Goodbye Bali

For our last days in beloved Bali we headed back to Kuta for a final night out in Sky Garden, HOWEVER, this was not until after our travelling day back from the Gili's of EIGHT HOURS, we decided to save about 3 pounds each and take the public bus... huge mistake, we ended up surrounded by buskers, moving sweet shops, pot noodle counters and endless sales pitches, hilarious to say the least! But if you have the option; take the fast boat, it cuts 7 hours off your journey!

Of course we headed back to Sky Garden for our final night out; we simply cannot get over FREE DRINKS for two hours....... its brilliant.

After a month of travelling Bali, we still only managed to see about 2 thirds, we weren't able to squeeze in the entire North-West of the island, surely an excuse to head back with more friends in tow?

Goodbye Bali, we love you

Next stop Malaysia....

Island Hopping the Gili's

Our last week in Bali!!!!! :(

We jumped on a fast boat from Ubud and headed to the sweet honeymoon island that is Gili Meno.

 

Imagine paradise and you are in the Gili's; white sand, crystal blue water and a mountainy lombok for a screen-saver worthy view.
Our first Island of the 3 was Meno. We spent our days enjoying the beach, or exploring the island in a tiny one hour walk, aswell as diving.... the most INCREDIBLE diving! With 20m visibility and 24 degree ocean we swam around with Sea Turtles aswell as Bumphead fish (a shawl of 23!!!!!!)... simply incredible. In the evenings we played cards with the locals whilst they sang a very Indonesian version of Jason Mraz with the guitar and bobbed their crazy afros.

We stayed in a cute lile shack... showering in sea salt in the back of the cow field was rather smelly.... to say the least.

 View at breakfast! ^

The 2nd island we visited was Trawangan; the party island! Each bar/club/crazy pool resort has a day of the week that they host a party, we arrived on Monday just in time for Blue Marlin night. THE best party location, the sea, a pool, the bar and two great dancefloors! Locals showed off their impressive moves whilst drunken westerners danced on the bars... brilliant. However, the rest of T wasn't as untouched as Meno, with lines of shops and bars and never ending shouting of 'TRANSPORT!' - but this time on a horse! Its safe to say that we loved the party in Trawangan, but Meno is not worth missing for the chilled atmosphere and incredible landscape.

 

The bluest of seas.

  

The 3rd and final island we visited was Gili Air, snorkelling on a reef just 50m from the shore with turtles was not something to be missed! We also played tourists and got hair wraps, ice creams did a little shopping for various sarongs etc. In the evening we went to an open air projecter in the beach and watched a movie for the first time in 2 months...... cute.

WE LOVE MENO

bye bye, Malaysia tomorrow xxxxxxxxx

Ubud overall

What can we say? We want to live here.

Ubud is the place to love yourself. Endless spas, yoga and meditation classes provide this - as after all, you can only love someone as much as you love yourself. 

Everything from the never-ending line of shops to the infinite number of restaurants makes Ubud the perfect place to relax. We've spent a week of luxury here, compared to bumming around on the beach, having reflexology, massages and facials, as well as visiting temples, markets and watching Balinese dancers.

The market was definitely an experience - 7am is far too early to be spying fish guts and pig heads out of the corner of your eyes. The smoke was choking and I doubt we saw one smile, yet it was interesting to see the locals bartering with each other... and we managed to grab some prawn crackers so all was good.

Ubud is FULL of market stalls; we are now pro barterers! Yet we cannot help but blow the budget everyday on smoothies, bags, t-shirts... and maybe a couple of billabong bikinis.

 

Every morning the locals put there offerings out on the streets of Bali, which is cute and makes the entire jungle city smell of incense.

Once again, we made a trip to the temple.... which meant passing the terrifying monkeys, though we squealed and ran for our lives, all was well when we discovered them pier jumping from the trees into a pond, hehe.

Afronisia!! An amazing african/reggae/jazz band we went to see with a bunch of dancing hippies; their music was incredible and wild dancing in the crown only heightened the AMBIANCEEEE.

A show of traditional Balinese dancers was amazing to see! Jod: I studied these back in the day during drama and it was fantastic to actually see them in the flesh.  An elderly man screeched down a microphone as the voice of many of the characters and they moved frantically about.  Their eyes were wild and darting and their hands outstretched and shaking continuously.  Definitely got my Artaud on. 

Treating our bodies as usual to a post-yoga raw honey lassie or whole coconut.

Our last day in Ubud was a little different from the rest.  Rather than spending six hours of our day in meditation of some form, we raced up the rice paddies on a quad bike! Not steady in the slightest but a very very fun way to see the scenery of the town.

LOVE FROM BALI
jod + meg

The Yoga Barn (Ubud)

After a short but sleepy boat ride on the public boat with the locals and a melon, we jumped on the bus to Ubud! Probably the only place that we had any idea what we wanted to do; rafting, visit temples and the rice paddies. That was until... we found the wonderful Yoga Barn.

'A little piece of tranquillity n the heart of Ubud'

Immediately we fell in love with the jungly location and never ending list of classes on offer; Yin Yang, Hatha, Sound healing, Esctatic dance, take your pick.

We decided on an unlimited pass for seven days, creating our own little yoga retreat.

We ended up going to an average of 3 classes a day, normally including at least one Yoga and one meditation class. Aside from our beloved sound healing with White Star and Esctatic dance, a few of our favourite classes were Vinyasa Flow (with Carlos; yoga to a ukele, why not?), Crystal Bowl Mediation and Sunday Dance.... a long explanation of each will be boring unless you are here, so maybe start saving and head over to Bali and the Yoga Barn?

