Bali, Indonesia

Bali, Indonesia 🇮🇩
July 20th-27th, 2017

My next stop was Bali!  I had been looking forward to this part of the trip since I booked it a few months ago.  I did a group tour with Wanderlands, a tour company based in Australia.  There were about 20 of us total, ranging from around 20-30 years old.  There are many Australians throughout Bali since it’s a close and inexpensive travel destination, but everyone in my group was either from Europe (England, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg), Brazil, or the US.  I was excited to be traveling with a group for a while to give myself a break from having to plan everything on my own 🙂 Also, super excited to be below the equator for the first time ever!!!

Bali Highlights:

Kuta

• Cliffs/Temples
• Sunset
• Surfing

Ubud

• Waterfall
• Monkey Forest
• Yoga

Gili T

• Sunset
• Snorkeling

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Kuta – July 20-23, 2017

We stayed at a hotel in the Kuta area for the first three nights of the trip.  It’s a pretty touristy beach area not too far from the airport.  My heart nearly stopped when I realized my room number was my best friend Sara’s birthday (April 3rd). She passed away from an extremely rare uterine cancer exactly one year ago in August. One of the many signs that Sara is traveling alongside me on this trip. My roommate, Kelly, is from south London and we got along very well during the course of the 8 day tour!

The first night, we all went to dinner as a group to get to know one another.  I ordered chicken satay (typical Indonesian cuisine with chicken skewers and a peanut sauce) and tried the Bali cider. Both were very good!  It was great getting to know everyone a bit more—crazy how many German speakers we had in our group!

The next morning we visited Tanah Lot, a rock formation Hindu Temple set on the beautiful coast of Bali.  It was low tide, so we were able to walk all the way up to the temple–during high tide it’s surrounded by water as if it’s an island itself. The actual temple is only entered by practicing Hindus, but for a small donation I was able to get blessed with the holy water.

We passed a giant snake and Marion, an Austrian from my group, decided to hold it.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to face a fear head on, so I bravely held the snake for several minutes myself after watching him do it.  I was definitely a nervous wreck and shaking afterwards, but I also felt accomplished and empowered.

We went back to Kuta that evening to watch the sunset on the beach. I enjoyed relaxing with everyone before a late dinner and a little Bali night life.

The next morning we drove to Uluwatu, another temple with amazing views of cliffs on another coast–just when you thought it couldn’t get more beautiful! There were wild monkeys around the temple, so you had to be careful of your belongings so they wouldn’t try to steal anything!

We had lunch at a spot near the beach with a pool in the restaurant!  It was a fun change jumping in the water from the second floor after finishing our meal 🙂

One of my favorite things from the Bali trip was surfing for the first time!!! It was such a fun experience.  Even though it was very challenging, I definitely want to do it again (hopefully soon!).  Even though your eyes are burning from the salt water, the waves keep knocking you down and throw your surfboard all around, the curiousity of whether or not you’ll be able to balance enough to stand up on the next wave makes it so exhilirating.  It was almost addicting trying to see how you could improve from one wave to the next.

Ubud – July 23-25, 2017

Ubud in on the Bali island of Indonesia, an hour or so north of the Kuta/Denpasar area.  It felt less touristy and more relaxing–where most of the yoga/silent retreats tend to be.  Our first stop was the Teganungun Waterfall.  It was beautiful! I could’ve stayed there all day if we had the time.  We went swimming in the refreshing water beneath the falls!  The waterfall was very powerful and the current got stronger as you went out, so you had to be careful not to let the water take over.  The rocks surrounding the waterfall were all beautiful and it was definitely its own little oasis.

After checking into our hotel, we enjoyed the pool for a bit while our rooms finished getting ready. The water was very refreshing and it was nice to cool of in the hot sun. We walked to the Monkey Forest, home to over 600 monkeys. It was crazy seeing tons of monkeys wandering all over the place and the area itself was scenic with tons of trees and vines throughout. The monkeys are overall pretty friendly, but it’s important to follow a few basic rules so you don’t give them a reason to attack you, e.g. you can’t make direct eye contact with the monkeys or they will try to compete with you for dominance, they love to steal loose items from your hands–particularly plastic water bottles and food, and mothers are extremely protective of there babies. Unfortunately, we saw those last two first hand when Jonas (one of the guys from Germany) had a lighter in his hand to try to entice the cute baby monkey onto his shoulder. It worked, but maybe a little bit too well. Before we knew it, the baby had grabbed the lighter from his hands and was trying to take it back. The mother was close by and defended her baby by jumping onto Jonas and biting his stomach and arm. The whole thing happened so fast and we were all in shock. The bite did not look good, but thankfully Jonas was up to date on his vaccines and the clinic in the Monkey Forest cleaned the bites with betadine and provided paperwork that the monkeys get checked regularly and don’t have rabies. I helped Jonas clean the bites with alcohol wipes and bandaids over the next few days to make sure they didn’t get infected. It’s safe to say that we were all a little scared of the larger monkeys after that and when it came time to feed them bananas to get them to climb on our shoulders for a picture, I didn’t feel the need to try again after not getting a great photo the first time…

