Life In Amed

Blog #6: Yesterday we arrived in Amed after a four hour bus ride through picturesque fields, past grand temples and towns of one size or another eventually along a winding coastal road stopping at our hotel: Life In Amed Cottages, located on a black sand fishing village beach. The grounds are beautiful with two story cottages and a pool. The owner who lives in Ubud happened to be staying here and we had a nice afternoon tea and chat about life in Bali. Coincidentally, she also lives in San Francisco and owns a gift shop in the Haight.  What are the odds?
We had visited Amed 17 years ago and it was very quiet then and although more developed now is still a quiet set of fishing villages. The main tourist draw seems to be diving with many dive shops to choose from. Amed is not really a town like Ubud, it is much smaller and really just hotels and restaurants and the occasional grocery/gas by the liter stand on either side of the narrow road along the northeast coast of Bali.

  Although our hotel has a nice restaurant it turned out that the manager the restaurant we had heard about was staying at our hotel and told us that tonight there would be a live Reggae band. He was leaving for the restaurant and said he would lead us to it. So we followed/chased his van on our scooter flying over the winding, pot-holed and unlit coastal road passing many other inviting restaurants for about five miles and finally stopped at "Pashta". It looked new, even had parking! The layout was open with a high thatched roof and a band area on one side and Japanese style low tables and cushions in booths surrounding it. The menu was typical including tomato soup and a mix of fish, chicken and "Fork" (pork), but no pastas or pizza. Of course I ordered the tomato soup (I am starting a mental catalog of all variations of this soup and there are many from wonderful types including creamy versions to a more of a minced tomato, onions, garlic and herbs, usually all delicious) and we both ordered the grilled chicken in orange sauce. When our main course finally arrived it was coated in a mess of some kind of thick sauce and chopped onions and garlic. I scrapped the goop off to try and find the meat and concluded that this chicken appeared to have died of starvation. It was not a boneless breast as I had imagined, but back and leg or something. I've seen scraps left by street dogs with more meat on them. So I ate the rice. Lily's dinner was the same. We called this the Malaysian Diet Plan Balinese Style after the un-eatable food we were constantly served and could not eat when we were in Malaysia.  We paid our bill and left.
The live Reggae Band? They were coming from Denpasar by motor bikes and unfortunately there was an accident and a band member was hurt so we got a local pick up band to fill in. They attempted to play 70's folk and Bob Marley Reggae tunes. They tried, but were as bad at music as the chef was at cooking.
  However the evening was not over. What could be more romantic than riding together on a motor scooter on a winding, deserted  coastal road through the soft warm evening air under a moonless, star-lite night accompanied by the sound of the surf beside us? It is just another evening in Bali.