From rock star burger in Bali to budget pasta in Auckland

It's funny how one minute you sit in an air conditioned Hard Rock Cafe in Kuta, Bali eating a legendary vegan burger with a million degrees outside and the next minute you're suddenly in the fresh aired city of Auckland New Zealand, excited about the fact that you've find a cheap falafel to eat (that cost about the same as a fancy dinner from the place you just left)

Anywho, the trip went well and Auckland is amazing! It's a big city, but not that many people in the city center that you expect from a big city like this. So lovely! 

We arrived in the afternoon after a night flight with an one hours stopover in Sydney. Since then we've explored the city, including Freeman's Bay and the Harbour and we've started the true backpacker lifestyle when we bought the cheapest pasta and curry sauce we could find in the supermarket that we cooked in our tiny room at Princeton Apartments. Gotta love it, especially since we live across the street from a really cheap sushi place..

I'm so excited to be here and soon we're heading to Rotoura. Let the adventures of Kiwi Land begin!

The vegan mission in Seminyak: finding vegan restaurant Banana Leaf and yummie desserts at Bali Berries

After having our morning coffee at this little cafe deli close to our hotel, we decided for once and for all that it was time to find that all vegan Thai restaurant we'd seen advertised when we first arrived to Seminyak. 

Little did we know that the map we had was just the worst. 2 1/2 hours later we were hungry, tired, dizzy and I was about to lose hope of ever finding this vegan eatery. So with the smallest amount of patience left, we just jumped into a tixi and finally we reached our destination.

Once in the airconed clean little restaurant we could breath again and when we had our food, the entire walk suddenly seemed worth it.

It took us so long to decide what we wanted from their amazing menu. This really feels like Vegegården in Malmö (minus the big buffet they serve there) with food options like vegan shrimp, calamari, beef steak jerky, soy chicken, different tofu-, rice-, and noodle dishes. 

Yes, the list is so long but the main thing is that everything is vegan! 

We shared the soy chicken satay with peanut butter sauce to start with and were so amazed by the taste. It's actually a bit scary how meaty the texture is. Some vegans don't like when food is too close to taste like animals, which I completely understand. But for me, as I didn't stop to eat meat because I didn't like it, but for ethical reasons, it's nice to be able to enjoy something that is close(ish) to the taste of meat, and at the same time knowing that no animal suffering is involved in it.

Speaking of vegan food that taste like meat, the shrimps in my soup that I ordered looked exactly like it could've been real once. But the waitress assured me that they were of course fake. They look and taste exactly as the once I've had before in Malmö, so yummie!

It's so amazing how much different shapes and forms of food that you can do with the beloved soy bean.

The only thing bad about Banana Leaf is the food choma afterwards. The portions are big and it's too good to not eat it all up..

We still managed to get up after a while and walk next door to the frozen yoghurt place; Bali Berries.

They might not have vegan yoghurt, but they do have vegan cookies and cupcakes (!!!!), unfortunately my food choma stopped me from getting one but I still treated myself with a refreshing smoothie.

I chose the Energy Booster, to make myself prepared for what was gonna be an even longer walk back than the one we had on the way here. I think all of the smoothies were vegan, if you just ask them to not put honey in it. 

Mine was made with raw cacao from Ubud, peanut butter and almond milk and it was so chocolaty and delicious!

When we started our walk back we must've walked in the complete wrong direction, because all of the sudden we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere with rice fields surrounding us and no other tourists anywhere to be seen (and remember, tourists are everywhere in Seminyak otherwise, at least that's what we thought..)

So once again a taxi driver had to come for our rescue, and we promised ourselves to not walk another meter during the rest of the evening.

Our great walks in Seminyak-Legian-Kuta

With crappy internet connection I've been a crappy blogger. But here it goes. 

The recent Seminyak days I've eaten the local street food so many times that I've lost count by now. I absolutely love it! It's funny how the cheapest food has been the tastiest, considering the tempeh, tofu and veggies are amazing and available almost everywhere in these little warungs along the streets.

The best thing is that whatever time of the day anyone of these places are opened, which means we've had it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and as a late night snack on our way back to the hotel.

The other day we walked along the Main Street for ages and found ourselves ending up in Kuta, which is much more busy than Seminyak. We made some much needed shopping for new shoes (my shoes were barely usable anymore, and Kuta is a good place for doing some shopping bargains, lucky me!), shorts and a lot of DVDs for future use.

Along the way of our shopping adventures we stopped for a refreshing banana juice break. Man, I'm gonna miss all these amazing freshly squeezed fruit juices around here! 

We also saw the memorial monument from the terrible bombing attack in 2002 when a lot of people lost their lives. 

After a walk like that we were starving and found the Falafel House in Kuta, where the whole menu is just different dishes with falafel (which makes them win the falafel competition against Happy Falafel where everything but one dish were just meat and chicken..), everything from salads to falafel burgers and the falafel here is sooo crunchy and yummie!

I've also said good bye to my long fluffy hair when I had the most spontaneous and quickest (and cheapest) hair cut of my life. 

Other than that we've had some great nights out with Bintangs and funny people at different venues. One night we went to this larry bar/resto called Frankensteins bar, which is like every other themed bar in Ayia Napa, but here it stands out from the rest of the Aussie inspired bars around this area. They had a cool show going on with talented dancers and live artists singing, so cool!

All in all, this area is definitely an Aussies vacation spot and there's not much else to do around here than eat, drink and go shopping. The beach is (excuse my language) pretty shit. Too much crap and people..

