Frowns With Rice

Early morning view from our bungalow on the beach.

Amed, April 27 – May 5

After Ubud, we spent eight days on the beach in Amed on the northeastern coast of Bali. Other than Mitch’s battle with a meter-long, crazed, female triggerfish near the wreck of the USS Liberty, it was a very quiet week. That was perfect. We enjoyed the chance to explore a small village and hang out on the beach one more time before starting a whirlwind tour of China.

Emma walks on the volcanic black sand in front of our hotel on her way to lunch.

Most of the people in Amed make their living fishing. Every family has an outrigger sailboat outfitted with a motor. Their white boats rim the shore of every bay along this coast. During the day, the resourceful fishermen take advantage of the growing tourism by giving tourists rides down to the japanese shipwreck for snorkeling or taking them out for a sail. They even take tourists fishing.

Many of the restaurants or warungs serve freshly caught fish. We got to know the owners of one place that just opened a month ago. Wayan is a fisherman and spends every morning out on his boat. One day we ran into him and asked him how fishing went that day. He said he caught one and a half barracuda. Before we could wonder to ourselves how one could possibly catch one and a half fish, he explained. He put out a line with hooks to catch mackerel. After the mackerel hooked themselves, along come the barracuda and swallowed them whole. That day, he had two barracuda on his line as well as some mackerel. Then, a shark came along and ate half of one of the barracuda. Luckily, Wayan thought this was a very funny story.

We ate freshly caught barracuda several times at Wayan’s warung or restaurant. It was some of the tastiest fish I have ever had. Perhaps because it was so fresh. Wayan’s wife, Ketut, is a self-taught cook. She learned all of her recipes from a book according to Wayan.

Many of the people in Bali and Amed speak english which makes travel here very easy. They learn some english in school but most people learn on their own speaking with tourists. This means that we can speak with locals and hear some of their stories. The Balinese are very open and friendly.

Children on their way to school.

Often, however, the many signs and menus in english are misspelled or grammatically incorrect. This is a great lesson in grammar and spelling for Bjorn and Emma. We have a great time discovering errors on menus as we wait to order our food. This is true everywhere in the world. Granted, if I had to write a menu in Indonesian or Balinese, I would fail miserably. And we appreciate so much the effort to make all the menus readable to tourists. But, we were surprised to find such items as frowns with rice, toast (screambled, builled, and fried), quackamolie, fitacinni and, my favorite, chicken with sweat and source.

Other than eating, we spent our time swimming and snorkeling on the fabulous reef in front of our hotel. One day, we went down to explore a japanese shipwreck. It turned out to be very small but the reef surrounding it was fantastic. We spent the morning there. Another day, Mitch and I dove the wreck of the USS Liberty. It was beached in the 1940s after being torpedoed by a japanese submarine. An earthquake in the 1960s shifted it from the beach to underwater.

It is quite large and now is covered with coral and has many interesting fish swarming around it. One of them, a very large nesting triggerfish decided Mitch was too close. She charged at top speed from 30 feet away straight at Mitch’s unprotected legs. Triggerfish have very sharp teeth made for eating coral. She dodged at the last minute and returned to her distant nest only to make several more charges. Mitch swam backwards so he could fend off the triggerfish with his fins. But she never got close enough to bite, always turning at the last minute.

View of mountains from the bridge over the river near our hotel.

The rest of the week, we simply relaxed and recharged. We read, slept and reorganized our packs for the final two weeks of overseas travel. The equatorial heat and humidity got us up early to enjoy the cooler hours just before and after sunrise. Then we retreated to the pool, beach or air conditioned room for the mid day heat. We had several days of rain and clouds which kept the high temperatures at bay.
The day we left, we were ready for the next adventure. The kids in particular look forward to our long flights so they can watch movies. The flight to Hong Kong would be four hours. Little did we know that it would be far more of an adventure than we thought. But I’ll let someone else write about that.
-Margit