First thing’s first: don’t take the fact that I hadn’t posted about Bali until now as some kind of testament that it wasn’t worth posting about. That honestly could not be further from the truth — Bali is beautiful!
I arrived on the Indonesian island in January, totally exhausted from an unnecessarily long flight between Ho Chi Minh, Kuala Lumpur, and finally, Denpasar (the airport in Bali). I was greeted at the airport by my mom (yay) and her driver, who had navigated the streets from Ubud to come get me. I was honestly SO excited to see my mom, guys. We’re really close and she had also been traveling through different countries around Southeast Asia, so I was really looking forward to meeting up with her and experiencing some of it together. Plus, when you’re tired, what’s better than having your mom there to take care of you?
I knew very little about Bali before I arrived there. Embarrassingly, I’ll admit that most of my assumptions came from Instagram. All I knew about Bali was that it was beautiful, there were some incredibly stunning villas that would be perfect to post about, and the place would (I thought) be completely overrun by the most beautiful Australians you’ve ever seen.
Ah yes, Instagram. Good stuff.
As it turns out, Bali isn’t really all about gorgeous Aussies and luxurious villas. You might be like ‘uh, Steph, yeah. Obviously. Bali is it’s own place and has it’s own culture and has so much more to offer than that.’ Well, dear readers, you are absolutely right.
Since I was staying with my mom, I joined her at a very sensible hotel, where we were literally the only ones staying there since it was the low (read: wet) season. The good news is, we had the pool to ourselves and never had to fight anyone for a lounge chair. The bad news is that it was raining, thundering, and lightning-ing (?) more than you’ve ever seen in your life.
That aside, we managed to find some dry times of day to scope out the island. We took a road trip north to Lovina Beach to dip our toes into the black sand, walked up to the most gorgeous twin waterfall, and stopped at a completely natural (and equally beautiful) hot springs to bathe in the warm waters. Outside of that, I also visited the famous Bali Swing (if you’re on Instagram, you know the one), shopped the local markets, attended a traditional Balinese dance show, and ate more Nasi Goreng (Indonesian fried rice) and Mie Goreng (fried noodles) than you could keep track of. Aand of course, I’m still constantly craving that even now.
Additionally, my mom and I braved a walk through the famous Monkey Forest. Our hotel was in the same area and the monkeys were, well, terrifying. Every morning I had to eat my breakfast before a monkey would notice and swing in to steal my pancake, and there were a few times where I had to lock myself in my room to avoid an encounter. They have teeth, people. Big ones. And they DO bite people all the time.
Anyways, more on the Monkey Forest later if you’d like to read about it! It was actually pretty funny… I was holding my breath what felt like the entire time, trying to keep an eye on all of the monkeys around me while also making sure not to actually make eye contact with any one of them (they can see that as aggression). Spoiler alert: I made it out unscathed, with absolutely no monkey bites. Maybe I’ll write a post on tips for exploring the area. Until then… here’s some photos from our road trip around the island:
