Once we recovered from the crazy trip to Bali, we had a great time. We arrived in Denpasar at about 2am and after finally clearing immigration and customs found a cab to take us to the harbor where Love Song was moored. It was rather miraculous that we found Alan, flashing his headlamp in the dirty harbor at night. We were relieved to be lulled to sleep on board Love Song and had a great week of sailing, hanging out, talking, and adventuring. After provisioning up at the bulk food store we sailed to Lembongan, a small island off the coast of Bali and stayed there for almost a week. It was fun to venture around the island on foot and on rented scooters. We hung out on the beach and enjoyed the food and wifi at the cafe's on the beach.
After a week with the Simis family we took a cab to Seminyak where we rented a house from a friend of a friend in the heart of the busy fashion district. We had lots of downtime and naptime and ate really well at all of the fresh local restaurants. Calder found a dish --mi goreng (fried noodles with an egg) that became his go-to food for the trip. Though Bali is primarily Buddhist, unlike the rest of Muslim Indonesia, there were many things that reminded me of living in Malaysia as a kid. The language and food both took me back to our days living and traveling around the peninsular country. We spent several days hanging out at the beach in Seminyak, on padded lounge chairs we rented by the hour. We met up with the Simis's for an adventurous day in the lovely city of Ubud (cultural capitol of Bali) wandering through the monkey forest, learning about local crafts and culture, and gawking at impressive hand crafted furniture. The Balinese have a knack for design and everyone we met was overly nice. It was a great place to travel with kids. We bid farewell to Bali and the Simis's who were continuing on their way around the world, next stop Malaysia.
We had to leave a day or two earlier than we had hoped to catch open flights back to the states. We spent a quick night in Hong Kong and made new friends with the Bentley's who very kindly put us up in their apartment near the airport for the 10 hours we were in town. Someday we hope to go back some day for a real stay.
The worst part about the whole Bali trip was coming home. Not that we weren't glad to be back home in our own beds, but the jet lag was a killer coming back this direction. After a day of rest we had to go back to work, but the kids were still on Indonesian time and night was day and day night. Try explaining to a 7 month old that even though he feels like its 1pm and time to play, it really is 3am, and time to sleep. We did have some memorable nights hanging out in the kitchen at 3am.
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