If it wasn’t for Stuart taking me to Balangan beach to catch up over a few beers, I would probably have never found this beautiful, post-card perfect, little beach. It’s a little difficult to get to (if you don’t know the way) but worth it. The Balangan beach is un-crowded and simply gorgeous.. There’s a couple of restaurants that sell basic BBQ dishes and a hut that have cold beer ready.

Tomorrow I’m taking the day off. You know where I’ll be

Last night I visited Kafe Warisan, a very nice Mediterranean/French restaurant here in Bali. It wasn’t planned, at about 9pm I simply asked the missus what she wanted for dinner, she replied Steak, so I quickly had a search online for suggestions and Kafe Warisan had great reviews. Un-showered, I put on a mucky t-shirt and on went my sandles. As we entered the restaurant, we noticed everyone really dressed up as it’s a swanky place… oops! Nevertheless, it ended up being a great meal out

To kick start the meal of, I opted for the onion and goats cheese tart topped with pine nuts. This is very unlike me, as I have a bad habit of ignoring the vegetarian options on restaurant menus. After checking out this excellent onion and goats cheese tart was excellent, I’m defo going to give more vegetarian dishes a chance.

While I was enjoying each bite, I figured out how to make it as it’s dead simple, so I thought I’d share with all those lucky enough to have a kitchen and like to enjoy great food.

I could be wrong as I can’t test this recipe at the mo, but I’d put a wager on it that the recipe goes something like this:

Let some thinly sliced onions break down the natural sugars in a little butter over the stove on low heat for about 40 minutes (like you would when making Onion Soup). When the onions are ready, add these to small puff pastry tarts and top with goats cheese (you could use lot’s of different cheeses here) and put under a hot grill to warm the cheese. Add salad garnishing and roasted pine nuts. If your having a dinner party (these are ideal for this type of celebration as there quick to make), create a pattern on the plate with decent balsamic vinegar along side very small chopped up tomatoes.

If you try this recipe, please take a picture so I can add it here! Thanks.

I’ll leave with a question: Do you give vegetarian food a fair chance when dinning out?

Last week Matt Cutts published a blog post asking his readers for suggestions on a new 30 day challenge, after successfully completing his goal of walking 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. I think a 30 day challenge is a great idea, and could potentially be really rewarding once completed. And let’s be honest, 30 days isn’t that long is it? Just the right amount of time to make a difference, but not to long that we’ll quit.

So, I want to know if you have ever taken a 30 day challenge and if not, why? Tomorrow is the 1st of July, a great time to start a new challenge

My 30 day challenge for July is to lead a healthier lifestyle and to hopefully lose a few kg. My goals are:

- No bread
- No beer
- 1 hour of exercise per day

I enjoy exercise, but sometimes work gets the better of me and I can easily let it slip. This will be the easiest. Beer, wow I love a nice ice cold beer while the sun goes down, but there are other alternatives so this should be do-able. Bread… when the day comes that a waitress puts a bowl of bread on my table while I’m waiting for my dinner to arrive will be torture… but I’m going to give it my all. I will write a follow up in 30 days!

What 30 day challenge are you going to start?

Naturally, this left only one option: to get on the bike and see what the fuss was about. Jimbaran Bay is home to some of the best hotels on the island, but it’s still a very sleepy town. The beach is great, curving around to create a nice bay and the food, well…. it’s hard to explain how good the food was without using sexual references. Put it this way, our seafood feast could not have been better; it was perfect.

The longer I stay in Bali, the deeper my love for the place grows.

It was 5pm and we hadn’t eaten all day, so a BBQ corn on the cob rubbed with salt and butter was a perfect little treat when we arrived at the beach.

The not-so-busy beach.

The beautiful sunset.

The holy grail… Lobster, Red Snapper, Crab and Prawns. Yum!

