Look Who's Here

My youngest sister aka Ayisha's favorite "aunty-who-I-made-clean-my-poopy", Cik Limah was here!

My sister came to pick-up my mum. She arrived late on Friday, had 2 full days on the weekend and they both left yesterday. When I brought my mum back to Bali, we wanted her to stay for the whole month of Ramadan and leave with us when we go back for Eid but she didn't want to be away from home too long and she wanted time to prepare for Eid. We didn't want her to travel back on her own, so my sister came as she was the only one who could make the short trip for this purpose. Not like she needed too much convincing ;)

It was her first time in Bali but because it's Ramadan, like Moi, doing the sightseeing stuff and exerting yourself ie. walking in Ramadan is a big NO-NO lah. Why? Because we can't have ice-cream while strolling down the beach. hehe. And like I mentioned every Ramadan too, using fasting as an excuse is a big NO-NO to Michael. So to be fair, we did go to ONE beach in Bali, Double Six in Seminyak.

This is another beautiful beach in Bali, surrounded by lots of beautiful people and interesting cafes. Bit expensive tho. Even their beach chairs cost more to rent than in Sanur - where some spots have them for free. My sister did have fun there with Squeaky playing in the sand and dipping their legs in the water a bit but we didn't stay too long. My sister was ready to shop on this short trip of hers, and not in markets mind you, air-conditioned souvenir shops please. :p

I took her to the same place I've been taking all my visitors to shop - Krisna at Sunset Road. This place was recommended to me by taxi drivers as THE place to shop for souvenirs. It's air-conditioned, huge and the prices are still very reasonable. In the beginning, I wanted to take people to the markets, particularly Sukawati, for the shopping. But I was told that Krisna has similar or even better quality products. And eventhough you can't bargain like at the markets, most of the stuff are already cheap and some even cheaper than what you could've bargained for.

Proof - when I went to Ubud Market with my MIL, we bought some fancy slippers and I haggled like crazy for the 6 slippers that we got between us. I was pretty proud of my achievement too. RM10 per pair from RM30 first price quoted to me (well the crazy guy quoted my MIL RM60! chet!). Then I went to Krisna and saw the exact same pair for RM6!

I would still bring my visitors to the markets, especially Ubud Market just to have a feel of it and experience the haggling bit. But if they just want to go in, get stuff and get out and not worrying about losing one another (esp your kids) amidst the markets and the heat, then Krisna it is! So, in the 4 days that Limah was here, we went to Krisna TWICE! That's how much fun it is. ;)

Souvenir shop next to Krisna -  eh no lah, not the reason why I bring people to Krisna kiki :p

Besides shopping, what else is another acceptable Ramadan activity while in Bali?

Menge-SPA of course! For the first week that my mum was here, I kept bringing her to this new Spa place near my house. They've just recently opened so that first week they gave free Spa packages for the 1st 20 customers every day. During the days that my sister was here, they did a 'bring 2 guests get free packages' deal. Talk about excellent timing! So my sister (and my mum of course) went 2 days in a row and had themselves pampered after a hard day of shopping. She did about 2 1/2 hours per session and only paid about RM30 altogether because she had extras on top of the deals like Chocolate Scrub to go with her Spa and Vanilla Milk cream for her Hair Creambath.

After all that hard work, it was then time to break-fast. So as dinner was the only time I got to show off all the yummies that Bali has to offer, we went out for breakfasting on both nights. We took her to Flapjaks on the first night for some good yummy pancakes (ok this one's not Balinese, but we LOVE pancakes and they do THE softest, fluffiest, yummiest pancakes here!) and ice creams.

"Yes u washed my poo-poo but am still not sure if we should share"

"OK lah! This is how much I love you!!"

On the 2nd night, we wanted to take her to a famous local Warung for some local treats like Bakso (meatball soup) and Nasi Uduk Ayam Kalasan (coconut rice & fried chicken) - sort of like Nasi lemak but lighter and tastier. The chicken that comes with it is TO DIE FOR! This little famous place is mentioned in the Lonely Planet, a MUST-GO if you're here. Very cheap too. But of course, it was packed out on that day! So we went to Restoran Renon instead, which is always packed on normal days but pretty quiet on that day. It's a very popular halal Chinese restaurant in Bali. A lot of Muslim tour packages to Bali would include this place as their lunch or dinner stop. It's a huge place with very prompt and excellent service and everything on the menu is extremely tasty.

So in conclusion, if you don't have a lot of time in Bali and you're not fussed about doing the touristy sightseeing stuff, there's only 3 things you have to remember to do - food, Spa and Krisna!

It was a short trip for my sister but Ayisha enjoyed every minute of it.

She's all 'Cik Mah', 'Cik Mah' all the time that she even cried her heart out when we dropped Limah off at the Spa and couldn't wait to go pick her up after. Luckily we're going back for Eid soon, at least I have that to assure her when she asked for Cik Mah again. :)

"See you soon!"