Happy Birthday Colleen.

It is still the 7th here on the west coast of Canada.

Hope you had a wonderful day.

~Ann

Happy Birthday Colleen! I hope someone else makes you a very special treat!
Ellen

Thanks everyone! I had the best birthday ever, with a big trip around the countryside in Bali looking at some really cool stuff, and then DD called to say her BF proposed!!!! Hard to top that :-) No cake but we had some cake from our anniversary dinner two nights before (our 30th, hard to believe) and dinner at this bustling street market with dozens of stalls selling exotic Balinese food :-)
And happy birthday to Ashley too! Hard to believe she is now a married lady when we've known her since high school :-)

This post was edited by colleenoz on Sat, Jun 8, 13 at 1:12

Happy Birthday, Colleen! Sounds like you celebrated it in a fun way.

jude

Belated Happy Birthday, Colleen and congrats on your daughter's engagement. Nice.

Bali, as in Indonesia? That sounds so exotic. Can you just get in a car and drive to Bali? I had to look on a map to see where it is. If I said that I spent the day in Canada, would that sound exotic to you? The world is a funny place.

Is it yesterday or tomorrow in Oz?

Another belated happy birthday to you, Colleen. When my brother lived in Australia, I had to remember to send him greetings the day before his birthday, as he was more than half a day ahead of us.

I'm glad you had such a wonderful day, and happy anniversary to you and your dh, also!

Sally

Happy Birthday Colleen!
Sounds like you really did have a HAPPY and diverse birthday. Good for you.

Cathy

No Pam, we have to fly as Bali is an island and so is Australia. It's about 3 1/2 hours' flight from Perth which makes it a popular tourist destination- it takes about the same time to fly to Melbourne and even longer to Sydney, and both are a _lot_ more expensive than Bali.

Happy belated birthday, sounds like you had a great one!

Good to hear you had a nice Birthday!

: )
lyra

Happy belated birthday!

Happy (belated) Birthday Colleen....and congratulations!

Sounds like you had a great time in Bali - did you do any shopping? It also sounds like a perfect birthday, with the engagement and all.

I would really like to visit Bali, and you're lucky to get so close. It's a five hour flight to Maui from here, but less than three hours to nice beaches in Mexico, although I'm afraid to travel very much in Mexico any more like I used to.

What kind of exotic Balinese food did you have? Do they eat scorpions there? I've seen that on the travel channel, but I can't remember what country they were in.

Lars

Didn't do a lot of shopping, Lars, we're more into looking at historical and cultural stuff. One of the things we saw was a 2,300 year old bronze drum called the "Moon of Pejang" which is the largest ever cast in the world. When you consider the effort it would have required given the technology of the day it rates with the Pyramids IMO. We also saw a relief carved into the living rock about 25metres long, which was created in the 13th century. What an effort that would have required as well.

On the eating side we had a lot of babi guling (roast suckling pig), nasi goreng (fried rice), nasi campur (like fried rice with assorted toppings) and sates of chicken, pork, beef and goat.

For our anniversary dinner the cook at the villa we were staying at pushed the boat out with some delicious crisp spring rolls with a homemade dipping sauce, followed by a whole fish with a Balinese salsa which involved among other ingredients chillies and lemongrass, a seafood curry with prawns, squid and fish, some really outstanding chicken sates with homemade peanut dipping sauce, and some meltingly tender pork spare ribs, also with homemade sauce.

Some of our other meals were eaten at street stalls which would make the FDA's hair curl, but the food was all piping hot and the stalls clean, and we didn't suffer any consequences beyond what you might after a night of really hot chillies ;-) One place we got bowls of noodles in chicken and vege soup for $1, and ten little chicken sates cooked over a charcoal grill while we watched for 50c.

I think you'd love Bali, Lars, the fabrics would make your eyes light up for sure :-)

Colleen, the largest casting I have ever seen is The Korean Friendship Bell near the Los Angeles Harbor. Was the drum you saw a similar size? Of course this bell is new, but in ancient times, there were some amazing castings, particularly the Colossus of Rhodes, which I think was bigger than the Statue of Liberty, which I have seen, and so maybe that is the largest casting I have seen. Anyway, you said this was the largest cast drum, and I do not remember seeing many cast drums.

Your meals sound delightful, and I think I would have enjoyed them. I really like fresh Indonesian and Thai food, which is one of the reasons I make it myself and have lemongrass in my yard, not to mention the hot chilies.

I know I would love Bali - I have bought books on it, and I especially like all the art - the sculptures, ceremonial masks, textiles, architcture, etc. I have a few Indonesian pieces, including an antique mask in my livingroom. I used to have a lot of shirts made in Indonesia that I bought in the early 1990s. You must have seen many beautiful flowers as well.

Lars

The Moon of Pejeng is about half the size of the bell, being about six feet high with a tympanum about five feet across. How they got it up in the tower that houses is is another mystery to me :-)
We also saw a bunch of stone sarcophagi which have been unearthed around the region, ranging in size from about the size and shape of a Weber barbecue to a pair of bathtubs, one upended over the other. The small ones intrigued me as they can't have held an adult (unless a dwarf), and must have taken a reasonable amount of time to create, so who would start a stone coffin to be ready for a child's burial?

Colleen, it sounds like you had an amazing time and the food sounds delicious, if you could tone down those hot chilies just a bit for me, LOL.

Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary and Happy Engagement to your daughter. So much to celebrate, you might need another trip to Bali!

Annie