Saminyak – It’s a love and hate relationship with me. I find the huge amounts of tourists and the many areas of development a pain in the arse. While flipping the coin you are among many, many great restaurants, close to the clubbing scene in Kuta, close to many great beaches, the great Bali Dehli that reminds me of a little Central Chitlom Food Hall in Bangkok and then there are the great shopping opportunities all over town. Maybe it’s just me and I’m really fussy bugger, but Saminyak is not perfect (for me), but its pretty close.

No doubt, Saminyak makes for an ideal holiday destination, but would it make an ideal place to live mid to long term? I’m not sure as I’ve only been in Bali for a week, and I’ve not yet had to opportunity to explore other areas of Bali.

Regardless of what I think, the expat community here is huge; it’s apparent that many people are okay with being among tens of thousands of tourists and can put up with the development everywhere. Tourist visitors to Bali in 2008 exceeded 2 million – A record for Bali.

Out of curiosity and half heartedly thinking I could see myself living in this area, I dedicated a few days looking around to see what my budget could get me accommodation wise. It’s been a interesting few days and has been a great way to meet new people.

Although your requirements and budget will be different to mine, I thought I’d jot down a few notes that will hopefully help those that are considering moving to Saminyak – especially if you already have your heart set on the Saminyak area.

What you’ll need:

First things first, get yourself a local telephone SIM as this makes life a lot easier communicating with agents and home owners.

Get yourself some transport. Motorbikes can be rented for $4 a day and are well worth the freedom it gives you to explore small alleys and small roads that cars could not fit down. With the lovely weather, it makes a great way to explore and get to know more of the area.

Where to find:

Personally, I haven’t had much luck with agents that have shops everywhere you turn in Saminyak. It seems these are more geared towards weekly holiday rentals than mid to long term rentals. Saying that, if you have a huge budget exceeding $5k a month, it may be worth chatting to them.

Get friendly with waiter staff in restaurants and bars and ask if they know of any villas that are up for rent. I have gotten a few leads from them as they seem very enthusiastic to help out. I guess they are looking to get a kick back, which is fair enough. I’m pretty sure these will get a lower commission that an agent would get, so you should gain more bargaining power than going through an agent.

The best places by far to check out villa and apartment rentals are on bulletin message boards in café’s. The ones I have come across are the business center located on the corner of Jl Dhyana  and Jl Raya Seminyak. The Mocha Café located on Jl Raya Seminyak also have a busy board worth checking out.

There is a huge variety of accommodation options which have been posted on scrap pieces of paper by property owners. The property options range from single rooms to 8 bedroom villas. Today I come across a couple that want to rent out their second bedroom in a great 2 bedroom villa with a pool.

The Bali Advertiser, a free classified ads paper that is printed (I think) by weekly is available in some supermarkets, bars and connivance stores. Not only do they have a good property section, the paper is filled with ads from people selling a wide range of items. They are have a web site here.

Rates:

Compared to the west, villa rates here are cheap, but not as cheap as you would think for South East Asia. I guess this is mainly due to the area – Saminyak, as I have read, is certainly one of the most tourist-y areas on the island.

It’s hard for me to comment on property outside of my requirements (As I haven’t been looking at 8 bedroom villas) but as a guide, a pleasant one bedroom villa with a pool, within a 10 minute radius of Saminyak, range from $1,500 to $3,000 per month.

The other day I saw a great beach hut that wasn’t located on the beach, but it really did have that beach hut feel to it (I hope your still following – It’s hard to explain haha) for $500. There was no air-con, and all the furniture was at least 20 years old and worn, but it would have made a great pad if I was sharing it with a buddy planning to just surf for 6 months.

Anyway, hopefully these notes will help

I visited Bali during my first ever trip to Asia - A 2 week holiday away from the corporate world which included a few nights in Singapore, followed by a few nights in Nusa Dua and then onto UBud. I think I only ventured out into the towns a couple of times, opting to stay in the Villa I had hired to re charge my batteries. How things have changed!

This time around I’m venturing out, learning how to surf, visiting Temples and going anywhere my scooter takes me. I’m currently staying in a nice place for a week so I can catch up with work - Then I plan on using the bike to explore what Bali really has to offer.

