The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: October 2018

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Balinese Cooking Class at the Amala

Today we did a Balinese cooking class at the Amala, a really nice hotel near the airport. https://www.theamala.com/balinese-cooking-class/ We got up early, Yoga, Swim and prep for a busy morning. Our cooking class started with a pickup by the chef himself. I Gede Sarjana got us at exactly 8:45 AM. Out first stop is a cool local market. This place is a gem. The fishermen (and women) leave at 5 PM and return at 5 AM with their catches. You can get there early and negotiate with them if you wish. Otherwise the fish are awaiting in a pretty big market. Beside that is a huge selection of vegetables and stuff. Our tour was very helpful in showing and describing items used in Balinese cooking. I wish I had taken notes. Michelle took interest in some interesting eggs. These are normal chicken eggs cooking in an interesting process. They are placed in the ground, covered with dirt and rock salt. Then above the ground a fire is started for 15 days. The result is a slowly cooked and salted egg. They were kinda salty. We were armed with fish and veggies for our journey to the Amala. We met another participant from Austria. We had a cooking hat, apron and cutting center for each of us. We reviewed what we were to cook and later eat. Base Gede is a traditional spicy chili paste very very common in Balinese foods. Jukut Gedang Mekuah is a green papaya sea food soup. Sate Lilitayam is a chicken sate on a stick. Desert was a Godoh Biu, Balinese fried banana. It was a blast cutting, cooking watching and learning. After we ate everything. Yum. It was way too much food so the leftovers went with our Austrian friend. We got clean copies of the recipe, certificated of participation and got to keep our aprons. Cool. We were kinda baked after getting home so we slept like champs, lazily ordered room service and relaxed like rock stars. Awesome day.

Lobster at the market

Today's catch

Seriously fresh

Our Chef trainer

Lot's of fish

This is one half of about 6 long hallways of vendors

Veggies, yum

Shrimp paste, a very important ingredient

The veggie entrance

Let's go cook this stuff

First some shots of the boats

A cute not dead dog

We had time to spare. Got a free young coconut

There was over 1 litre of coconut water in this one

Sexy chef

The spices we will use

The yellow oil is coconut oil infused with tumeric

Shallots, peppers, garlic and related items

The veggies we will use

Our cutting surfaces

I watched the Base Gede

It's important to get a slight burned coconut flavor

The raw dried coconut is literally burned for about 30 seconds

We packed the Sate Lilitayam onto a stick made of onion

Nice hats

They look like this before and after cooking

This is the salty egg thing

Sate Lilitayam

Jukut Gedang Mekuah

Godoh Biu

OMG Yum

Good morning Indonesia - Let's get our SIM's and see the beach

We slept ok but the 3 hour time shift was interesting. Today is get the internet day. During our free amazing breakfast one of the hosts offered to travel in is break to purchase us some SIM cards. I knew getting them configured and purchased would be way more difficult so I declined. I had done some research on SIM's already. The cell service here is excellent and is offered by many carriers. The best for Bali is Telkomsel. I was hoping to get a specific SIM with a plan and purchase it from a reliable provider. The alternative is one of many street vendors and that can be a concern with pricing and honesty. We were advised to at least try the street vendor not far from the hotel before a longer taxi journey to another place I had reviewed. We took a chance, got our sun gear on and went for a nice walk looking for water, food stores and a SIM card. The sidewalks are kinda beat up here. The catch basin is a whole in the sidewalk covered loosely with 2 concrete pads. I'ts kinda fun walking, looking at the sights, trying not to trip and also avoiding the crazy cars/bikes whipping by. We found a few SIM vendors among all kinds of other shops and services. There is a sprinkling of traditional art, design and architecture everywhere. Food offerings are left out daily as part of their religious ceremony. It's breathtaking and makes the walk more enjoyable. We found a little SIM place and chose a simpler card as they had no larger data offerings. The nice girl set it all up and it took her about 5 minutes for each phone. It would have taken me 5 hours. They also must see your passport to associate it. Yay we had internet and Indonesian Cell numbers. We returned home, cooled off and rested and did some pool time. Michelle went ahead with lots of research. After the sun was lower we headed toward the "beach" We made a wrong (really right) turn and wound up taking a longer and actually nicer route through more shops and vendors. The beach was soon found and what a beauty. Many locals sit in the shallow water letting go of the hot day. There is no shortage of beach food vendors, beach side rental places and restaurants. We randomly picked one and had an amazing meal. I'm picking anything with lots of vegetable and a name I don't recognize. We walked back the correct way and cruised to bed. Great day.

