I have been remiss in posting mainly because there is not much to post about. We are having a very relaxing, great time in Bali with good friends and good food. Everyday is pretty much the same so not much to report. I will do a bit of a summary to catch everyone up. We will leave tomorrow night on an 11:45pm flight. It will take 36 hours to get home if all goes well.

I did go diving one more day back to Nusa Penida to see the mantas one last time but other than that we have been hanging out at the resort. I did see some mantas but nothing was like the first dive where I saw so many I could not count.

Great water color.

We keep the same schedule, breakfast with Merv & Michelle at 9:30 and we usually linger until 11. We then go our own way until dinner although we did go shopping a couple of days with Michelle. We were looking for some Louis Vuitton purses for a friend so that was a good excuse to do some bargaining. The quality of the knock-offs seems pretty good and the prices were very reasonable. We also got some plastic “Birkenstocks” and “Crocs”. Between the 3 of us we got 4 pairs and Michelle did a great job of negotiating and we got the 4 pairs for $9 each. I don’t even think the guy in the shop knew what was happening but he took the cash and put the shoes in a bag and off we went.

It is very hot, like Florida, and the humidity is pretty bad this time of year so with most of the stalls not being air-conditioned you don’t feel like shopping for long. We did take the hotel shuttle to a small indoor mall one day at 4pm and then walked back to the hotel stopping for dinner along the way. Merv & Michelle had plans with friends for dinner so we were on our own.

The restaurants we go to have all been great and we do have our favorites. We discuss at breakfast where we want to have dinner and M & M make reservations. You never know how busy the places are going to be so good to have reservations. Most of the restaurants are close enough to walk to but sometimes we take a taxi and the taxis never cost more than 3 dollars. The rides can be very interesting because as mentioned before the roads are very narrow and motorcycles are everywhere.

This is a 2 lane road and on the right you can see all the motorbikes parked on the side of the road which makes the roads even narrower to maneuver.

On the left is one of the breakfast dishes Kathy orders, Shakshuka, which is tomato sauce, spices, cheese and a fried egg. They serve it with toast to help you soak up the sauce. In the middle is my tacos from taco night at Ling Ling’s (I know, not very Mexican). I got a chicken, pork and beef one. The last picture is oatmeal which Kathy gets sometimes for breakfast. It is oatmeal with caramelized banana, peanut butter, blueberries and raspberries, sliced almonds and maple syrup on the side.

Another thing we have tried to do every night is go down to the beach for sunset. We usually meet for dinner a little after 6:30 and the sun sets at 6:15. We walk down with a beer and watch the sunsets and they have been spectacular. The people watching has been a lot of fun also.

A few of the sunsets and of course the boat kite is seen at almost every sunset because they walk down the beach selling them and sunset is a great time to show them off. I really wanted one so I bargained and got one from $15 US down to $6. When I brought it back to the hotel one of the guys at the hotel told me that you can only fly it at the beach because it needs a lot of wind. I was not planning on trying to fly it, I want to put it out by the pool as decoration.

Kathy at the beach. The nice thing about the beach sunset is that almost every restaurant along the beach has live music and there is always a beach soccer game going on.

The beach at sunset and a very busy dog walker. Like I said, the people watching at sunset is so much fun.

We also went down to the beach one afternoon and rented 2 chairs and an umbrella and enjoyed the surf. The water is very clear and very refreshing. The only negative of the beach is that people come trying to sell you stuff, like sarongs, sun glasses and wood carvings. The hawkers are not very aggressive but you do have to constantly say “not interested”.

Our beach set-up

This is the beach walkway with restaurants and surf schools on the left and beach chairs and umbrellas on the right. The photo on the right is how they sell petrol for the motorbikes. This is at a lot of the shops on the street and it costs a little more than what you can get it at the gas station for but it saves you having to wait in line at a gas station if you own a motor bike.

Tomorrow we leave and our grand adventure is over. We have had a wonderful time and cannot thank our hosts enough for their hospitality and sharing their knowledge with us and keeping us company these last several weeks. We never could have imagined what a wonderful time we would have ahead of us when met this nice Australian couple on the 21/22 Viking world cruise. You just never know.

Michelle arranged a late checkout for us since our flight is not until 11:45pm. I will get another pedicure in the morning after breakfast and Kathy will get a foot massage and then spend some more time at the beach. We requested a ride to the airport at 6:30pm. We fly 8 hours to Seoul, Korea where we have an 8 hour layover and then 13 hours to Atlanta, another 4 hour layover and then 1 hour to Tallahassee. If all goes well we will be home by midnight on Wednesday, 36 hours after staring our journey.

Thank you for following along and our next adventure is set for February 26 when we will go to Istanbul, Cappadocia and then pick up a Viking Nile river cruise in Cairo, Egypt.