Bacon cheeseburger in paradise

I've had good food before, food that made me want to eat until I passed out. But I have never tasted anything as fabulous as the bacon cheeseburger I ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Bali last week. Most Balinese people practice a happy-go-lucky version of Hinduism, and there are very few Muslims. Therefore, restaurants offer pork as a regular menu items. All restaurants in Java, no matter how westernized, offer pork alternatives, such as beef bacon. No biggie-I respect that completely. But if I'm being honest, I must admit that beef bacon tastes exactly like I imagine toenails would, were I to start eating toenails. The beef here also tastes different. Not bad, for the most part, but there are few restaurants where ordering a burger or steak is a good idea. To make an increasingly long story short, the Hard Rock Cafe's burger was made of genuine USDA top-grade ground beef, actual real cheddar cheese, real KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce and BACON. REAL ACTUAL BACON. I took my first bite and seriously got tears in my eyes. I'm misting over just thinking about it (no, not really). It's just funny, creature comforts we take for granted or little things we don't even realize we'll miss.

Speaking of things we miss, little things, I cried for approximately half an hour yesterday because I saw an ad on msn.com for cute pet Halloween costumes at Target. Then I started thinking about one little thing-a little fuzzy dog I miss. Then I started thinking about how last Halloween Travis and I decorated our cute little house and had trick-or-treaters, and how I took pictures of cute kids in costume for the paper, of how we went to a pumpkin patch with Nate and Allison and Ethan and then carved pumpkins and how Ethan was a karate kid for Halloween and how oh! the ad was for Target! I miss Target, I want to shop there, there are Targets at home and my dog is at home and........cue the tears. Hooray, homesick.

Anyway, before I start the tears all over again, a positive thing! We spent a week in Bali. It was GORGEOUS. We flew in on a Saturday and spent Saturday night in a nice hotel in Kuta, the main touristy part of Bali. Kuta boasts a jillion hotels (including one INCREDIBLE Hard Rock Hotel), an apparently excellent surfing beach and about 14 skillion shops where you get to bargain for the best price and take home great stuff! Sunday we hired a car and drove to Amed, a sleepy little resort village on the north-eastern part of Bali. In Amed Travis and I stayed in a two-story beachfront villa at this resort for three nights. The villas aren't fancy-they consist of beds and bedside tables and porch and balcony furniture and nice bathrooms and air conditioning, but they're nice and relaxing. The resort had a nice pool and was right on the beach. The beach was very calm (ocean waves are a force to be reckoned with!) and local fishermen have their boats there. The boats are these cool wooden outrigger canoes with little trolling motors and sails. The fishermen are all really nice and speak English, and for about $20 will rent you snorkeling gear and take you out to snorkel near the wreck of a WWII Japanese boat. It was fabulously relaxing, and the snorkeling was beautiful. We even made some friends-the Balinese are very friendly and welcoming, especially the people in Amed. We struck up several conversations with fishermen and their wives, most of whom worked as masseuses at various resorts up and down the beach. We were invited to a birthday celebration for a three-month old boy. Frankie, the baby's dad, explained that three months is a significant birthday for Hindu baby boys. He and his wife invited us and then later invited us to see some Balinese dancing. Good times.

We also took a day trip from Amed to see Pura Lempuyang, a huge Hindu temple built into a mountain in Bali. From the top of many many steps, we had a breathtaking view of Gunung Agung (gunung means mountain), a BIG volcano that erupted in 1963 and still looks just like a big volcano should-complete with some smoke!

Wednesday we drove back to Amed and stayed at our first hotel again for three nights. We did a TON of shopping (and got better deals once the shopkeepers found out we weren't really tourists and we were actually temporary Indonesian residents). So much, in fact, that we had to buy a big "Bali Bag," a huge tropical print duffel bag, to take our loot home. We had a great time relaxing, saw some gorgeous Balinese oceanside sunsets (and even a sunrise in Amed) and just enjoyed ourselves.

Now it's back to real life, though it's only two months and one week from now that we'll be landing in the Omaha airport for almost three weeks at home. Definitely looking forward to that-even more than Bali. :)