It’s almost the end of my third week in Bali, and there’s been lots of odds and ends to report. One was an inevitability: I got pretty sick last weekend, as one does in tropical places, the night after my horseback ride. I don’t really know exactly what it was I ate and can wave vaguely at a few possible suspects. My digestive system was in full revolt on Saturday night, and I spent all of Sunday weak and exhausted and mostly sleeping, but then Monday I was surprisingly chipper and back to normal, just being super, super cautious with …
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travel
Saturday morning I went horseback riding at a stable. I’ve been pretty excited about this. I’ve loved horses since I was a kid, and have ridden a lot throughout my life. I’ve never owned a horse, but I did lease an off-track Thoroughbred when I lived on Long Island. For the past few years in Vancouver I’ve been riding every two weeks, which helps keep me sane and connected to one of my favourite parts of life. I had a long stretch of not riding when I first moved to Vancouver, was first trying to make a go of it …
I’ve spent most of the past few days getting back into work. I find Hubud a very easy place to be. People are pretty friendly and everyone likes talking about travel – most of us have that in common, though there’s certainly plenty of local Balinese coworkers too. There’s a variety of spaces to work in whether you feel the need for productive quiet or a lively space where you can gab with your neighbours. There’s a tempting cafeteria, and some beanbags to flake out in. I like to set up near the window facing the garden, even though there’s …
On Sunday I hired Wayan, the driver, to tour me around some bits of Bali. Specifically I wanted to see a non-touristy beach, a lovely waterfall, and some temples. Wayan suggested Bias Tugel. I looked it up and it looked perfect, relatively small and secluded without all the hustle and hype of the popular resort areas like Kuta and Seminyak. It’s about an hour east of Ubud, and I was a little nervous to be going ANY closer to Mount Agung aka the active volcano that almost made me cancel my trip. But it’s still a healthy distance from the …
I did it, I did it, I did it. I made it to Bali! It was a surprisingly good flight for being 22+ hours of travel. Got a respectable amount of sleep on the 12-hours Vancouver-Taipei leg (pro tip: the Taipei airport has free massage chairs, if you get a token from the information desk) and the 5-hour hop down to Denpasar felt like a minor jaunt in comparison. EVA Air seems like a pretty civilized airline. I eventually found my driver in a swarm of drivers holding up names, and on the drive from Denpasar to Ubud (another hour …