ALSO even if you don't like yoga... the FOOD was the best we've had on our trip so far. All organic, eco friendly and vegetarian... The Little K has managed to create a recipe for the perfect Dhal and Chapati, or feta omelette wrap, simply amazing.

Slack lining at the YB

BIG LOVE FROM BAAAAAAAALI, heading to the gilis tomorrow xxxxx

Emergency blogspot!: Sound healing/Ecstatic dance in Ubud

As we sat in what has become our local in Ubud, an Eco-friendly and veggie-friendly cafe (of which you'll find in copious supply here), we couldn't stop smiling at how amazing our day, and our lives in general are! We had to tell the world/our mums are probably the only ones guaranteed to read this post.

(We are at one with nature hahaha) but really, we are asked to free our minds and press our heads to the ground in thanks to Mother Nature but at the yoga barn, it doesn't seem so silly! Trust.

We had just finished an ecstatic dance class!!! Probably the best kind of meditation that anyone who loves to party should be able to relate to! It's a wild, bare-foot, free-for-all dance party! All the best bits of going out and none of the crap; no snogging, no dolling up, no judgment (sports bra and saggy leggings combo is considered a 10/10). Definitely the best dance moves in Ubud. There's no chatting, just letting your body feel he music and go wild and shout or sing if you want! Anything goes!

The perfect end to a perfect day.

After vinyasa flow that morning, we headed to 'sound healing' - once again, incredible!!! Three of what you might consider full-on hippies (yes, one did introduce herself as white star) played music, sang, blessed us as all the beings in the East, West, North and South by exhaling the Tobacco from her pipe, with water and with crystals. Mm hmm, indeed we were crying by the end as we sang 'we are a circle' holding everyone in the class.

Nusa Lembongan

Possibly the sweetest island you will ever see.

About an hour on a slow boat away for Sanur, but it could not be more different! With no stalls of clothes, or even cars on the island, the only thing between our room and the sea was the sea wall - amazing!

 

 We spent our days with juice and yoga (where we once again befriended two middle-aged women who taught us a little about the island as they own property over here) by the beach, along with snorkeling with Manta Rays (much bigger then we remember from South Africa!!!!!) and surfing Lacerations (a surf break out to sea.... green waves and everything CHECK US OUT).  It's really sweet how the kids out here have so much more freedom than back home but are then again, so much safer as everyone seems to look after them.  For example, our surf instructor's boat took out a couple of the local kids! They were squealing with delight every time they caught a wave and I bet their parents weren't at all worried about where they were.

 Scooting around the mangroves was probably the most unsteady few hours of our life, but cool way to see the island without a painfully long walk... hilarious AND practical.

 Snorkelling ^ lol at the honeymoon shots.

Only in Bali.... not enough money for the change so got a chocolate bar instead, perfect.

Probably the best sunsets I have seen in my life! 5 days was not long enough!

Peace and love from Bali,
Jod + Meg xxx

Kuta + Uluwatu (Bali) PARDY

We have arrived in Bali! (well we have been here for nearly two weeks, but the internet is about as slow as everything else on Bali time so we have been struggling to update)

On our first night in Kuta, it was safe to say that we were terrified... we arrived in the dark, got completely ripped off for a taxi (30 dollars when it should have been 6, but he followed us around and into the toilet so what could we do), and then locked ourselves away into a crepe shop of all places, to hide forever.

HOWEVER, after a brave walk down a mysterious dark alley, we arrived in the perfectly fine, and equally hilarious Poppies Lane 2. We wandered outside and realised that Kuta was the Aiya Napa of Bali, with Bounty and Skygarden night clubs handing out free drinks to 'international guests' - free drinks for being on holiday? safe to say we got carried away!

The following night we were ready.... 9pm at Sky Garden for drinks and THE BEST dance in Sky Dome with the locals. We stayed at Gora Beach Inn... after you get over the scary exterior of a dingy car park, the inside is really sweet, for less then 5$ a night we had a room overlooking the pool and banana jaffles for breakfast! Pretty perfect as an escape from the streets of  'Transport!! Transport!!' and 'Mushrooms???'

After we had enjoyed the nightlife in Kuta, as well as hiring surfboards for just one day, we quickly plotted our escape to nicer surroundings; Uluwatu. We stayed near Padang Padang beach, which is beautiful! White sand, blue sea and the rest... though i'm pretty sure we spotted a few comodo dragons!!!!!!!! As we arrived on a Sunday we headed to the Single Fin Party at Uluwatu beach; there was an amazing local band and every traveler was keen to drukenly chat to you about Bali and their love for surfing.

We spent our days either chilling on the beach with a Nasi Goreng (Pot noodle with an egg on the top) or at the Temple, with the monkeys............ THAT ATTACKED US! Absolutely terrifying; the monkeys jumped out the trees, bared their fangs at us and started climbing up Jodie skirt.... our screaming did NOT help but was rather entertaining for the locals.... "You no like monkey???"

^^(After being asked SO many times for photos with various foreign people because we are English, we have started asking for photos back, with hilarious results hahahaha)

In Uluwatu, we spent our mornings taking part in the yoga classes at Mu, a hotel near where we were staying. It was SO NICE! The teacher was really cool, tanned, told us we were beautiful in our sweatiest times and loved everything about Bali - we would definitely recommended this class! It was quite pricey at 100,0000 for an hour but definitely worth the money, we spent the whole day feeling relaxed and stretchy.

One day after class we befriended a 60 year old french man (why are our mates always about a thousand years old) and we gave both of us a lift home on his moped whilst telling us which surf competition he was organizing that day.... hilarious.

Happy Travels xxx