Sun, Sand and Sea in Seminyak

Our villa Mutiara Bali was located in the Seminyak area, and that’s where we ended up spending most of our time. Walking around the area, it’s basically built for tourists, all you see in the area are villa properties, spas, restaurants and boutiques. The main road where most of the action takes place is along Jalan Ayu Kaya, where most of the restaurants and boutiques are located.

Warung Murah

Naturally the first thing we do once we settled into our villa was to go seek out some local food. Bypassing all the higher class looking establishments, we opt for the nondescript Warung Murah. Cheap decent Indonesian food – the Ayam Betutu was pretty good. There’s a nice in-depth review for Warung Murah on Travelfish here.

Seminyak Beach

Seminyak beach is off Jalan Petitenget and you’ll spot it easily because of the whole horde of people in the car park. It’s like a serious market place in the carpark alone, with lots of food carts and people peddling things. And after you push past all that and get to the beach… let’s just say the Balinese really love the beach. There’s no sunbathing on this part of the beach, but the Balinese are more than happy to jump into the surf, jeans and all!

Potatohead

We walked down a fair bit until we hit Potato Head, and it was a hip happening beach club – we kinda bypassed the front entrance, but somehow managed to snag awesome seats facing the sunset and were rewarded with an awesomely pink sky. The prices aren’t cheap by Indonesian standards, costing close to Singapore establishment prices instead.

But the service at Potato Head is top notch – when we were leaving the beach club later that night and wanted to walk to the nearby W hotel to check out the place, the manager not only directed us to a faster route by the beach, but got a security guard to escort us along the unlit beach with a torch and made sure we got there safe. Kudos to the operations manager Jeffrey!

Nirvana Restaurant and Spa

On our last night out, we wandered along the Jalan Kayu Aya stretch and found Nirvana… well the Nirvana Restaurant and Spa at least – it serves Western food on the first level, but inside there’s a staircase that leads up to the spa on the 2nd level. It has just 6 staff though, so you have to try your luck elsewhere if it’s full. We got a manicure and pedicure with nail polish done each for 170,000 IDR, pretty decent overall!

Khaima

We also had dinner at Khaima, a fusion restaurant that served a mix of Middle Eastern, Indonesian and Chinese food. Decent, the best part was probably the belly dancer who came in and really shook that body, I mean… those were scary undulations happening!

Here’s a map with the various places we visited, look out for more Bali posts coming up!

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