Bali Food. Siam Sally

Siam Sally is the first restaurant we went to in Ubud and we loved it. Its design is amazing and just reading the menu is an instant joy for your taste buds. Siam Sally serves Thai food - as I'm sure you have already guessed from its name. We shared caramelized mushrooms, Pomelo Salad with toasted coconut, peanut and jumbo prawns in roasted chili and Ho Mok Tale, which is New Zealand mussels, squid, prawns and fish with steamed cabbage in a wild ginger and red curry coconut mousse in a steamed banana leaf. The food was delicious and although I was happily full, I squeezed in a coconut ice cream with black sesame seeds and coconut cream as I didn't want to miss out.

Siam Sally doesn't only have brilliant food, its service is also very good and so is the atmosphere. On Saturday nights the restaurant has a jazz band and you can come and have dinner or a drink whilst enjoying the music and looking over the rice paddy fields from across the street.

I'd love to go back again! http://www.baligoodfood.com/siam-sally.asp

As for prices, we ate in two (starter, main, dessert and drinks) for about €25.

Siem Reap. Angkor

Angkor Wat sunrise

Angkor Thom

Mt. Bromo

sunrise at Bromo

Riding up to Bromo

Ubud

Ubud has been amazing. We were almost about to miss it due to lack of time but I am so happy we did not. We decided to loose one of our flights from Yogya and buy one from Denpasar (Bali) instead. We had a day and a half in Ubud and loved every second of it despite the torrential rain that was hindering us from enjoying it even more.
We walked through the rain to find a hostel and found this place with a magic garden, a forest in itself that was family run. Everyone there directed you to speak to "Mama". Mama is a very nice old lady that takes care of the hostel/B&B and seems to have turned the family into the oppositeof patriarchal. She kindly showed us a room and after a bit of the usual bargaining, we settles for 250000 Rp (25euros) for a triple/night with breakfast, fan and hot water. The bathroom was a bit..say...simplistic but it was quite clean and we enjoyed it there. She did take care of us and bolied Laura rice and served her tea for her upset stomach. Her breakfast was also really good: fruit platter (pinapple, papaya, coconut, melon) and a toastie with egg, peanut butter and chinese cabbage. Strangely enough, the toastie was really good!
Ubud is incredible: it feels stuck in time and at the same time, there are so many things going on. I have never seen as many nice cafes, bars and restaurants as there. I think we could've spent a month just eating and drinking in different places and we would've still found new spots - thought I'd barely eat on the trip, wrong!
I'll later put photos of the food and names of places but till then, a teaser: pomello, chilli and shrimp salad, caramalized mushroom, New Zealad mussles in banana leaf, basil mash, mango mojito....anything you can imagine. For a very good dinner (shared starter, main, drinks and desert) in a gorgeaus place, we payed around 15euros each - just to give you an idea.
There are also a tens (if not hundereds) or art galleries with beautiful Balinese paintings, wood carvings, jewelry... You cannot take your eyes of them! I was dreaming of a house already. You can also visit Monkey Forest which is literally a forest where monkeys freely wonder around. You feel as if civilization has disappeared and monkeys have taken over. I felt as if I was in "Planet of the Apes".
The market was quite disappointing as they were so used to tourists that if you didn't want to buy from them, they'd start yelling at you. However, the shops on Monkey Rd. are very pretty, have a lot of arts and crafts, batik and silk clothing or sarongs, scarfs...You can bargain a lot better there and you know the quality is superior.
The people in Ubud are extremely nice and warm. They are the soul of the place and you can feel it. I would've stayed in Ubud for a lot longer. I would've like to go to the second Jazz concert whilst sipping from a papaya-mango-drink. We were so happy to end our trip in Indonesia with Ubud! It really left us longing for more. We understood the charm of Bali...

