#writerlife: lotus pond

Day 8

Waking up in Ubud is unreal. By now, I have totally leaned into the culture here. I know that the smiles everyone gives me is genuine. I know that the happiness of this hard-working people is core-deep. Living outside of the confines of capitalism has caused the Balinese people to embrace simple pleasures; there is no guilt exchanged for happiness, there is no price to pay for a favor, there are no ulterior motives for kind gestures. They just are - each moment, each step, each smile.

It's impossible not to get sucked into the bliss when this is what you are looking at each day:

We all meet up over breakfast and debate about if we want to go on a 5-hour drive to tour local temples and mountains. The general consensus, as we are staring out from the open-air dining area at this landscape, is no. There is an anti-gravity yoga class being held that morning that I am dying to try, Steph and PJ decide to go white water rafting, and Andrew heads to the glass-encased gym.

I wind up with some heavenly time alone that I spend writing, and eventually grab my book to play around in the hot, warm, and cool "plunges" outside of the gym so I can read, but also take pictures of my book (because #writerlife).

Our villa has an amazing outdoor dining area, and my dad has befriended the chef, so we opt to have an amazing French-fusion meal prepared for us there.

I've officially adopted Ubud as my home: there is almost no way anyone is going to drag me onto a plane away from this place.

#writerlife

Bali Bound: Day 8

Day 8 Waking up in Ubud is unreal. By now, I have totally leaned into the culture here. I know that the smiles everyone gives me is genu...

Day 6

It's our last day in Jimbaran. The beach stretches on for miles, the tepid pool water is as blue as the sky (which is almost definitely what heaven looks like), and the sun is slowly warming the new day's air. I keep thinking it, and I keep waiting for the shock to wear off, but this really is paradise. No amount of time can diminish my awe.

We decide against another road trip and instead spend the day playing tennis, doing yoga, and having a karma cleansing and blessing performed by a Hindu priest.

Day 7

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

Good morning, Bali! It's a bittersweet morning: we keep hearing that our next destination, Ubud, is going to be even nicer than Jimbaran Bay, but that's impossible. I'm really going to miss Jimbaran. I've hit that point in the trip where I'm really thankful I don't have to go home yet. I'm finally falling into a rhythm with it here: the laid back lifestyle, kind smiles, the belly-laughter.

We take a car and head towards Ubud. We do have one stop before we get there: a healer named Tjokorda Gede Rai. He is a very famous healer, known for his royal lineage and his effective methods.

We walk through a garden of stone statues and reach a pavilion with an old man sitting on a rug. Behind him is a table full of fruit, incense, and jars of different colored liquids. There is a line of quite a few women, all waiting to be healed. We sit down and wait while they take their turns.

He sits on a chair behind each person and pokes at their head, touching different spots and gauging their response to pain. Each woman is different. Some wince at certain spots, some react as if he's using a scalding hot poker or cracking their skulls open. Each spot corresponds to a different ailment. He then has them lay out on the rug and he uses a stick to poke their toes. This gives him a deeper understanding of the problem going on. He then uses energy healing and meridian work to open chakras and improve circulation. When he comes back to the toes and pokes them again, the pain is gone. It's pretty miraculous to watch.

My experience was unfortunately uneventful; he said he couldn't find anything to heal on me. That was fine. If anything, it was good to hear.

We then went out to lunch and stopped at a local wood carving shop. Ubud is known for being where the artists are: wood carvings, stone carvings, painting, silver and gold. The craftsmanship is astonishing. Even the smallest details are carved out meticulously. We pick out a few pieces that we really love and get our first taste of bargaining. It's not so much bargaining, though, as just convincing the person to tell you what the best price he can do is, but it's fun all the same.

Finally, we head back to the hotel. Ubud is one of the greenest places I've seen in my life. It's an eyefull of vibrant rice patties and tropical forests between the more urban-feeling streets. The more incredible part of Ubud, though, is the baffling construction of the town.

We drive down a street and see nothing but wall-to-wall shops and houses. Every so often, we'd be able to see a glimpse of a rice field, but we definitely have the impression of a crowded town center. We see a small sign for our hotel: Four Seasons Sayan, but on either side of the sign are buildings that are distinctly not part of the hotel. It's just a driveway.

Before I can even get the joke out "wait - where is the hotel!?" the narrow driveway begins to slope down and turn. We circle downwards, but we never go underground - we are zig zagging down the side of a steep hill as if the road had been perched on the edge the whole time without our knowing. We pull up to the entrance of the hotel, but there is no hotel - we are entering from what is essentially the roof of the lobby.

There is a bridge that connects the driveway to a lotus pond, surrounding a staircase that spirals down into the lobby. We go down, and half of the hotel is wide open to a breathtaking landscape of the hill that the hotel is carved into. It's difficult to explain just how the architecture is laid out, but it follows the curves and shelves of the rice patties and natural topography. It's surreal.

Bridge connecting driveway to hotel

View from the lobby of the hotel

Rooftop lotus pond

View from lobby with an Indonesian xylophone

Andrew playing a xylophone

We are greeted by the hotel staff, including the managers and the executive chef, who is French. I tend to collect languages, and was thrilled to use my extensive (read: limited) Indonesian and the French I've learned in school and during my travels. My brain is running around at top speed saying all the things in all the languages I knew like a kid at a park about to scrape her knee. It was linguistic bliss.

We settle down into our villa, which was also entered from the top and wide open on an entire side of the structure. There's like a 0% chance I will ever leave this place. Cue the passport burning.