Ubud is beautiful and cultural rich but it lacks one thing: a beach.  We didn’t want to leave Bali without checking out it’s legendary beaches so we headed down the coast to Seminyak for a few nights.  Seminyak is a couple town away from the world famous Kuta beach.  Kuta is the probably the most famous beach in Bali and but it has a pretty bad reputation lately due to extreme overdevelopment and the night club bombings in 2002 and 2005.  Seminyak has a reputation of being the more laid back neighbor to the north and seemed more our speed.  This turned out to be a good example of why when you are traveling, you really have to experience things for yourself and you can’t always really on hearsay.  Despite all of the negative things we had heard about Kuta (and that I experienced in 2006), we actually loved it this time.  We took a day trip down from Seminyak and had a great time body surfing and reading, and relaxing in the sun and there were hardly any crowds.

I had sent an email to my former friend and coworker Prisilia who happens to be from Indonesia and among many other helpful pieces of advice, she recommended that we try a place called Potato Head Beach Club in Seminyak.  We were walking along the main street in Seminyak one night and we happened to see it so went in to check it out.  I’m so glad we did.  First of all, the enormous semicircular outer wall of the place is made completely out of old wooden window shutters in various sizes which gives it sort of a Thunderdome look.  Then inside, is one of the most architecturally creative and beautiful swimming pool, beach, and restaurant complexes I have ever seen.  We hung out by the pool for a while and had an amazing asian tapas dinner.  We wanted to enjoy our last night of relaxation in Bali because we knew that tomorrow we were heading to unknown (to us) territory in Java to explore some volcanos and sulfur mines.