Whoo

Today’s venue from the List was the Woobar at the W Hotel. The W is expensively lavish and lavishly expensive even by Seminyak standards. From what I saw around me, it’s popular with senior Indonesian bureaucrats, Indian industrialists, and the chubby wives of members of the Chinese Communist Party; people who’ve done very well from populations that haven’t done very well.

Just sitting on their oceanfront deck is a minimum $200 spend. Fortunately you can sit a metre away, under the cover of the bar’s roof, for free… apart from your premium-priced cocktails, of course.

I tried a Rumba Smash, which is a terrible name when you consider that they could have called it the Basiltini. It’s just native basil syrup, vodka, lemon and three drops of basil-infused coconut oil. And it’s superb.

It was so good that I decided to have a second drink, and this time chose the Markisa Shrub… which is basically a Passionfruit Margarita. They really need to get someone more savvy on their cocktail names.

Since I was near the ocean, it seemed like a good opportunity to finally allow Cory and Cody to hit the waves. I’m not sure their forms are all that, but surfing is hard when you don’t have knees or functioning elbows.

In the evening I was introduced to a Southeast Asian chain store called KKV, which is so adorable that it’s actually kind of oppressive. As I said to a friend, “This is what happens when you weaponise cuteness.”

If it weren’t for luggage limits I’d have spent a fortune there; you don’t get to purchase weaponised cuteness at reasonable prices every day. As it was, I had to restrict myself to a single box of off-brand Lego based on the civic mascot of Kumamoto Prefecture. And before you ask, there were a lot of different sets based on the civic mascot of Kumamoto Prefecture. He leads a full, and popular, life.