Sanur

The last day of the week in Bali we spent in Sanur. A modern tourist place with many big and fancy hotels. We were a bit disappointed when we arrived here from the peaceful atmosphere in Amed. However the beach is very beautiful, so it is easy to understand why so many tourists end up here.

The women in pink t-shirts are preparing small boxes made of banana leaves for a big upcoming festival.

We ran into this Vespa in one of the many shops in Sanur. Me and Lasse considered both one and two times whether or not it was reasonable importing it to China. It was a hard decision leaving it in Bali :)

Absolut Petrol

When you need to fill up the tank of your motorbike, just stop and get some Absolut Petrol. The latest release in the "Absolut" family.

Fishing and snorkeling

One day we decided to go fishing with a fisherman, Tobi, living in Amed. We had to get up very early, 5 am we should be on the beach ready to set out. It was totally dark when we took the small fishing boat and headed for the deep sea. I must admit it felt a little bit scary since we couldn't see many meters in front of us in the dark, but very exiting.
After a while we run into a small shoal of mackerel and we succeeded in catching some fishes :)

When dawn came we could see how many other fishing boats that were out there, that we didn't manage to see in the dark. We also had a nice view of one of the big vulcanos in Bali. It is active but hasn't had an eruption for many years now.
On the way back to shore we passed close to some dolphins. Great to see! The dolphins are not appreciated by the Balinese fishermen since they "steal" a lot of their catch. It was still a very nice moment for me and Lars :)

When we had done some fishing and didn't succeed in catching any more fishes, it was time to go snorkeling. Tobi took us to a Japanese shipwreck, which now is covered in many different kind of corals. A lot of different species of coral fishes were possible to see. It almost felt like we were in the movie "Finding Nemo". To sum up, a very nice snorkeling spot! :)

For lunch Tobi arranged so we could eat the mackerel we caught, to lunch in a local restaurant. Great taste! The restaurant is owned by Birth, a nice and kind man, that is suffering economical problems due to that not so many tourists currently come to Amed. We helped him out a little by eating in his restaurant many times. The fish satay was delicious :)

Relaxing

During the week we managed to relax a lot. Sleep, read books and get some Balinese massage. Really nice to have vacation! Should have it more often ;)

Colours of nature - beautiful Bali

All these pictures Karin took in the garden of the hotel - amazing!
What a nature!

Fishing village Amed

Amed is a small fishing village on the eastern coast of Bali. Almost all people living in Amed are working as fishermen. The boats they use are really small and cute.


The beach is covered with a lot of fishing boats. Some parts of it is covered by black sand, due to the nearby volcano.
The view from the hotel restaurant was nice :) very close to the ocean!


During our time in Amed it rained quite a lot during the afternoons. It was not a problem to us since it kept down the temperature and it was nice lying on the porch reading a book and listening to the rain.

Enough of Kuta - further on to Amed

After two nights in Kuta, it was time to head away from the "Hello lady - looka looka!" So we decided to go to Amed, which showed to be a really quiet place.

After about 3 hours car ride (good driver for a change in Asia) we came to Amed, hungry and tired.... And, by just a coincidence, we found a place called "Coral View Villas". And it prooved to be a really nice place!

Here's our small cottage were we had a really special bath room....
about 25% of the bathroom had no roof. So when it was raining you could take a shower both in the rain fall as well as in the shower water... Innovative...

The pool was also really nice in the middle of a lot of palm trees and other plants

Bali breakfast - yes, red face as company

 

I was tired and, yes, red I can agree...
Pinapple pancake, orange juice and Bali coffe were on the menu.
We stayed at a place called AP-Inn. Seems to be a place where a LOT of Swedish people land for some party as well as relaxing in Kuta.
We had a wonderful 'garden' - in the background and it was still hard to realize that we 24 hours ago were in Beijing.

Sunset in Kuta

Kuta beach itself might not be the most beautiful beach in Bali - but the sunset is surely something to remember!
I had already managed to get somewhat of a 'red-face' after the first day - so I were to stay away from the sun during the rest of the vacation. 

Varmt - som in i &(¤%=#% !!!

Veckan innan Bali-resan pratade vi med Karins mamma och kollade ivrigt på internet angående vädret på Bali. Receptionisten på AP Inn (där vi bor) sa nämligen att det var regnsäsong och det är det ju säkert också.

Men - i alla fall - jag håller på att smälta bort. Karin e helt däckad av värmen... Hmm, vi kanske skall åka till Alperna istället för värmen...

Hursomhelst - vädret är fantastikt, varmt, svagt fläktande och kroppen stortrivs i ett klimat som inte innebär 6% luftfuktighet (Beijing har det)...

Snart är vi nog återställda och har vant oss vid värmen - men för tillfället är det ganska varmt... :D Skönt!

Mellanlandning i Singapore...

Det tog väl Karin cirka 10 minuter att inse att jag med en gång skulle parkeras bland gratis öl och nötter för att hon skulle kunna kolla all shoppingen på flygplatsen...

Nu har jag tröttnat på detta och skall leta upp henne ...
Planet går 19:00 - så det e en stund kvar.

SQ803 - The sun always shine in Business class

A couple of early birds are drinking champange in business class in Singapore Airlines Boeing 777. Finally on the way to Bali and really a beautiful morning! What a shame to leave Beijing when the sun is shining. But +-0°C is easy to leave when you know you are going to +30°C.
 

Preparing for take off...

It's always good with some coffee and juice before flying. It's even better when it's free :)
We should fly business class more often...

Celebrating the upcoming Chinese New Year

In a conference room in the office we celebrated the upcoming New Year by eating take out lunch and drinking Budweiser. An alternative way of celebrating! :)

Impatient?

Close to our home there is a hospital that has this sign - seems to be a hospital for women having babies - sooon :-)

Close to what I would guess is the "Entrance" this sign is .... funny...

Close to what I would guess is the "Exit" this sign is .... funny...


So - I wonder if there is an "Impatient"-sign somewhere in there as well?
:-P

Lunch - 13 kuai

To eat really good noodles with a beer for 13 RMB, especially after walking 10000 steps :)

And leaving for Bali tomorrow - a saturday can't be better than that :)

Beautiful Beijing

Everywhere there is 'things' to celebrate the new year, the year of the ox.

3rd ring road...

Not so busy today, but at a normal day, in the late afternoon, it is usually clogged.

Happy New Year - Performance at work

We had a performance at work and me and Christian sang "Happy New Year" in both English and Chinese. Some people didn't understand what we were singing - but we got applause anyway :-)

Saturday morning brunch

We started the weekend by having brunch at the cafe in our building. Indeed a very nice way to start the weekend! They serve fresh and good sandwiches and the coffee is just great! Almost as good as the one Lasse makes at home ;)

Giganto-rattmuff

Sara o jag gick förbi en bil med en gigantisk rattmuff på lunchen. Föraren borde definitivt vara varm om fingrarna när denne är ute o kör :)

Flat ducks

At Carrefour it is possible to buy whole flat ducks. Definitely a different way of buying food compared to food stores in Sweden! Interesting!

Filip in Beijing

Filip is on business trip in Beijing for one week. Of course we wanted to meet him! He came and inspected our apartment and then we went out to have dinner together.

Lisa Ono concert

Jenny bought two tickets to the concert with the Japanese singer Lisa Ono and asked me to join. I had never heard her sing before, but I was definitely positively surprised. A great singer! The music is mainly Bossa Nova and she sang in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English, Chinese and Japanese! Impressive!

Thank you Jenny for bringing me!

Lamps lamps lamps

Today we went to Beijing's lamp market. A few nice lamps, a lot of ugly ones and a loooot of crystal!

Flee market

This Saturday we went out to look at Christian and Victoria's new huge house. It was very nice!
After drinking a cup of coffee it was time to visit a flee market, where we could find a lot of different things. How about buying two Dala hästar in Beijing?

We bought quite a lot of things - four big baskets, one chest of drawers and some flowers. This time we skipped the Dala horses, next time we might buy them ;o)

Most over loaded truck...

On the way out to Christian we saw this quite over loaded truck with plastic bottles

English translations

Today when me and Lasse went for a long walk through the city we stopped to have lunch in a small restaurant. The menu they had was quite funny -- a lot of strange translations, e.g. "the onion pepper explodes the river prawn".

And how about "Speculation wood to the knots"?! I wonder what kind of food that is.

or "Explodes the stomach"?! :) Not always a good idea to translate word by word from Chinese into English.

Another "good" translation in the menu was "does the pot to rip the chicken" :) It might be a good idea to hire someone in the restaurant that has a little bit of knowledge of English.

Juice party

We decided to have a juice party to use our juice machine. Lasse went to Jinkelong (similar to Swedish Ica) and bought a lot of fruit - more than 16 kg! We had to do quite a lot of peeling but when done it was just to put the fruit in the machine and out came newly squeezed juice. Very delicious! Alina, Henrik, Sara and Lasse were responsible for peeling fruit.

Alina is supporting Lasse during the juice making :)
Per and Henrik is focusing more on the espresso making.


This is the result! Doesn't look like that much juice, but it was. Hmm, which one was the favorite? I must say that the pineapple and orange juice was very good, but also the carrot and apple were nice. I think it is a good idea to mix them all, even though the color doesn't turn out so nice - it's just to close your eyes and enjoy ;)

Drinking home made juice together with Indian food. Not so bad actually!

Another day at the kitchen market

Just a week after the last visit we returned to the kitchen market.
Also today we were short of time, so it seems like we have to go back there yet another time :)
The store in the picture is selling clothes for restaurant waitresses - many many different choices.



Today Lasse and Per were focusing on the stores selling coffee, while Sara and Karin were very concearned about all the poor animals being sold at the market. It was very close to Sara buying an aquarium with fishes and Karin a couple of mice. Soo cute and small mini mice and they have to be outside in the cold cold weather all day :( but we cannot rescue all the poor animals in the market and we don't want to support the cruel and illegal trade of animals.