Scooting in Bali

To make it easier to get around in Ubud, we rented a scooter for a very reasonable price of about $4usd/day.  We kept it a few extra days to explore the Northern and Eastern parts of the island and experience a different side of Bali.

Our first destination was Munduk, a small village to the North, on the edge of what seems to be a collapsed crater.  Before leaving, we identified two possible hotels and plotted them on the iPhone.  When we "arrived", we were in the middle of nowhere.. there were no hotels or villages, and the supposed "road" seemed to be an extremely narrow dirt path going down.  Not knowing any better, we attempted to take the bike down the narrow footpath, but doubled back after 10 minutes figuring it can't be right.  Lucky for us, we must have looked really lost at the main road, some friendly locals driving by in a truck stopped and asked us what we were looking for.  They kindly pointed us in the right direction and we quickly found our way to Munduk and the proper location of the hotel… moral of the story: GPS coordinates are not always right! ;)

From Munduk, we explored the rice fields and scenery in the area.  We let ourselves get lost and (again) ended up on another super narrow path.  This path was beautiful though as it went through the rice fields and had a trickling stream on the side.

 

On the way to Muduk, we also stopped in Bedugul to see the local temple on the lake.

 

The next day we continued North to the coast, then veered East toward Tulamben.  We had only planned to stay a night or two here, but enjoyed it so much that we stayed 5 nights.  This gave us plenty of time to scuba and snorkel around the USS Liberty shipwreck, and learn to freedive (more pics/details to come, in future posts).

 

After Tulamben, we originally intended to do a 2 hour hike of Mount Batur (a volcano with a nice view of Bali and Lombok).  Unfortunately, a bit of research revealed several accounts of horror stories where tourists attempting to hike it on their own were getting hurt.  These were not typical hiking-related injuries - in recent months, tourists have actually been beat up by aggressive locals who have created a monopolistic Mount-Batur-Tour-Guides Gang in the area.  They won't allow any tourist to pass without paying (around $20/person) and, from the stories we've read, they've repeatedly resorted to agressive verbal abuse, shoving, punching, and kicking until the tourists give up and leave the area.  Turned off by these stories, we didn't want to support this behaviour in any way, so we bypassed the volcano and went directly back to Ubud.  Hopefully they will put a stop to this soon as it's a bit of a shame - the pictures of the hike look amazing.

Our short scooter loop was great and definitely one of our Bali highlights!  We saw a lot of rice fields, passed through small villages, and saw locals in their daily routines.  Here are a few more random pics from the trip :)

 

Silversmithing in Ubud

In addition to rice fields and spirituality, Ubud is also known as the artistic centre of Bali.  Streets here are lined with the many artisan stores of painters, sculptors, glass blowers, and silversmiths.  We found a silversmith that offered classes and, of course, we just had to take it!  

Choosing a Pattern

We wanted to take the class as a learning experience so when we arrived, we had no clue what to expect or what we wanted to make.  They served us refreshments and gave us some books of jewellery designs to browse through for ideas.  We both decided to make pendants - Jen picked a "Ying Yang Tree" and Dom decided to create his own design by mixing a few ideas from the books.

Cutting the Pattern into Silver

After drawing the actual-sized design on paper, the design it is glued onto a pressed silver plate.  Holes are punched into the areas that will be removed and we used these holes as the starting points for the process of carefully cutting out the design using a super small saw.

Smoothing

After cutting, the next step is to clean up and smooth out the raw edges using a bunch of super small files.

Blow Torching

The next step was to use a foot-powered blow torch to burn off the paper and add a silver loop to the top of the pendant.

 

Polishing

The last step involved using a range of different sand paper grits to gradually grind, smooth out, and polish the pendant.

 

Ta Da!!

They gave us a cord to loop the pendant onto and voila - we got to admire the fruit of our labor!  We were both quite happy with how our designs turned out.  It was a fun day!

 

Eat Pray Love Ubud

The popularity of Bali has boomed in recent years due to the vastly popular book and movie "Eat Pray Love", featuring Julia Roberts.  Although the movie isn't just about Bali, we can definitely say that the title words rang true with us - we absolutely loved the people, atmosphere, and food in the spiritual centre of Ubud, Bali. 

We started our adventure in Bali with 2 days in Kuta - a loud, over-commercialized city near the airport which.. we don't really recommend unless you like noise, being overcharged, or beaches littered with garbage..

PRAY
As part of our world trip, we wanted to go somewhere where we could learn and practice Yoga.  After some research, we found a place called The Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali, so we headed there to check out the studio and immediately signed ourselves up for the 20-class pass (which they allowed us to share between the 2 of us).  The atmosphere of this place is unlike any other yoga studio we've ever seen (not that we've done a lot of yoga in the past...).  Nestled in a serene area, the huge windows of the lower studio open up to a lotus pond, while the upper studio overlooks the surrounding rice fields… to top it off, the studio also features a quiet organic cafe and spa nestled amongst the vegetation.

We mainly did the typical Vinyasa Flow classes, but they also offer a huge selection of specialty classes to choose from.  We decided to try some, including:
  • Anusara Therapeutics - focuses on alignment to relieve and heal musculo-skeletal aches and chronic pain in knees, neck, feet, lower back, and wrists.
  • Sukshma Yoga - uses breath and micro movements to provide subtle exercise to internal organs.  We learned to use our Yoga power to clean our breath without using mouthwash or brushing our teeth… ok, that one maybe a bit more far fetched, but we did learn a lot from the rest of that class :).
  • Acro Yoga - a fun class that combines yoga with pairs acrobatics.  A few more of these classes and we'd be set to join the Cirque Du Soleil.
  • Qi Gong - oriental movement meditation for cultivating internal energy.  Basically, you slap all the parts of your body… apparently it helps to stimulate blood flow.

Unlike the intense Power Yoga classes that we'd previously done in Calgary, we felt that Yoga Barn better understood and taught the essence of Yoga.  They continually reminded us that "Yoga is not about instant gratification.  It's a gradual process about yourself and having fun - it's not about power or pain".  They seem obvious statements to read, but are not always apparent when you participate in certain classes back home.

EAT
The food in Ubud in wonderful and cheap.  For around $5/pers/meal, we indulged ourselves in gourmet flavours and loved every meal. The restaurants here cater to every diet, from roasted suckling pig and hamburgers to vegetarian and raw vegan desserts.  To top it off, several restaurants even have outstanding views among the rice fields.

LOVE
Bali is typically know for its beaches and perfect surf waves.  The lesser known things are what we learned to love the most, particularly the rice fields.  You can actually find them all around Ubud, though most are hidden behind the various hotels, restaurants and shops lining the roads.  Venture just outside the centre of town and you'll be rewarded by the scenic beauty.  We did a few walks around town specifically to appreciate the rice fields and we were not disappointed.  

We were also fortunate enough to stay at a fairly inexpensive hotel ($33USD/night) that has an infinity pool that appears to flow right into the fields….wow.  Some of the luxury bungalow rooms ($55-$95USD/night) even have really nice balconies facing the rice fields.  For fun, we took a tour of some new villas belonging to the hotel next door - for $150USD/night you get an amazing 1 bedroom private villa with its own private pool.  It was definitely once of the nicest accommodations either of us had ever seen!  

We spent our last day at a spa where you can get a 2.5hour package (including a 60min massage, body scrub, body mask, flower bath, tea, and a cookie) for only about $28cad.

Aah, what's not to love about this place...

We absolutely loved our experience here and hope to return one day.  Hopefully, the real-estate and tourist booms don't destroy all of the things here that we came to appreciate so much.