Cross another b**ch off

We can add Selong Blanak to the list of beaches we have visited now. 13km east of Kuta, it's the ideal place if you want to learn to surf. Gentle, medium size, slow-moving waves. It's also a gorgeous swimming beach. Afterwards we went to Mawun Beach [previously] and then lunch at Ashtari [previously], which now has a paved road, unlike last year.

Along the way we also passed the illegal gold mines.

Let me tell you about dinner last night though. We went to the Anda Restaurant and Monika had a perfectly nice Mahi Mahi with a Sasak sauce. I ordered the vegetarian pizza. 

When it came it had the usual pale, insipid look of most Indonesian pizzas but that's alright I wasn't expecting much. I had already eaten there and had the only other vegetarian dish, Fettuccine Alfredo, which was quite nice. As I made my way through the third slice I started to chew what I thought was a particularly tough piece of onion skin which turned out to be plastic (probably from the bag of mozzarella). I put it down to 'there is occasionally an oversite in the kitchen'. When I got another chunk in the next slice I put it down to carelessness. 

When the the waiter comes over and asks if we have finished we say yes but I point out the lumps of plastic and say that we're not paying for this. He gives a sort of bemused grin (I don't think he understands what I'm telling him), collects the plates and heads off to the kitchen. While the bill is being prepared he hoes into the rest of the pizza. I guess strips of plastic don't bother him.

He comes to the table with the bill and the pizza is still on it. I repeat that we're not paying for it and he finally gets the picture and heads for the kitchen again. He comes out with a portly, bare chested chap wearing a sarong talking to him. The wiater heads for our table and the other fellow marches off to the exit to the hotel restaurant. The bill has the pizza crossed off and the waiter apologises and says that the chef has "taken his uniform off". Quiet what that means, I'm not sure, but the moral of the story is, 'don't order pizza at the Anda in Kuta'.