A nicely decorated McDonald's

Michelle at our fancy hotel

Dinner on the beach, that's a mountain in the background

Goodbye Sydney - Hello Indonesia

We slept pretty good and rose well at 6:00 AM. Uber ride to the airport was at 8:00 AM. We had a few hours to eat, cleanup, chill and do a final pack. We arrived with plenty of time to check in and board. Our Indonesia departure tickets has not yet been arranged so we were concerned about that. Security check in for me was weird. I must have looked oto casual and relaxed. I also had become separated from Michelle after screening (you can't wait there for another) I guess I looked like a bad ass because I was asked to go through the Xray, eek. I had nothing in my pockets yet the scanner triggered something. The silly woman put me through again. Same false positive. Some dude had to come over, see I had nothing in my pockets and pat down the areas they sensed something. My shorts have zippers and this scanner saw them as metal. Seriously Someone needs to calibrate that Xray because I'm glowing now :-). Our flight was at gate 63. Cool the last gate. We needed a morning walk. Flight is going well and we are looking at the lovely red soil of interior AU. It was nice saying goodbye to AU by flying over our most cherished spots. Approaching Indonesia I could see the airport we were to land at. The captain indicated there was some runway maintenance ongoing so we had to go into a holding pattern for a while. That was kinda cool. I could see 2 other craft in the pattern as well. We were soon landing and departing onto a very hot and humid tarmac. Fetching our bags and passing into the country went smooth. The transition to the next country is always a bit wonky with no cell data in place. This time it was a little awkward with getting a taxi. It turned out the hotel did not see our request for a ride that day (message was at 3:00 AM) We wasted 30 minutes trying to find our names on cardboard held by one of at least 40 people looking for rides. Many others came to us asking to be their taxi. We called the hotel and learned it would be 1.5 hours total time. Bummer. We took our chances with someone who helped us with a call. It turns out some "taxi" drivers don't have taxis licences I suppose. We were led away from the departure area into the parking elevator. We both were a little weirded out about this so I asked him to bring the car to us. This would foil any attempts at funny business as we were not going to any non public area. After an awkward 10 minute wait, he arrived. It turned out ok and we were driving away from the airport soon after. The traffic here is nuts. The drivers are not so concerned about lane choices and the constant barrage of scooters and motorcycles reveals a beautiful but chaotic dance. It's mesmerizing to watch the traffic flow. Our hotel awaited a 45 minute drive. OMG it's way way to fancy for us. Massive ceilings, long hallways, huge pool, people tripping over themselves to help you, huge room, amazing cheap food. Total score. We ordered room service had a swim, yoga, mojito, smoothy and crashed.

Buddy and his shy friend

Last moments on AU soil

See yah AU

Interior AU getting more red

Really close to Alice Springs and Uluru here

The left side of the plane may have revealed more sorry

Hi Connor

The Airline, Virgin AU had a cool streaming app for their customers

The flight map was on top of a Google Earth image, nice touch

Here's where we did like 6 loops waiting for the runway inspection

Bam on the ground and letting someone else navigate in this madness

Michelle taking ownership of the entire bed

It's so big is crosses a time zone

Really really nice room. Way over the top yet inexpensive, so weird

I tip really well to feel less guilty

Goodbye Port Macquare - Hello Sydney

Our campervan was parked immediately behind a fancy dinner place and bar. As we were dosing off it was pretty noisy with an older party crowd. I was happy they get quieted down right around 11 PM. We slept great and were up around 6 AM to start our final push to Sydney. The clouds blocked our desire for a morning walk at the beach so we simply split after breakfast. The drive was great, thankfully no wind at 110 KM/h. Sydney had a few toll roads that I could have arranged payment for in advance. The driving distance saved was very little so I did not go for it. As we approached Sydney and were navigated away from the Tool roads, I wondered if that was not such a good idea. We were now in the core of the city, going quite slow, winding towards a really slow tunnel. It was very cool but surprising slow for a Saturday. Oh well. We made our AirBnb at 3 PM and chucked our stuff into the room and began a little Jucy van cleanup. We had the entire next day to ourselves so no rush. Switching from living in a van to a room and backpacks took a bit of time. We enjoyed a really nice Thai dinner and crashed early after a long day. The next day was kinda busy. We needed to buy a carry on luggage roller for our extra's. We will soon be losing out large scuba gear roller once KT's stuff is able to get back in it. We've come to enjoy having a big extra bag around but it is a bit of an anchor. Diving places offer cheap rentals so all we really need to carry is perhaps masks and snorkels. Fins/5mm suits/Knives/Mics items can be sent back home now. It's costing us 60 bucks or so per flight for this extra bag. No point in continuing to pay this anymore especially in countries where diving is not an option. Michelle's new roller can hold her backpack becoming a carry on. Outside of flying the roller can hold our extra stuff we seem to often have. Cool. The mall we intended to go to opened at 10 AM. The Jucy drop off is 10 AM - 2 PM. I even hoped to get a car wash in too. After a quick cleanup of the van we headed off zipping around town. The Jucy people were really happy we had washed and cleaned everything. Apparently we drover of 6000 KM's, wow. A quick Uber back and we are Jucy free and ready to pack for tomorrow's 11:20 AM flight. We had lot's of food still left which our AirBnB hosts are soon to enjoy. We prepared offline Google maps, arranged 3 nights accommodation, did some MagicJack/MagicApp configuration and got our heads into packing and clearing airport security.

I forgot to mention this bird in a previous post. This bird was at a previous campsite. I was walking near her when she chirped and almost attacked me. She was resting atop some eggs for days on end. She had a typical 3 chirp warning for anyone that came close.