Eat, PLAY, Love!

Bali, The Final Days

EAT:  Organic, fresh and farm to table most of the time.  Bali is healthy eating, whether you want to or not!

PLAY:  Most of the time, we took traveling way to seriously.  Obsessively planning every second of everyday.  We had to force ourselves to slow down, chill and have some fun!

LOVE:  We love so many things about Bali including: sunsets, landscapes, yoga shalas, red sangria, temples, beaches, mountains, greenspaces and we ADORE the lovely Balinese people.❤️

We have been all over this tiny island and we decided to spend our final days at the beach.  In fact, very close to the famed  “Eat, Pray, Love” Padang, Padang Beach.  We visited this tiny beach area and were disillusioned by the hordes of sunbathers and surfing groupies that crowded the white sand.  Locals selling their sarongs, semi cold drinks and sunglasses added to the chaos of this beach.  There was some rock climbing and bouldering lurking over the beachgoers and Will played around for a bit.  Deterred by the crowd and the heat (90 something degrees), he didn’t last long.  We paid parking and a fee to go into the area, but couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  Our home base for our last week in Bali was Jimbaran.  A medium size fishing village,( but the biggest and most famous fishing village on the entire island),  boasts a very strong community of fisherman who insist on maintaining their way of life.  They have been successful at shutting out big commercial  development on their turf.  Jimbaran is noted for having a very cohesive, proud and devout Hindu community.  Fresh fish is cooked and served with veggie and rice every night on the beach during sunset.  You pick your own fish and tell them how you want it cooked and then enjoy the sunset and the menage of local surfers who sit like ducks until it is just too dark to ride the waves.  The water is warm inviting locals and tourists to swim and pose in the evening as the sun sets in the distance.  Fantastic ambience, romantic scenery and cheap food prices.  Best sunset bargain for sure and, hugely, popular for locals and tourists.  A MUST do.  Fish on the beach.

Jimbaran was a fantastic base for us as we explored the Bukit Peninsula.   We drove to the string of surfer beaches that beckon wave riders from everywhere.  The waves are quite impressive and not for the beginner.  At the end of the line, we visited the stunning Pura Uluwatu (temple) perched on steep coastal cliffs.  It was hot and crowded and we were happy to scooter back down to the Singlefin bar for a cold one and a hip vibe.  Bleached blond, muscle laden hunky surfers and their bikini thonged girls dominated the scene.  I have new respect for surfers and the incredible athleticism necessary for this sport.  OH OKAY, the guys are HOT and checking them out is a good sport too.  I wasn’t the only one checking out derrieres.  The only difference is thongs reveal it all and trunks only give a hint.  

We explored the coast the other direction and took the scooter to the famed Kuta Beach and a bit further to Simonyak.  We were less than interested in the scenery here due to crowds on the beach, along the shopping streets and on the road with their scooters.  We, actually, skipped Kuta and headed straight to Simonyak so I could shop.  Thanks, Will.  The shopping here is heralded, still cheaper than usual, but more than I wanted to spend on most things.  We had a very peaceful and scenic lunch on the beach where the breeze kept us cool and the food satiated us.  Then, we had a good karma moment when we discovered our camera was missing.  We checked the mall where Will was sitting and waiting for me to finish shopping and to our delight, someone had found and turned in our camera.  We❤️ You, Bali!  And, thanks to the lovely KiWis who found and turned in our camera.

Bittersweet departure from this tiny island with an oversized heart.  We love ❤️ you, Bali.  We’ll be back!

1. HUMILITY

Recipe for Humble Pie (some of you may know this as “eating crow”).

Ingredients:
5 cups of viscera and other inferior parts of a deer
1 frozen pie crust

Baking Instructions: Mix together in a large mixing bowl. Fold into the pie crust and bake at 350 for 1 hour. While baking, practice acts of humility. If your acts are genuine, there is no need to eat the pie. If you acted in haste and with arrogance…..DIG IN!!!!!!

Exercising humility on a regular basis was humbling in and of itself. We really had to work on this one and it challenged us. Acknowledging that we are not always right, was difficult for two “tend to be controlling” people. Putting the other before self was challenging for two “sometimes selfish” people. And, listening more than talking for two ” Chatty Cathy” teachers was excruciating some days. But, we practiced and we tried.  Consequently, there was enough humble pie for both of us.

There are so many ways to live humility and act with humble intentions. It felt too big to tackle all of it, so we chose smaller pieces to work on this week.  A partial definition of humility is “knowing our own limits, our strengths and weaknesses, physically, morally or otherwise.”  This made every yoga class we took a humbling experience. We had to dig deep to find our balance and accept our limitations as well as our strengths with grace.  Outside of yoga, we tried to accept the possibility that we weren’t always right AND admit it; we tried to listen more than we spoke and we tried to compliment each other and others often.  Finding our humble selves in yoga was very positive for both of us.  The rest?   Not so much.  We are a work in progress and will continue to work on keeping things simple, being grateful and acting with humility.

YogaBarn:  WE had a love/hate relationship with this place.  We loved going to a different style of yoga everyday for 9 days.  The teachers were all great and a mixture of local Balinese and international yogis who have moved to Ubud.  The shalas are very nice, clean and the ‘barn’ provides everything.  The organic cafe was fantastic, but slow and we missed a class one day which really pissed us off.  There are so many yoga shalas in Ubud, it is overwhelming.  We just stuck to the YogaBarn and tried not to become part of the “scene”.  And, it IS a scene for the young, bohemian yogi.  All classes were full and if we were not there at least 30 minutes before a class, we did not get in.  We became a little obsessive about showing up early and that got a little crazy.  We had to plan travel time on the scooter in the most chaotic traffic I have ever scene (maybe equal to Bangkok in the old days.)  All said and done, our yoga experience was very positive and Will is officially a true blue yogi now!!!!  I am so grateful that he took every class with me!  Now that we have moved on from Ubud, we are missing regular yoga class everyday and resorting to doing a practice on our own.  Pretty sure Will doesn’t enjoy it as much when I am the teacher!  It’s a control thing.

Ten days in Ubud was enough…it would have been torture without the yoga to keep us in our zen and balanced.  The place is a traffic jam of  Eat, Pray and Bohemian lovers driving scooters (that they have no business driving) up the wrong side of a narrow one way street.  Everyday….all day. Not to mention the throng of tourists trying to cross roads that have no traffic lights, stop signs or crosswalks.  INSANITY!!!!  But, love/hate.  We did a lot of exploring, staying shy of big tourist destinations.  We found rice fields to stroll in at dawn and dusk.  We ate at the local food places and became fans of Indonesian fare. We loved chatting with the locals and the Balinese people are some of the loveliest, kindest, and most humble humans on the earth.  We adore them and would say that Bali’s best kept secret is not a place but the people who live here.

We escaped to the central mountains of this small island and we thought we might be in heaven.  We passed three beautiful crater lakes, green lush tropical forest and landed at Lesong hotel in the middle of some of the most beautiful rice terraces we had seen yet.  We had simple, easy hikes to waterfalls and because very few tourists actually make the effort to get out of Ubud or away from the beaches, WE WERE ALONE.  Munduk was peaceful and bucolic.  It was spectacular vistas and simple village life where there are no weekends. Hindu festivals, cremation and offerings dominate the daily life.  We had a fun and informative cooking class at Lesong. Again, it was the fabulous people that made our 3 star hotel feel like a 5 star experience.  On the way out of Munduk, we happened upon the deeply cut, steep rice terraces in Jatulawhi.  We thought we had seen the best of the rice fields but these “fields of gold” appeared around a corner and we had to stop and immerse ourselves in their uniqueness and beauty.  On a mission to get to the next place, we hopped on the scooter and made our way back to a new beach area.  We were happy to turn in the scooter and let the taxi man do the driving.  Goodbye Ubud.  We might miss you!!!!  We are off to Eat, PLAY and Love at the southern beaches of Bali.  Bali Hai!!!!

GRATITUDE FOR:

More GRATITUDE for:

Gratitude:  In Bali, gratitude is so much more than a simple “Thank You”.  It is a lifestyle, and a fundamental piece of Hindu daily life.  The Hindus express gratitude through countless offerings and they include everyone and every earthly thing in their daily practice. They believe that “gratitude is to be cultivated as a habit or attitude of mind not dependent on a condition.”  We are so grateful to be on this journey of learning together and in a place that teaches and practices gratitude everyday.  For us, saying thank you and stating our gratitude for things was easy and accessible.  The challenge is learning to have the grace and the knowledge to SHOW our gratitude in actions that speak louder than our words.   

We have been anticipating our return to Bali for a long time.  We both were in Ubud some fifteen years ago and not together.  We both had experienced very special encounters in Bali and we came here with some very high expectations and hopes for similar experiences.  Sanur Beach was a new destination for both of us and we loved the Indonesian coastline with spectacular views of sunrise and sunset.  The yoga shala was fantastic as were our teachers and classes.  After a few days we moved to the East coast and the region of Amed.  This was a return visit for Will and a new place for me.  After being a bit underwhelmed the first day, Amed quickly grew on me.  The scooter rides, food, yoga, views from our hotel and birthday massage were all spectacular.  The day trip to the quiet and sedate country village of Bengli was simply unforgettable.  Rolling green rice terraces and richly fertile valleys of vegetation admisdt a simple life unfolding everywhere around us was intoxicating.  It might go down as one of our favorite places to watch the world go by, drink in  the fresh air and immerse ourselves in the sounds and smells of this bucolic farming village.  Colorful people, happy children, and artisans all make up this hidden gem of a place.  In the end, it was difficult to leave Amed.  However, we were headed to Ubud and the much acclaimed Yoga Barn and our excitement got the best of us.  What we didn’t expect (we had been warned), was the complete throng of tourists, locals, motor scooters and the quadrupled growth that made one of our favorite cities somehow VERY different and VERY difficult to negotiate.  It was overwhelming, noisy, hot, sticky and energy draining.  What has, remarkably, stayed intact despite the Western-style version of growth, change and up- to-date technology, was the rich Hindu/Balinese culture.  The local people continue to keep their traditional dances, attire, festivals, celebrations, offerings, music, art, and religious beliefs very much alive in the throes of immense growth and  capitol gain.  For this, we found gratitude and it made life easier as we tackled the “new” Ubud.  We have been to enough places in the world where culture has eroded due to change,technology and the almighty dollar.  We love the Balinese people for resisting the temptation to throw away culture for money.  Don’t get me wrong….they all have a cell phone, TV and motor scooter.  However, they are still the sweetest people on earth and live a third world life of humility with grace and dignity.  It is gratifying that we can travel to places like this and have unique, step-back-in-time experiences each day that we are here.  We are humbled and we don’t eat much humble pie.  Week 3:  Finding Humility.

PS:  Will the Thrill has been a total champ about yoga.  He has taken every class with me and is, actually, getting better and liking it.  I love it that we can practice together.  He has as much fun choosing the style of class as I do.  Gotta run….off to ACRO YOGA.  I hope we don’t hurt each other………

                              Perfect Manifesto

Everyone is creative and everyday is an opportunity to perform a new creative act. When it’s hard to paint the clouds, we draw the mountains.  Making things make us feel good (GRATITUDE).  We learn to do something by doing it. When we are brave, our life expands. Risk is what transforms us.  Imperfection is our ally. (HUMILITY) We like to slow down and do one thing at a time (or we try). We take pleasure in ordinary everyday details (SIMPLIFY).  Simplicity takes time.  Being mindful helps. We don’t mind if we’re not too flash (cool, lekker, awesome). We care about being authentic.  Living a modest life makes us happy (HUMILITY) We’d rather ride a bike than take a car.  We’d rather read a book than watch TV (except for sports).  We like to travel light. It’s good to work with others.  It’s good to listen.  Sometimes we name our chickens before they hatch. Many things can be solved with a strong cup of tea and a long walk.  When you get right down to it…the essential thing to do is to do what you do with your whole heart.♥

We landed in Denpasar, Bali on Friday and quickly headed for the coast at Sanur Beach.  We had a beautiful, upscale room, with a colorful view, a pool and the beach just a few steps away.  How do we simplify in a place that has everything?  We started with looking, enjoying and embracing the simple follies of nature.  We tried to steer ourselves away from shopping, lingering, expensive restaurants, sugary tropical island drinks with alcohol.  Instead of an entire big sized chocolate bar, we learned to be content with the 2 small pieces left on our bed each night at the hotel.  We found the yoga shala and the kite boarding lessons.  We did indulge in both, but kept it fun, focused and relaxed.  This “simple” thing is a shift and shifts take time.  It has not been easy, but we have made headway.

WE prepared ourselves for four days at the Organic Side by Side Farm where we would move to next.  Our posh lodgings became a humble abode and I would describe our experience as a notch between camping and glamping. Our bed was situated above three garden pools that were home to the fish we would eat in the next few days and we did sleep outside with a mosquito net.  Our bathroom was private, but open air, no flush toilet, cold shower and rustic.  The food was farm to table and all organic.  We ate what we saw hanging from trees, growing beneath our feet, and sprouting from vines.  We had no dairy, used only palm sugar, no flour, nothing processed and everything from the farm.  The food was amazing, but our tummy adjustment also took time.  We had some rumbling and tumbling and more trips to the rest room than we wanted.  But, we ate and ate and loved the fresh and new tastes of everything our lovely chef, Elo, fixed for us.  The green mystery banana pancakes with freshly grated coconut and fresh honey were magical.  We drank water or blended fruit juice..papaya, lime, banana, coconut to name a few.  Our tummies adjusted.  We wandered instead of hiked through the lush rice terraces and a tropical and very traditional Balinese village.  Life here is simple, but hard.   You work (farm), you eat what you grow and harvest each day, you sleep and you pray (Hindu offerings several times a day).  The dominant religion in Bali is Hindu.  They celebrate, give offerings and pray a lot.   We were very fortunate to celebrate the Galungan Holiday with our host Ketut.  It marks the time when the ancestral spirits visit the earth.  Families gather for several days and visit the temples to make contact with the spirits of their families. They visit and make offerings at their family temple, the village temple and the provincial temple.  We visited the provincial temple and one of the most difficult to get to in Bali (duh…we would pick this one) named Pura Luhur Lempuyang.  1700 steps cut into the mountain took us to the top.  Before the actual steps was a grueling up hill 3km march up a narrow road from the parking lot.  Instead of simplifying the toll this would take on our bodies by opting to take the bus, we marched with Ketut.  In total, the pilgrimage took us 4 hours and we marched and stepped 7 miles.  We stopped at each sub temple to offer and pray and we were allowed to partake in all of the ceremonies.  We only had to remove our shoes at each temple stop and wear  a special sarong (everyone else does this journey in their flip flops).  And, of course, it was raining.  We were blessed with the holy water and, embraced by everyone around us.  Hindus accept anyone and everyone into their religion, their temples, their festivals and celebrations.  This was a very special and humbling experience for us.  Needless to say, our legs were a bit lethargic the next day.

I think we made some significant gains towards our goal of simplifying.  It just isn’t easy.  It took work and made us realize how very fortunate we are to be on this journey together.  We felt gratitude for so many people, places, experiences and each other.  GRATITUDE seems like a no brainer as our intention for week 2.