Jimbaran Seafood

We woke up late and met the others at the buffet breakfast. I took the buffet slightly easier today (just an omelette, croissant and juice) because I was starting to consider how much weight I'd put on before going home!

I was glad to have the day by the pool - it was good to relax after our active day in Ubud. I read my book and sat in the shade. Around 1pm we began poolside drinks. Beers and sunshine make the afternoon go past quickly! We had a pizza that was actually really good for a late lunch. Around 4pm we got an Uber to Kuta.

Kuta was a seething mass of people in a tourist shopping district of Bali, with big billboards over every shop and fancy 'real' brands. I got a watch for Hugo and a Mont Blanc pen for Dad from a genuine-fake shop. We went to a chucks shop and Josh bargained his size 12 high tops down to 200,000 and shook on the price - at which point the manager found out what his shop assistant had sold them for and followed us down the street demanding more money. Time to go!

Our driver in one of the dodgy blue cabs tried to charge us 120,000 to Jimbaran just down the road. We haggled him down to 80,000 (much more reasonable but still high in my opinion), but when we finally got there due to bad traffic he insisted on 100,000. Being from a country were haggling isn't the norm, it's hard to negotiate in Bali. You know you're being ripped off but you also know you can afford it and because of where you were born, you'll live a far more privileged life than that person ever can. So you just pay it.

We walked down a dodgy road lined with seafood restaurants that didn't look attractive from the outside. Although the sea was nowhere in sight, there were tanks filled with lobsters and crabs. We arrived at Lia's Seafood Restaurant, that Erin had researched on TripAdviser, and were led through the basic restaurant to a huge beach filled with hundreds of candlelit tables and thousands of people. The transition from small dirty street to this wide open space was quite magical - there were stars above us and lights on the coast at each end of the beach.

We ordered about 5kg of seafood - crumbed calamari, king prawns butterflied with garlic, red snapper, and lobster for about 1,000,000. The food was so fresh and delicious. We went home feeling relaxed and satisfied.