Bali Birthday

Geger Beach- Nusa Dua, Bali

Beautiful temple on the cliff

Flowers from our sweet guesthouse hosts

Delicious seafood dinner at local warung

I survived turning 50. Going halfway around the world didn't stop it from happening as I had hoped but we picked a pretty good place to spend the day.
We've been down here on the southern peninsula of Bali for the past few days. Staying at a great guesthouse a few minutes walk to the beach. We haven't done much except sit around on sunbeds looking out at the sea. Well not exactly true- we have walked the beach a little and read a couple of books. We've eaten some pretty good seafood. We have no excuse for being so lazy but it feels nice.
I had a great day- It started with beautiful flowers from Kadek and Made, our guesthouse owners, who have been amazingly sweet. Next we went to the beach . It has been perfect weather here. Clear sunny days but not too hot- Temps in the 80's during the day with a breeze. Evenings are in the 70's. There have been a couple of times in the evening when I have almost felt chilled with the breeze. I'm worried that we've spent way too much time in warm weather and we'll be freezing when we get back to typical Northern Michigan summer weather. After the beach we both got massages. Something we should have done a lot more of throughout this trip. It's so cheap- 60,000 rupiah or about 5 bucks. Kadek made a call for us to her favorite restaurant. A local warung (small family owned restaurant) where she assured us we would get the local price. She drove us there and gave us advice about what to order. They had a cooler filled with super fresh white snapper so we chose one of those plus some mussels and prawns. They were all seasoned and grilled and served with rice, sauces, stir fried morning glory and the requisite cold Bintang (Indonesian beer.) It was the best grilled fish we've had anywhere on this whole trip. The owner was thrilled to serve us. The place is far off the tourist track so they don't get many blondies coming in. The whole meal- about 16 bucks.
Great way to spend the day!!
Today we head to Hong Kong. We'll be there for 5 days then fly back to the states.
We were having a little sticker shock looking for a place to stay in Hong Kong. The cheapest hotel is almost $100/night and (based on reviews) probably would be tiny and not too nice. The most we've paid so far in other places has been about $45 with our average probably being closer to $25-30. We ended up booking a studio apartment on AirBnB. We haven't used that site yet so hopefully it will turn out OK. It looks like a decent place in an interesting neighborhood and it will be nice to have a kitchenette. Looking forward to eating lots of great street food.