Blue Mountains

Adam was kind enough to take us on a mini road trip out of Sydney to the Blue Mountains, which Amy said was one of her favorite trips when she was in Australia.  Just a couple hour drive outside of the city, the mountain range and series of deep gorges have a blue haze to them because of the forests full of eucalyptus trees:

 

We took a walk through one of the Blue Mountain's towns, Leura, for some shopping and to pick up some local Aussie treats at a bakery for a picnic/taste test with a beautiful view:

Starting in the lower left corner and going clockwise, you've got a fig slice (kinda like a cross between fruit mince pie and a Fig Newton), Lamington (vanilla cake cubes coated in chocolate and dusted with dried coconut), vanilla/passionfruit slice (pastry layered with vanilla and passionfruit creamy custard), custard pie (vanilla custard with nutmeg), and caramel slice (an awesomely chewy caramel bar cookie covered in chocolate)... all pretty awesome, although the vanilla and caramel slices were my favorite:

Not pictured are the awesome sausage rolls and meat pies, as we scarfed them down too fast.  Sausage rolls might be my new favorite thing.  

Adam and his siblings sing a song about sausage rolls to the tune of the ACDC classic, "It's a Long Way to the Top if Ya Wanna Rock and Roll":  it goes "It's a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll."  It is an earworm, as Tim will attest after hearing me sing it approximately a thousand times for the next week.

Also not pictured ( but thoroughly enjoyed) is the assortment of Australian salty snacks we sampled, including the familiarly orange-hued, yet strangely shaped Cheezels, Twisties (similar to Cheetos in shape and crunch), and bacon and cheese balls.  My review of each is as follows:

Cheezels: interesting... poofy like a cheez ball, but somewhat lacking in intense cheez flavor.  Let's be honest, though: nobody does fluoro (Aussie for "fluorescent") orange faux cheese like America.

Twisties: We tried chicken flavor Twisties, which had great crunch, but were disconcertingly chicken soup flavored.

Cheetos Cheese and Bacon Balls: Amazing.  Like the canned cheez balls of your childhood, yet with a slightly bacony, very smoky overtone.  Amy compared it to smoked gouda, which sounds weird, but is pretty accurate.

Probably not the healthiest meal any of us has eaten, but the view was great!:

After our picnic, we headed to Katoomba to catch another view of the mountains, including the awesome view of the Three Sisters rock formation from Echo Point.

After checking out the views, we headed to a beautiful historic (built in 1880) hotel, the Carrington, for a beer.  They had some cool old Blue Mountains posters that reminded us of the old school U.S. National Parks prints of yorn.

They also had some really random Laurel and Hardy (I think?) statues in the hallway?

Nights in Da Nang

Tim and I hit the town a bit in Da Nang, grabbing dinner at the lovely Waterfront Restaurant, where we got a prime table overlooking the street and the Han River, which divides the city from the beach area.  

It was a warm, but not hot night, so people were out on the town.  Kids were riding bikes on the promenade by the river, fishing boats cruised by (illuminated by the bright neon lights that Vietnam seems to favor), and folks whizzed by on motorbikes, sometimes with their entire family perched precariously on the motorbike (more on that later).

 

Our meal was pretty tasty- a bit of Vietnamese fusion.  We started with one of Vietnam's favorite salads, the green mango salad.  So crunchy and good.  Then we followed that up with the twice cooked pork belly with a star anise and orange sauce.  Awesome:

We rocked a bottle of wine as well as some local (to central Vietnam) beer: Huda. 

After dinner we walked along the river until we spotted this cute bar and went in for a couple beers.  This time we went with Biere Larue, which they served with some kick ass super salty peanuts.

Good times.

Bali: Other Assorted Ubud Shenanigans

While in Ubud, we participated in a lot of activities, but we also did our fair share of lounging around in our relaxing suite at Alam Jiwa.  Here are photos of some of the other leisure activities in which we partook:

Looking shiny, drinking Bintang besar and eating some excellent sate at Kafe Batan Waru:

 

Taking a break from our power shopping around town to watch the cute local kids play soccer in the main square:

Eating lunch (and taking terrible photos, see below) at the famed Ibu Oka's babi guling (roast suckling pig) restaurant.  Made famous both because it is delicious and because Anthony Bourdain stopped by several years ago to indulge in the porky heaven and record a segment for No Reservations, Ibu Oka's is an Ubud institution.  I've tried babi guling before in Bali and enjoyed it, but this experience was above and beyond that.  We ordered the "special" and were served a mound of rice topped with large slices of super tender roast pork covered in an awesomely fragrant spice mix, some fresh long bean and coconut salad, caramelized crispy pork skin, some blood sausage and these amazing  spicy crispy bits (I don't really want to know what they are) that are to die for.  This place was hilarious, too.  Overrun by people every day (I read that some days they go through 8 pigs at lunchtime), it has developed somewhat of an attitude and the surly service associated with U.S. diners and the Soup Nazi.  I'm sure it's a turn-off for some people, but I actually found it amusing because service in Indonesia is usually so over the top.

Continuing on our "treat yo self" quest, we indulged in massages and manicures at the Alam Wangi spa.  The massages were lovely and the manicures less so, but the tasty tea and snacks at the end made up for that:

Getting our cultural fix at the ARMA Museum, a large museum devoted to maintaining and making available to the public Balinese artwork, both traditional and contemporary.  The museum had a dizzying collection of beautiful and detailed paintings and sculptures depicting life on Bali and various Hindu tales.  I would recommend the museum to anyone visiting Ubud...

My favorite part of the trip to ARMA was actually at the ticket booth.  We had a little bit of confusion about whether the entrance fee quoted to us by the ticket seller was for all 3 of us or just 1 of us.  In the confusion, Meghan had paid for all of our tickets, so Liz and I handed her change to cover our portions.  The ticket seller made an attempt to convince Meghan to give him the small bills we had handed her in exchange for the 100,000 rupiah bill with which she had just paid him.  She quickly shot him down, basically telling him (with a wink) that she had been in Indonesia long enough to realize you don't just give away your small but highly-coveted bills.  Bravo, Meghan!  Small bill hoarding is necessary here, as many shops, stands and taxi drivers will not have change for the larger bills (or will claim to not have change even when they do, which results in a stand-off/stare-down at each transaction, both sides waiting until the other breaks and looks for change.)

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the museum, but Meghan captured the great detail in the carvings on the outside of one of the museum buildings:

Eating a tasty dinner at Cinta Grill (where we had sparked the interest of the bartender and a random dude from Boston earlier in the week) on our last night in Ubud, followed by drinks with all the long-haired locals and aging hippies at the Laughing Buddha next door.  The cover band was pretty good (somewhat of a rarity, I've found), doing twangy and bluesy versions of Superstition and some Rolling Stones tunes.  However, they confirmed my suspicion that the '80s-era Sting song, Englishman in New York, is Indonesia's favorite song.  I have now heard at least 4 separate Indonesian cover bands play this song.  So random.

We were excited because they were the first bar we'd been to in Bali that actually had Storm beer in stock...  we drink it all the time in Jakarta, but seemed unable to find it in Bali and I wanted the girls to try the alternative to Bintang.  Also, Meghan got a really fancy looking watermelon mojito that she enjoyed: