'No piss' said our hostess at Lumbung Bali Huts commenting on the lack of three quarters of the advertised menu in the restaurant. 'Piss is off. It's not the season'.
We were on Lembongen Island, an island off the coast of Bali famous for seaweed production but obviously not, it appeared, seafood. We had just returned from snorkeling several metres away in the waters of the Indian Ocean that was practically lapping at our toes as we sat, and would see (and indeed eat, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed) a fine catch further down the bay the next day, but here we were, outside our traditional Balinese thatched hut eating a packet Mie Goreng that tasted and looked like Alphabetti Spaghetti, and a frozen Vista-type 'fisherman's curry'. So much for divine seafood leaping off the fisherman's hooks and grilled in front of our twitching noses, we thought...
But that was before we discovered Scallywags organic seafood bar and grill. The black and white signs with their fishbone logo lured us down past mangroves and over potholes towards Sandy Bay and into paradise. It wasn't so much the seafood, which was middling, but the fact that we had found the ultimate place to lounge whilst watching glassy turquoise waves roll and tumble as we sipped....
I'm not a cocktail girl normally but this view definitely called a mojito!
Meanwhile Julian, recently seen reading meditation and attachment theory books and carrying things on his head, was sending good karma out to the banana painting he left up on auction before we left for the island so was feeling compelled to indulge in all things banana. The banana fritters were as crystally crisp and frothy in the middle as the waves from which we could not take our eyes.
Now, back in the vast metropolis of Ubud the sound of the waves are replaced by the water feature in our pool, which I am trying to pretend is blocking out the sound of the eternal 'Eat Pray Love' building work that is going on around our rented house. And yet we are glad to be 'home'. Glad to be back to our yoga class, our painting and writing, the delectable butterfish in Nomad, the tuna caught fresh on Thrusdays at Naughty Nuris Warung, the Nasi Lodeh in our corner caff and above all the best coffee in all of our coffee-serious lives, in Casa Luna. There all the baristas are trained in Australia and could teach a thing or three to every coffee maker in Paris.
Oh and yes, that cinnamon bun.