So far I really like Bali, so much in fact that I spent today house, or should I say Villa, hunting. Although traveling is great, I’m desperate for a place I can call home and set up a little home office so I can continue building up my businesses.

The whole aim of me working online is so that I can open up a business which involves Satay’s… I have had this idea for 4 or so years now and I’m keen to progress as soon as I can sell me web businesses for 7 figures. (That’s the aim anyway!) Here in Bali I am blessed with some of the best satay’s I’ve ever eaten in my life… along with the friendly locals, the laid back way of living and the many great eateries… I can easily see myself spending a year or so here… venturing off to other near by countries when time permits.

I’ll be a bit slow updating the blog for the next few days as I’m not really doing anything other than grinding out work, but once I’m done here I plan to explore a lot more of Bali and will update the blog accordingly.

I decided to chill out in Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days. There’s not much to see or do, in fact I’d go as far as saying it’s one of few cities I have visited that I actually dislike. It’s filthy and very, very smelly. In fact that’s an understatement, it’s fucking disgusting.

The highlight of the trip was going up to the The Petronas Twin Towers connecting bridge and the cool thing is, it’s free! This is the view from up on the bridge:

The China Town Market was cool to walk around and grab some satay’s!

It’s been a while since I last updated this blog… lot’s of events have been going on. First up, while I was in HCMC I got a very nasty fever, which the doctor later confirmed was Dengue Fever.

Having Dengue Fever, as it sounds, was very nasty! It started out just as any fever would; headache, lack of energy, cold/hot shivers and a runny nose. Then I lost my appetite, which really messed me up. I ended up not eating for 7 days, and even the thought of eating anything made my stomach turn. By day 4 of having the fever I was vomiting around 6 times per day and sleeping all the time. I simply had no energy… I remember going to the shop around the corner from the hotel and just couldn’t gather enough energy to put one foot in front of the other. As I said, it was a nasty experience.

I then went to the doctor… I knew I needed help due to the lack of food intake. I first went to a clinic, and the doctor got all excited thinking I had the HDN1 virus. The doctor was weird, it was almost like we wanted me to have the HDN1 virus. Anyway, He transferred me to the Tropical Disease Clinic.

I clearly remember pulling into the Tropical Disease Clinic and thinking there’s no way I was going to get treatment here. The hospital was very old and just looked unhygienic. I then instructed the taxi driver to head to the FV Hospital. What a difference this was… the hospital was of international standard…. It could have been mistaken for a 5 star hotel. I was directed to the emergency department where I was checked over and put on 2 drips, had an x-ray of my chest and had my blood checked against lot’s of different viruses. For the first time in a week, I felt like I was getting taken care of.

Sitting on the bed with the drip inside my arm was heaven… a tear dripped down the side of my face knowing I was going to get better. And the drip worked; later that day I was able to eat half a chocolate chip cookie.

After the doctor confirmed I had Dengue Fever, I had the option to stay in the hospital or return back to the hotel and come back in for a blood test 2 days later. I opted for the later option.

Over the next few days I was able to eat little pieces of food without vomiting; I was started to recover. When I returned to the hospital 2 days later, I was given the all clear.

I just want to thank everyone that sent me a Twitter message, sent me messages on Facebook and thanks to the people that called and emailed me. Special thanks to my Mum… My mum makes a great nurse when I’m sick and not being able to have her with me was a real shitter.

First up, a HUGE thanks to Natalie for letting me know Ratatat would be playing in HCMC this weekend. I’ve been looking forward to the event all week and after some great food and wine, we made our way to the Spanish Pacharan Restaurant and Bar where they would be playing. The event was free so as expected the bar was rammed!! So much in fact, that there were lot’s of people outside on the street.

Before the duo went to the stage, they were standing behind the bar chatting to people which I thought was cool. The visuals that got displayed behind the band when they were playing were excellent, especially considering they were playing in a small bar. And of course, you could tell the guys really did give it their all. It was a great show.

Here is Loud Pipes, one of my fav Ratatat tunes: