Bali

Going to Bali has been on my bucket list after I read Eat Pray Love and watched the movie one too many times. When I thought about taking some time away and traveling, this was one of the places that first came to mind as well. All that being said, our expectations were high for our trip to Bali.

As we got closer to leaving Australia, we started planning and researching more for this trip. With all the Bali searches we were doing, our Instagram algorithms began feeding us Bali content constantly. While this was helpful in terms of finding where to stay and things to do, it also gave us a glimpse of what Bali may actually be like.

When you think of Bali you likely imagine the rice fields, beaches, yoga, etc. Which you do get all of those things, but from a different lens. Our photos you see in this blog post show primarily one side of Bali. In reality what you see here and on Instagram is only a fraction of what Bali is actually like.

We had some moments of bliss (what you see in photos), and also a lot of moments of realization (this may not be the place we thought it was). I’ll leave deeper thoughts about Bali for real life conversations as that is the best way for me to sum up my thoughts.

For now, here are the places we traveled to in Bali:

• Ubud
• Canggu
• Nusa Lembongan
• Uluwatu

Ubud

After landing in Bali, we drove about 1.5 hours inland to the popular town of Ubud. When you see photos of waterfalls and rice terraces in Bali, it is likely these are all taken in Ubud. We saw more of the Balinese traditions and culture here than any of the other cities we visited.

Where We Stayed

We have realized that 90% of the time we will not like staying in the busy center of a town. Instead we prefer to find a quieter area even if that means additional minutes of travel to get to places. For our lodging in Ubud, we did pick a place that was off the beaten path. Luckily renting a scooter in Bali is super easy with the rental process entailing you giving the person cash for your rental period and them handing over the keys. No paper contract required. Between hopping around on a scooter and getting Gojeks (SE Asia’s Uber) it was easy to get to where we wanted to go. We ended up spending $50 a night at Sitala Suite which ended up being one of our more favorite places we stayed in Bali. Plus no need to set an alarm when staying here as the roosters outside will tell you when it’s time to start your day.

Some Highlights of What We Did

While we do like to partake in touristy things and love recommendations, we often have the most fun when we stumble upon places ourselves. Here is a mixture of tourist, recommendations, and happy detours:

Yoga at The Yoga Barn

The Yoga Barn is tucked away on one of the less busy streets of Ubud. Somehow the owner of this place managed to find one of the few quiet corners of Ubud and turn it into a giant oasis. You could likely spend half a day here as there are many classes, a coffee shop, juice bar, villas to stay in, etc. Nathan and I attended one of the morning Vinyasa classes which was exactly what we needed.

Exploring Rice Fields

Since Ubud is more inland Bali, you will see more of the rice fields and jungle during your time here. One big thing to visit in Ubud is the Tegallalang Rice Terrace. This is one part of Bali you have no doubt seen on Instagram. Since it’s all over Instagram, this is a huge tourist area with “Instagram tours” advertised everywhere. This is the part of Bali that has that feel of Instagram Vs. Reality. On Instagram you see the perfect picture with the woman swinging, wearing the long flowing dress…In reality, there is someone every two minutes telling you to buy a ticket to enter the rice terrace and then people are just paying to rent a dress on a random swing, etc. After that experience of even trying to enter the terrace, we took a quick picture from afar and left.

Which leads me to how we stumbled upon a different rice field that was a lot better. Nathan decided one afternoon to go for a run in the heat. After 30 or so minutes, he came back saying that we needed to hop on the scooter now and see these rice fields he stumbled upon. Sure enough after a 5 minute scooter ride on a “road”, aka 12×12 pavers, we were in a more secluded area with beautiful rice fields surrounding us. This was probably our favorite part of our Bali trip.

What We Do In Every Country: Eat & Drink Coffee

Ubud has a lot of tourists coming in and out of it, so there are plenty of restaurant and cafes in the town. Here are some of the highlights of the cafes that we visited!

All throughout Bali, we noticed at the entrance of almost every cafe, business, home, etc. had these little offerings on the ground (3rd photo below). These offerings called canang sari often contained flowers, food, candies, etc. Things like this really made the culture of Bali and its people shine.

Canggu

Canggu is on the southwest coast of Bali and about 28km from Ubud. Which for a 17 mile drive you would think that would take about 30 minutes…it took about 2 hours to get there. Bali has very few traffic lights and operates primarily by honking to communicate where you are trying to go in an intersection. On top of it all, there is a decent amount of traffic with the influx of motorbikes and cars on the roads.

After our long car ride, we arrived in Canggu and would be here for the next two nights. Looking back, this was more than enough time for us as Canggu is certainly more of a party and digital nomad area. It’s also where we saw more and more of this gap of the real Bali and the Bali you see on Instagram.

To be honest, we didn’t take very many photos here. Nathan took photos primarily of every single construction site we came across (so if you’re wanting to see those, feel free to reach out to him). Almost every other free lot was a construction site that was likely building more villas and hotels. Here are the few images we did capture: scooter parking for days, busy busy market, phone doesn’t eat first when Nathan is always wanting the first bite right away.

Nusa Lembongan

What better way to spend time on Bali is by leaving Bali for another little island? The Nusa Islands are made up of (you guessed it) three small islands southwest of Bali. A lot of people we talked to highly recommended going to one of the islands to find more blue waters and calmer atmospheres than the mainland Bali. We landed on Nusa Lembongan as our home base for the next five days.

To get to Nusa Lembongan from Bali you have to take a little ferry which is about 30 minutes. The experience before getting on the ferry was definitely something I don’t want to relieve and the journey on the ferry itself was choppy waters the whole way (lots of ups and downs like a rollercoaster). The highlight of this journey to the island was the end (lol) where a stray dog was wading in the water waiting for us to get off so he could say hi.

Goal For Nusa Lembongan: Relax

We hit a few hiccups with our location, but overall we used these next days to relax and plan out our next country. Here’s what we got up to:

• We walked around a lot.
• Enjoyed local cuisine that typically cost us $9 for the both os us to eat.
• Tried to schedule a massage only to find out that there was construction right next door that made a constant drilling noise.
• Spent $3.50 to get our laundry done. While it was very cheap our clothes did not smell any better (lesson learned).
• Watched some amazing sunsets from our balcony.
• Took a “water taxi” to get back to our hotel after venturing out about an hour walk away. We definitely didn’t get a fair price, but when a small balinese man with a fishing boat quotes you the same price as a boring taxi, you take the fishing boat taxi back.
• Nathan read more these days here than I think he has in the last 5 years.

Uluwatu

We ended our Bali trip in Uluwatu after Nusa Lembongan. Uluwatu is on the southern edge of Bali and closer to the airport so we figured this would be a great final destination.

To get back to the mainland of Bali from Nusa, you have to take another boat. Luckily we were able to book a speed boat for the ride back. Rather than it taking 45 minutes to get back, it only took 15 minutes. After the boat ride we had another 1.5 hours long car ride to Uluwatu.

Waiting For Our Vietnam Visas, Planning, & Relaxing

There wasn’t much more that we had our heart set on in regards to sight seeing in Bali at this point, so we spent a decent amount of time planning and hanging out. Since our Bali trip was coming to an end, now came the stress of waiting for our Vietnam visas to get approved. AKA if they weren’t approved, we would not be making our flight out of Bali. I had read horror stories about people applying, waiting five business days, and getting their visas rejected the day before they were to fly to Vietnam. In these cases, it seemed that the people would spend hundreds of dollars on a questionable express visa service and hope that it would work for their fligt. Needless to say, I didn’t want that stress. After four business days (and vivid dreams about getting rejected entry into Vietnam), we finally received the approval and our tourists visas. Once that weight was lifted off our shoulders, we booked the rest of our flights all the way up until July!

Planning honestly took up a majority of our final days. When we did need a break and wanted fresh air we would hop on our scooter and explore. This included more walking, visiting markets, eating the last of the local Indonesian cuisine, and getting a much needed massage!