But then again, I've been spoilt with beaches we've been to before we came here. I'm just glad the hotel has a pool to relax in when coming back from long walks here and there in the hot, burning sun.

Super crazy busy Seminyak

As the last stop on our amazing trip through Bali and Lombok, we decided to spend a few days in Seminyak, Bali, mostly to see what the fuss is all about. 

This is the #1 destination in Bali on TripAdvisor (ok, Seminyak prob earned this title because so many people come here - hence, it get loads of votes) and we felt like we kind of had to see south of Bali too.

But the journey here was way longer than I expected. We left our hotel in Senggigi in the morning, got dropped of at the harbour and got on the fast ferry.

The annoying part of this trip is that the boat stops at Gili Air and Gili Trawangan on the way, to drop off and pick up more people. Because of this the whole boat ride is, of course, longer. I dont know if it's because of the fact that it's low season now, but we couldn't even find a fast boat that went to Sanur (the much more closer harbour choice if you're heading to Seminyak) so instead we got to Padang Bai. Here a shuttle bus waited and with horrible traffic it took ages for us to get to Seminyak. 

But 8 hours after we left our hotel in Senggigi, we were finally there and what's the first thing I see when I get of the bus? A magazine with a vegan resto ad!

We quickly checked in to our hotel, dropped of our bags and went straight to one of the places we saw in the magazine - Happy Falafel.

I don't know if it was because I was starving after not been eating anything all day, or if it really was one of the best falafel (and hummus) places I've been to.

Here they'll give you a pita bread with falafel and you get to fill it yourself with whatever veggies and sauces you prefer from their amazing salad bar.

Giving a hungry vegan free access to hummus, means that it won't be much less for anyone else..

Three layers of hummus and loads of different veggies later I didn't even see the falafels in the bread anymore. It was more like a veggie overly stuffed pita with loads of hummus and falafel in the bottom - but oh my falafel it was gooooood!

Other than the falafel and the vegan friendly food I must admit, though, that Seminyak isn't really my cup of tea - something I really noticed when we walked down the busy road with crazy traffic, to find the even more crazy packed Double 6 beach. Trash and tourists as far as the eye could see and everything is way more pricey here than other places we've been in Bali.

But okay, I'm not gona complain, we did kind of expect this and chose to come here. And even though this doesn't even feel like Bali it has it's sweet spots. Plus, the sunset was beautiful and Double 6 beach is MASSIVE. From here you can see Kuta (which is even more crazy busy than Seminyak) and easily walk there along the beach.

But does it deserve to be #1 on TripAdvisor? Nah, not so much. This is way too westernized and busy to earn that ranking. But we're gonna have a great time here anyway :)

The adventure in Senaru Waterfalls, Lombok

So in the norhern part of Lombok, there are two big waterfalls that is supposed to be the coolest waterfalls of the island and of course we didn't want to miss out on seeing them!

Instead of doing like a day tour with a guide in a group of other tourists, we decided to try to do our own thing - going from Senggigi to Senaru, on our moped.

During the first bit of the journey there were stunning views over the three Gili Islands, nice roads and not much other traffic.

When we came to Bengsal after about 30 minutes, we asked this local man for directions to Senaru and he thought we were crazy for trying to drive all that way on a moped "it's 2 hours from here! 80 km! You need jackets, it's cold and rainy!"

We didn't let that scare us, but thanked him for the helped and continued on a much busier road. I held on for dear life on that moped and was scared half to death when dogs were running out on the road from nowhere and when crazy people drove by. But after a while the roads were less bumpy and less crowded again - thank gosh!

After following a tour bus that was going to the exact same spot as us, we finally made it to the entrance of the national park where the waterfalls are located.

We think that the main entrance might be a bit further up the road, and we were just lucky to find a short cut where there was only one guide trying to make us believe that he needed to lead us through the djungle park to the waterfalls - otherwise we might get lost. But thanks to Guy's research skills we knew about guides like him and we also knew that it's easy to go in without a guide. And so we did. The only thing we paid was the 10 000 rupiah entreance fee.

They said that the walk to the first waterfall would take 30 minutes and then another hour to the next one. But after walking on a path with a stunning view over rice fields and Mount Rinjani, we saw the 50 metre high waterfall just after about 10 minutes.

We continued the walk, through steep stairs and scary paths and at the end of way to the second waterfall we had to go through the river to get through. 

It was so slippery that I just saw myself falling, head first down the water, but we made it and when we got to the waterfall it was so worth the moped ride and the trekking there!

It was one of those times I really wish I had a Go pro, as we could swim in this waterfall. It was absolutely amazing! The water was so fresh and perfectly cooling after the sweaty journey we had. After that swim, I felt as if I boosted my energy levels and could walk all the way back without a problem. This is honestly one of the coolest experiences in my life, it just felt so unreal to stand right next to a waterfall, with hardly anyone around us and just the sound of birds and, of course the water crashing down in the water.

Trekking like that really takes it out of you, so when we got out of the national park we were starving and stopped at the closest restaurant and we had a lunch with such a beautiful view.

Once again, what I love about Indonesia is how easy it is to be a vegan. Anywhere you go (where they serve local food) tempeh and tofu will be at the menu. So at this place I tried Urap Urap (cooked vegetables with spiced grated coconut) with tempeh and tofu for the first time and it was delicious. Don't know what I enjoyed more - the view or the food..

Anywho, this day was just incredible (mostly because the way back went quick and smoothly and we made it back on the moped without a scratch) and you are defiantly missing out if you don't go for a swim in the waterfalls of Senaru if you're in Lombok!