We had a full day ahead of us in Ubud! Our first stop the following morning was at a primary school where we got to play with the children for a few hours. It was a lot of fun and you could tell they really enjoyed having us there 🙂

One of my favorite highlights was visiting the coffee plantation. We learned all about the famous Lewak coffee and got to see a lewak sleeping (they’re nocturnal animals). If you’re not familiar with lewak coffee, the animals eat the beans and poop them out to create the unique, quite expensive coffee flavor. I was happy to hear that it’s actually quite sanitary because of the multiple layers protecting the part of the coffee bean that’s used and it goes through multiple rounds of washing, boiling, and cooking the beans–all done by hand at this plantation. We also saw tons of fresh beans, herbs, flowers, and plants that are used for other coffee and tea flavors. At the end we got to try a sampling of the many coffees and teas that they make on the plantation. My favorites were the rosella, mangosteen, and ginger teas and coconut coffee.

Never have the words “lunch with a view” been more true. We stopped for lunch overlooking an active volcano, and boy was it breathtaking. Mount Batur’s last eruption was in 2000, 17 years ago, and it’s been stable since. We ate together as a group outside and every time I glanced up the view looked so crisp and serene that it could have been fake, like a green screen backdrop or something, but it wasn’t. Pictures don’t do it justice, as they frequently don’t unfortunately, but here are a few pictures of Mount Batur.

Our last stop of the day was at the Tegalalang rice terraces. These are unique and known for in their rice paddles involving the subak, a traditional Balinese irrigation system that has been passed down generation to generation. The views were very pretty and it’s remarkable that over 40 million tons of rice are produced annually in Indonesia alone. Definitely makes sense as to why rice can be such an inexpensive and abundant resource in Asia.

A few of us had enough energy to do a low key yoga session at our hotel that night, even after such a busy day. Definitely happy to say I got the chance to do yoga in Bali 🙂

Gili Trawangan – July 25-27, 2017

Gili T is known as the party island in Indonesia; geographically, it’s closer to Lombok than Bali. We took the ferry from the port on Bali, it only took a couple of hours and the water and islands looked just gorgeous. Thankfully I brought wristbands and Dramamine with me to help me from getting motion sickness on the boat.

Once we arrived on Gili T, we walked to our hotel where we had some free time to relax and lay out at the pool. The weather was gorgeous and I definitely lucked out with little to no rain with the nice island breeze during my time in Indonesia.

We rented bikes and rode around the other side of the island to The Exile. There are no cars on the Gili islands, only horses and bikes–it reminded me of Mackinaw island in Michigan in that sense. The Exile was the perfect location on the west side of the island to watch the picturesque sunset that night. We ordered drinks, sat in bean bag chairs (again!), and got to check out the swing and hammock they have perfectly placed towards the sunset.

We went to dinner at the little market only a few steps from our hotel. They made the tastiest skewers right in front of you, so it was very fresh. You got to pick your meats/fish and choose two of the many sides to try!

The next morning we got our snorkel gear, and headed to the boat! We were off in search of coral, fish, and turtles in the gorgeous teal blue waters off of the Gili islands. I borrowed my friend’s GoPro session for my trip, so I was able to get some underwater pics and finally got them to download to my phone (after much too long…). We stopped at Gili Meno Island for lunch. Gili Meno and Gili Air are both smaller and seem to be more family oriented than Gili T. It was nice to have a new view of the picture perfect waters.

We all had dinner and went out for drinks for our last night together as a big group. About half the group was staying another week and going to Lombok, the nearby island closer in size to Bali. It was bittersweet, as goodbyes usually are.

I had an amazing time in Bali and I’m really glad I chose to do a tour with Wanderlands. Traveling with the group made life a lot easier and took away any stress from trip planning for the week. It was also great being able to make new friends from different countries. Next up was my first completely solo travel stop in Asia: Singapore 🇸🇬