This one’s more for the pictures. But yep, Bali - we’ve had a time so far.
Sully’s nailed the first 2 days. Does he ever take the heat off of me for keeping up with what we’re doing. Wow. And the fact that he loves blogging is even better. I like how he sees me, well, like a duck. Calmly floating on the surface of the water, but he’s able to avoid/ignore all the chaos going on underneath the surface (or, in my head!) ha!. Like at the Townsville airport. He saw a small airport jammed with people waiting to leave to Bali. What he didn’t see was me stressing and worried that we were going to miss our flight, because I hadn’t booked a departure ticket out of Indonesia!? Which, duh, is one of the requirements of Indonesia! So after being refused access onto the plane, I needed to come up with a plan B and C for the next part of our trip. Part B being - how long do we stay in Bali? and C - where the hell do we fly to after? All in 30 minutes. Which seems like a lot, but under the gun and relying on your iPhone’s SIM card to not run out of data was just added pressure. It was tense. In the end, I chose to leave on he 21st and booked a flight to Cambodia. And we made the Bali flight. Barely.
We’ve been in Ubud now for 3 days and it’s been incredible. Fans of the book, Eat, Pray, Love will recognize it as the Love part of E. Gilbert’s journey. As much as I would love the 3 of us to roll into one of the local Yoga studios and disrupt the Ommm that all the travelling Yogi’s have going on, it most likely won’t happen. Can you imagine?? So we’re doing the other tourist thing here and visiting all the cool spots in the area. We’ve spent time white water rafting down the Ayung river. Although the photos look like it’s a very tame river…there were a fair number of level 2 & 3 rapids. I kept my GoPro tucked nicely away for those. Max & Sully sat in the front of our 6 person raft and loved every minute of it. It was gorgeous, a river running through a deep forested valley.
We've also been to a few temples. The boys have chosen to play hide and seek and other imagination nation games instead of soaking in the historical aspect. Whatever works. As long as they’re not being disrespectful. At one point during our visit to the Elephant Caves temple (Goa Gajah), they actual hid in the Elephant Cave (see photo) and scared other tourists who entered it! Amazing. I looked over and they were such a hit with a group of Asian tourists, more people were taking photos of them than the caves. Especially Max…Max is a hit here. Blue eyes, fair skin, red hair. They eat him up. Should be interesting how he takes to that as we continue through SE Asia.
Today we visited an Elephant Safari Lodge (where they house rescued Elephants) and the Tegalalang Rice Terrace, before the heat got to us and we asked our driver to take us back to our home stay. It’s a room on a family’s property in Ubud. As Sully’s explained, they have 3 kids and the family is extremely friendly. Their youngest boy Windu is 8. Max and him get along really well (Although WIndu can’t speak English and Max’s Balinese is just a little rusty!?). They know soccer, basketball and Clash of Clans, really well though.
So far our favourites are any kind of fresh fruit smoothie (they’re everywhere), coconut flavoured anything, Balinese curry and both boys are loving Banana juice.
We’re off to Gili Air Island tomorrow until the 14th. Snorkelling and Beach. We’ll be spending Thanksgiving weekend there, as well as Max’s birthday (his 8th, on the 11th).
Eat lots of turkey for us, wish Max a happy birthday and be thankful for everything you have.
GO JAYS!!