November 10: Bali - Day 5 in the P.M.

This afternoon Charlotte arranged for our guide from Saturday, Putu, to take us over to the Pura Luhur Ulu Watu temple for sunset and then dinner on Jimbaran beach. As we were driving to the temple Charlotte looked out the window, saw a rooster and said, "Look at that beautiful cock!" Needless to say, I jumped all over that comment. I think she has been spending too much time with Stacy lately. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The temple is situated at the top of a huge cliff and it has been there since the 11th century. 

At the temple site there are also a lot of monkeys. The monkeys in the monkey forest were well behaved compared to these monkeys. Luckily we had been warned because they will try and take anything that isn't attached to your body, and even if it is attached they may still try and take it. While we were there one lady had her sunglasses taken from her as we were walking by and another guy was getting his picture taken when a monkey tried to take his camera case from him. Putu said that after the monkeys take something they won't give the item back until they are given food.

Unfortunately the sky was somewhat cloudy so we weren't able to see a perfect sunset, but it was still a stunning site to be seen and I was glad we visited the temple.

After the temple Putu drove us to a restaurant in Jimbaran called Cafe Jukung and dropped us off for dinner. In the entrance courtyard of the restaurant they had a big pit with smoldering charcoal that I assume was coconut husk, since that seems to be the fuel of choice for cooking fires here.

I ended up ordering a red snapper, Mom ordered a grouper, Stacy ordered crab, Charlotte ordered a side of fried chicken, and Dad just got a side of stir fried noodles. Mom, Stacy and I got to go out to the front and pick out exactly which fish we wanted for dinner and then they cleaned and scaled it and threw it on the grill for us.

Before they brought the fish out to us they brushed on a mild tomatoey sambal to season it. I think it was probably one of the top three snappers I've eaten in my life, and off the top of my head I can't think of one that was better. It was super moist with crispy skin that had a hint of the smoky char flavor. The grouper that Mom had was pretty good, but the texture of the fish itself was not quite as good. It seemed to be a little bit mushy once you started to chew it, but the flavor was still good.

When we were done with dinner we got a ride back to the hotel and as we walked into the lobby Uncle Vic and Uncle Allen were there checking into their room, glad to see that they got here safely. Thus ends our excursion to Bali and hopefully the dive trip will be just as fun!!