Becoming satay (2 May 2010)

Now I know I am in a Hindu area, but I haven’t got mixed up with India and widows becoming suttee, this is more of a shaggy dog story.... Here at the villas, there used to be a guard dog – he’s mentioned in the online reviews and also in the bumph they leave in your room. I hadn’t seen him, so today I asked about him. Yes, apparently he was here, but in his life he made two big mistakes. The first was taking a bite out of one of the guests, not good. The second was that he used to eat up all the scraps of the guest food, so was the fattest and best fed dog around – every other dog you see here is Supermodel status with ribs clearly defined. But that was his undoing, after the bite incident he was taken back to the village and soon after disappeared – the word on the street is that as he had so much meat on him he became Satay.....

Villa -age life (22 April 2010)

So it’s goodbye to Ubud as I travel south towards the coast to Canggu, a small Balinese village, to a villa at Tamu Seseh, near Tanah Lot on the South West Coast. And the good news is the sun has reappeared. For the last two days in Ubud it has been very wet, with rain all day, and actually chilly (well chilly

It was a nice drive of about an hour through yet more rice fields at various stages of development, and some fields turned over to peanuts. I understand that often they do three rice crops, followed by a peanut crop before going back to rice – suppose it’s needed for all that satay!

I arrive at the villa and it’s fab – nice aircon bedroom, living pavilion, decent size private pool and a two storey “bale”, like a little wooden two storey terrace with day beds and chairs.

There are four villas in the complex, two 1 beds, 1 2 bed and 1 3 bed. At the moment, I am the only person here, but from Monday there are people in the other villas most nights. It’s not one of the ultra modern minimalist ones you see here such a lot, it was apparently designed based on a Balinese family compound and in keeping with the village. I am still not too sure about the open air bathroom – you have to time your shower to avoid mozzie time. It’s in a village called Seseh. It’s about 200 metres from a beach, but not a resort type one. It’s black sand with surf type waves and more a home to fishermen than sun worshippers. The village itself is tiny – one street of Balinese compounds, the usual temple and village meeting place and one rather scruffy little shop, with chickens everywhere and rice laid out to dry in the sun.

 The shop had water but everything else was crawling in ants so at least I wasn’t tempted by the chocolate.... The nearest resort area is Seminyak a newer development since I was last here and the most fashionable one. I’ll go in and have a look one day. But in the meantime I will relax into my villa, take a dip in the pool and be waited on by the staff of eight.... In this luxury and privacy, I feel a bit like a footballer’s wife, (without the footballer of course), but do you think if I kiss the frog that was resident in my open air bath this morning, it may turn into a prince?