Kuta

Kuta is the party beach in Bali. I imagined it to be exotic, very relaxed, full of surfers, cool cafes and nice restaurants...either chilled or glam. I also thought the nightlife would be amazing. Strangely enough going out felt like going out in Uni. The bad looking clubs with Europe-priced bad cocktails had that top of the charts or worse music and they were the place for drunken Caucasians to mix with local girls who were sadly doing everything they could to get their attention. That aside, Kuta is a nice resort, quite similar to what you'd expect in a very touristy resort - shops with fake bag and wallets, masks and oils, hats, money "changers", nice restaurants (usually about 7-8 euros for dinner). On top of that you get hostels and the people leaving in them and hotels. Also,Bali is known for its Spas and Kuta also has its jewels. We went to one for a really good balinese massage, manicure and pedicure. For the way it looked and the service, half the price in Romania...so a loooot less than in the rest of Europe.
There's not much to say about Kuta. The beach has nothing special about it, except for beginner surfers and Balinese men trying to sell you everything on this Earth. But, there is a tip: Gili's island. We didn't have time to see it but it's supposed to be very nice. A friend who's been going there for 4 years has recommended it.

What's interesting about Bali is the different features they have from Javanese people. They're a lot rounder, softer and have paler skin. They also mostly are Hindu as opposed to mostly Muslim in Java.

Next stop: Ubud. Bali's art city.

Singapore. Yogaya. Bromo. Bali

Got to Singapore after a very long but comfortable KLM flight. There DJ was waiting for me and Laura. I sat down with DJ for a drink and next to the counter a sign read: "NO STUDYING". I have seen cafe-signs before but they mostly said: "no smoking" or something along those lines. Apparently the Singapore airport is a cool studying place for students so the staff needs to make sure that the place doesn't get overcrowded with them.

Laura got to Singapore as well and then we spent a nice evening eating out with DJ and her friends and had a close encounter with the famous durian fruit. It's uhmm... stinky and mushy. It's a love-it-or-hate-it fruit. I disliked it because of the smell and strange texture. But definitely worth a taste.

The next day we made our way to Yogya where we had a really nice taxi driver that offered to be our tour guide for the next day. We got to our hostel, Delta Homestay - quite good looking on the outside and cleanish on the inside. The bathroom wasn't great but otherwise it was worth the money we paid (125000Rp/night). The staff was very friendly and also got us tickets to the Ramayana ballet (140000Rp). The surprising thing in Yogya was that we got a bottle of water everywhere and that people always had a smile on their face. We walked around, had a good lunch, dinner at ViaVia - the expat cozy place - and then saw the ballet. The next day started early with a trip to Borobudur and Parambanan. For 12hrs with us we paied our guide 150000Rp/pers ...well, more with tip. Yoko, our guide and driver, has been extremly nice. He walked us around everywhere and told us about the temples, was watching out for us like a father and was always happy to take pictures of us. I'd recommend him any day! What was the most surprising about Yogya was that DJ forgot her money at the hostel and then they called the driver of our bus to Bromo so we can return and grab it. I've always been told that we need to watch out with our belongings in Indonesia but they made a big effort to get it back to us.

We took a 12hr bus to Bromo - the mistake we made was that we didn't book Yogya-Bromo-Bali from the beginning with accommodation. We managed to get a hostel in Bromo and after 4hrs of sleep we woke up at 3am to go to Bromo. From one peak you can see the sun rise over Bromo, it's an amazing view. You then go by Jeep to a plateau from where you climb to the tip of the vulcano. You can either walk there or ride. We rode. Once we got to the vulcano, the view and smell of sulphur transport you to another world. Strangely enough we felt like in a Lord of the Rings landscape...Mordor. After 5hrs around Bromo we got driven back to Probolinggo where we waited for another bus to take us to Bali. Unfortunately, the bus ride was almost 12hrs from there to Denpasar, not 6hrs as they said. There are around 6-7 hrs to Lovina but a lot more to Denpasar. We then managed to get a hostel, slept well and made our way to Kuta in the morning. Now we're in Kuta, treating ourselves at a nice hotel, 25$/pers/night. We'll stay here for 2 more days, go to Ubud and then back to Singapore for a day.

I thought the roads here would be terrible, surprisingly they are better than in Romania. The driving though is much worse. The way they overtake is insane. I think 1cm is a decent distance for overtaking here. The honk also is an essential part of driving. And funnily enough the vegetation is different and so are the styles of the houses but most of the part we drove through in Java looks like rural Romania. I don't know if they're more evolved than I thought or we're way behind....still the shock was quite small. Interesting!