Our first leg was in Sanur, which I later found out is called Snore by the local expats. I don't know why I didn't catch this when I was doing my travel research, but apparently there's not a helluva lot to do there, and it's favored by middle aged people. My travel research is hit and miss, and sometimes I don't even remember in the end how I ended up choosing a place. In retrospect, I would have limited the number of days there to one or two. My mom really liked it there, but she's middle aged...
In the morning, this is the first picture I took. On Bali, most people are Hindu, so they put out offerings of flowers, a bit of food from that day, and incense, three times a day. If you're interested, here's a link to more info:
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/indonesia/bali/balinese_customs/info-217-bali_hinduism.php
These things would be all over the sidewalks, at pretty much every threshold, and even on the beach where the seaside businesses were. This particular one was from our hotel.
Sanur Beach is lined with shops and restaurants, so we ate on the beach a few times. Here's the place I had my first lunch before my mom arrived.
Nasi Goreng seems to be THE Indonesian (though not Balinese) food. It varies from place to place, but when I got it, it was always fried rice with a fried egg on top, a bit of satay, a piece of friend chicken, some veggies, some sort of fish sauce, and these fried fish crackers. It's pretty good, but not something I could eat a ton of.
I have to say I was pretty disappointed with the ocean part of the beach. Although the sand on the beach was nice enough, and the look of the water was pretty, fully swimming in it was not really an option. I guess I'm a beach snob now, but I don't really want to go into a beach that has giant beds of seaweed everywhere and bright green salad floating all around in it. I think there were also a bunch of rocks in the ground, so you couldn't get more than waist deep into it. So we went in a little bit, but it felt like kind of a waste to just be sitting there. After that we just walked on the beach and went swimming in the pool at the hotel. Luckily the pool was nice.
Here's the salad I was talking about. I wish I'd taken a closer picture. Some of it was unusually bright in color.
Locals enjoying the beach after work/school.
One of the only activities besides beach and shopping in Sanur proper is to go to the Bali Hyatt and walk around the beautifully manicured grounds, so we did that one afternoon.
This little pond area was my favorite part, because it was a little pond area with a cute little bridge and stuff.
There was quite a lot of this going on in Bali in August.
This is a temple, but it says to keep out, so we figured it was for employees only.
Another activity to do in Sanur that I was hoping to do is go to an art museum called Museum le Mayeur, but unfortunately we left it until I think Saturday, and then found out it was closed. We would be leaving the next morning, so there was no time to see it unfortunately.
But on the up side, we did get in some spa activity. Ubud seems to be Spa Town in Bali, but there were still plenty of little places to get massages and such in Sanur. One afternoon we got a massage on the beach by some ladies who owned shops there. Then the next day we went to a little spa called Carla Spa, which has three locations in Sanur. We each got a two hour package with massage and some other treatments. I think it was like twenty bucks or something like that. HA.
We also managed to find a place, actually another branch of Carla Spa, that had garra rufa fish, so we did a 15-minute session of fish spa two days in a row. It's really quite something. Mom was a little freaked out by it, but then she seemed to get used to it. I stuck my hand in at one point, and they swarmed the hell out of it. I wish I could stick my face in there.
After a few days in Sanur, it was time to get picked up for a package trip I booked for us to the Gili Islands, so I'll talk about that next time.
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