9/8 – With our visa extensions in hand, we moved about 5 kms. north to a new guesthouse in the area called Legian.  Lots of shopping opportunities here.

  

For some reason, there are lots of unusually shaped bottle openers here, in an assortment of sizes and colors:

Also lots of Native American / Wild West stuff, which we just can’t explain.

  
The exchange rate here is $1 USD = approximately 14,000 rupiah, which makes us feel like wheeler-dealers when we extract a million rupiah from an ATM in 100,000 rupiah bills, or pay 30,000 rupiah for a $2 supper.  You can live within your budget here for a long time.

Hey Peter – you can cash your Bitcoin here!

In Legian, the beach is wider and the waves are higher than in Kuta.  Morning surfing classes:

The wide beach At Double Six feels less frantic, and as we walk north to Batu Belig beach, the umbrellas, surfboards, chairs and touts diminish until the beach becomes almost tranquil.

We eat a Balinese lunch at a local warung (small restaurant).  Since coming to Bali, we’ve eaten lots of nasi goreng (stir fried rice with veg, chicken or pork topped with a fried egg) and mei goreng (fried noodles with all of the above), but our favorite dish is nasi campur (pronounced cham POOR), because you never know what you’re going to get. Translated as “mixed rice”, the dish always has a serving of white rice in the middle, surrounded by a variety of whatever else the cook wants to give you.  There’s always vegetables and chicken, but we’ve had curry, egg, peanuts, satay, tempeh, tofu, pork, soup, barbecue, shrimp and once, a whole grilled fish.  Order nasi campur – a new experience every day!

Back to our guesthouse for a swim in the lovely tropical pool lined with morning glory. Jim is making a video while he swims – I sure hope that iPad case is really waterproof!