinner with great food, great company (not the businessmen), and great entertainment (the businessmen). This dinner was actually a joint birthday celebration for myself and my friend Jill from Chicago. She is the pretty lady in pink in the second photo.

The second birthday celebration occurred the following evening, when Drew and I joined our friend Frank and lots of his friends for all-you-can-eat hot pot. Hot Pot is essentially the meat part of fondue, where you cook your own food in broth, but this was a much larger scale, as you can tell from the picture below. They had everything, meat, seafood, dumplings, veggies, everything.. We were S-T-U-F-F-E-D. 

But, of course, there is always room for dessert. This dinner wasn't actually supposed to be birthday related, but Frank surprised me by getting a chocolate truffle cake from the Mandarin Cafe, a very famous cake shop in Hong Kong. It was better than it sounds! Thanks Frank!

And finally, on Sunday, Drew and I went to our friend Andrew's flat for a Sunday roast dinner followed by a double feature. This actually wasn't birthday related either, but Andrew did such a wonderful job cooking, I wanted to show off our feast. Apparently celebrating for us means eating. We started with appetizers of all sorts of dips, olives, aged beef slices, bree, etc. Then came dinner with roast chicken, roast sweet potatoes, homemade bread!, a greens salad, a couscous salad, gravy, and mozz-basil tomatoes. Wow. Finally, dessert with berry crumble with vanilla ice cream and chocolate chip cookies. It was a blessing we were watching movies afterwards, as I don't think we could have managed anything else. Andrew's apartment is located as close to the water as possible, so his view is stunning.

Better Homes and Gardens, here we come!

G & K: Day 12 & 13

Day 12 & 13 - Kirchner stuffing and Korean BBQ

Thursday after the horse races was a pretty laid back day. We had Mo's language partner over for an American style breakfast that included omelets, bacon, pancakes, orange juice, and coffee. Lisa was really nice and tried all the food. She admitted to Mo later that the bacon was too salty for her. Man I love bacon though. We also played a game that she brought with her while her and Mo practiced their language skills.

During the afternoon Drew wanted to learn how to make the famous Kirchner stuffing from Grandma. It's best not to say what does into the stuffing, but I promise that it is delicious. We had to get a chicken with its head attached and they cut its head off. Weird. But delicious!

Friday was sushi day! I had been looking forward to getting sushi. It was a pretty neat restaurant because you could order from the menu and there was a conveyer belt with sushi going around. Each of the plates had a different color that corresponds to a price on it so when you were done eating the waitresses could just add up the total.

After lunch we made another trip out to Stanley so I could finally get the gifts for people that I hadn't yet. I finally managed to figure out what to get for everyone and bought a painting for myself! I really love it, it's hanging up in my bedroom now.

Dinner on Friday was possibly my favorite of the entire trip. We went to a Korean BBQ place that was down an alley and I never would have guessed was there. The table had a grill in the center that was covered by a grate. We ordered marinated meat that we then cooked ourselves over the grill in the center. In addition to our potstickers appetizer we ordered, they give you 8 sides that included kimchi, lotus root, potatoes, and other delicious cold dishes. We also ordered two different traditional alcohols, one of which tasted like vodka but you drank straight called Soju (not a fan) and another milky looking one called makgeolli (I think) that was sweet and actually pretty tasty.

Seriously it was amazing. The meat was flavored so well and since you can cook it when you want you're always getting it when it's fresh. They changed the grate on our grill halfway through since they are very concerned about the negative effects of the char. If I could go back to Hong Kong for one day I would have dumplings for lunch and Korean BBQ for dinner. Or maybe I should actually go to South Korea. That would be neat!

After dinner we went to a bar on the top of a building with a wonderful view of the city. We just relaxed, had some drinks, and ate a lot of bar peanuts. Plus Mo got to act like the Mother of Dragons with the neat lamp on the table.

After that we headed back to the apartment to get some sleep before our big trip to Macau!