Bali & The Unanticipated Challenges.

Dear Wilson,

Sorry, I've been silent on the blogs lately. I haven't done a single blog for a while. Just being lazy. I will try to catch up a bit. 😀

Indonesia was great. A little underwhelming overall to be completely honest though. I guess we had super high expectations. We have learned that our preconceived ideas about a location are never what reality actually reveals. The first blog will cover our arrival and the much anticipated city of Ubud. So here is our story.

We landed at the airport in Denpasar, Indonesia. I was thinking we would exit like normal and leave the plane directly into the airport. Nope, that's not how they roll over here… We exited directly onto the runway/taxiway. Then we proceeded to load onto a bus like actual real life fucking sardines. Let me put this into perspective. If you had a 12 passenger van and put 36 people into it, that would be accurate on how packed the bus was. No bullshit. I could have licked the people around me and to be honest, my tongue isn't even that long… I said my tongue… Chill out on the assumptions, perverts… Also, for the record, I had no interest in licking anyone. It was a figure of speech. Anyway, we took about a 5 minute bus ride, then entered the airport area. I won't inflict you with boredom on the rest of the airport experience. I will just say that Bali airport isn't super fun to get through and is a bit overwhelming. 

Finally we met the guy for our rental car pick up. The vehicle was nice and we were ready to go. I asked the guy where the insurance card was just in case I got pulled over or you know… fly over a cliff and destroy the car. His response… "Oh no insurance on this car." Lmfao 🤣🤣🤣. Well, I guess I just drive with no insurance. What's the worst that can happen? Lol. So we loaded the luggage up and started our approximately 1.5 hour drive to Ubud. I had been driving it Thailand for 2 months so I was used to Asian driving scenarios at this point but I wasn't really prepared for how much more difficult it was to drive in Bali over Thailand. Bali is significantly more difficult to navigate. Traffic was truly astonishing around the airport area and it was quite stressful but we managed. In my mind, this was going to be the more "secluded" mountainous region of Bali with beautiful rice terraces everywhere. Well it turns out that I was right about the mountains and rice terraces. However, I was very wrong about the secluded city of Ubud. Holy fucking traffic batman… Weirdly, it wasn't really overrun with tourists. There were quite a few tourists but also sooooo many locals. I honestly don't know where the fuck everyone was going. Indonesia definitely wins for the most motorcycles per square mile. I thought Thailand had a lot of motorcycles until I came here. I was truly amazed while driving the suv. At any given time there would be motorcycles on all four sides of the vehicle. It was extremely congested with traffic whether it be on the street or the sidewalk. When I say sidewalk, I don't mean just pedestrians lol. Thousands of motorcycles use the sidewalk as an extension of the street. No exaggeration. Sidewalks are overrun with motorcycles. It's actually a pretty crazy thing to watch. For the record, I may seem negative when I write this but honestly, I live for these moments. I secretly love the difficult scenarios I put our family through. It's truly not fun in the moment but later I love the memories. It's a love/hate relationship where the hate is short lived and the love is a lasting memory. Weird, I know. It's just how I roll. 

We finally arrived at the Airbnb. It's dark and we are on a very dark road that goes through rice fields. Basically the middle of nowhere. We are staying on the significant outskirts of Ubud. We couldn't find the house so we had to call the host. His staff met us on the road with his scooter to show us the tiny pathway through the rice fields to the house. Our stay was not accessible by car so we had to park on the side of the road in the rice field. The Airbnb was about a 10 minute walk from our car. This sounds like a bad thing but I loved the adventure. I also secretly LOVED watching Erica and the kids' faces as we walked in pitch black darkness through the tiny rice field pathways to the house. Our only light was the scooter headlight of the young man that we followed to the house. That was a super cool experience for me. Erica was pretty much convinced that a tiger was going to eat her and the kids at any moment. Her fear made it even better for me, haha. 

We finally made it to our stay. We couldn't see much since it was so dark. The young man who's name was Komang, was very accommodating and helped show us around as much as he could. That was it for day 1. 

The next morning we woke up to a truly beautiful site. Our house was literally in the rice fields with the prettiest view we have ever had from an Airbnb. We saw locals working the fields right from our outdoor living room. Definitely the most tranquil Airbnb we have ever been in. 

Over the next few days we explored the area. Mostly shopping along the streets to be honest. We did a scenic drive through the mountains one day and had some of the worst food we've ever had lol. We visited some beautiful rice terraces and the kids got to go on a swing over a cliff. Bali has some truly postcard worthy views but that traffic though… I had mixed feelings about Bali after our first week. How much we liked the island was still undecided. 

That's pretty much it for Ubud. 😀