Onward to the island of Bali, Indonesia. The town of Ubud in the central part of the island north of the airport was our first destination.

Neil and I had each visited Bali in the early nineties and both stayed in Ubud as well as other places on the island approximately 30 years ago. You can’t help but compare and reminisce about what it was before. We remember staying in little guest houses out in the middle of the rice paddies in the center of Ubud. Those rural places are now a dense commercial area. We remember the open air airport that is now thoroughly enclosed and modern and full of storefronts trying to see you SIM cards and transportation. And we remember that you could walk safely in the streets of Ubud with only a few cars occasionally passing. Now it was solid traffic from the airport to the center of town (and it took us 1 hour and 45 minutes to go the 25 miles from airport to hotel).  But then I reflected on how much Maui has changed in the 28 years I’ve lived here and I know that everything changes in both positive and negative ways.

Maui is still magical to me and Bali is still a magical island as we explored it deeper.

The first wonderful thing was that our hotel, Ubud Luweh, which Neil had booked online, is a guest house right out in the middle of the rice paddies. We had an end room and were able to open our windows to a view of newly planted rice paddies bordering the guest house.

So what was the negative?  The guest house was 4 km away from downtown Ubud and too far to walk to any restaurants. We shared a taxi with 2 other guests into the center of town our first night for a local Balinese dinner. We walked around the corner to view the Pura Tamam Saraswati water temple. The positive is that it was absolutely beautifully lit and looks very well maintained. The negative is that open air restaurants are now inserted into the edge of the temple grounds and while we were there, loud piped music (non Balinese) started to play and a synchronized multicolor light show began. This formerly sweet beautiful sacred water temple now reminded us of garish Las Vegas. Neil pointed at the sign that was asking visitors to respect the Balinese culture. We just shook our heads at each other.

Our room was lovely with a king size bed complete with mosquito net. It had beautiful Balinese furniture including a large wardrobe. We settled and were soon in Dreamland. 

Saturday, October 14, Day 1  Planning Day

We woke to the sunrise coming in our windows over the rice patties. We watched the swallows swooping over the rice at dawn (and later at dusk) feeding on the mosquitoes. (The bats took over the night shift.) They can have all the mosquitoes they want! And they must do a good job because we were not bothered by insects at all.

The hotel included breakfast. The manager offered us the menu the night before at check in to make our selections for the following morning. They have 5 choices including selections of both Western and Indonesian breakfasts. Neil chose nasi goreng, fried rice and egg, and I chose Mei Goreng, fried noodles and egg. They cooked it fresh for us when we arrived for breakfast in the morning and it was delicious. We had fresh juice and fresh fruit and a lovely cup of tea to accompany it. 

This first day, we planned to take relax and do some planning for what we wanted to see. The manager arranged for a driver to come and meet with us to coordinate a trip to the East side of Bali for the following day. We set up contact info on WhatsApp and then our driver Wayan called later to request our tour move to Monday.

Google maps works even in Bali, almost. It showed an ACK Chicken restaurant right near us by following a path through the rice patties and along a narrow alley across the stream. We thought that would be great for lunch and a fun little exploration. We found our way to the street going the most direct route through canyon-like sidewalk alleys but then we started going left and right looking for the restaurant. We finally were able to ask someone and they said oh no, they moved another kilometer down. With it being so hot, we decided to just go back to our room and eat some of our snack supply for lunch.

Late afternoon seemed the right time for dip in the pool. The water was warm and refreshing.

We decided to rent a motorbike for two days so we would have transportation into town for dinners and we could do some touring around the Ubud area on our own for Sunday. Somehow our request to the manager was lost in translation and the motorbike did not appear that evening and by the time they called for it, everyone had left the office so we wouldn’t get it until 8:30 the morning. We decided to try again to find the ACK Chicken restaurant. Rather than go to the street and walk a kilometer dodging traffic, we walked a dirt path among the rice patties as the sun was setting. The light was beautiful for photos. Our path eventually got to the main road that basically has no sidewalks and is full of traffic. We found the ACK which turned out to be a tiny open air KFC type restaurant. We later found that it’s a chain all through the island.

The walk back was the real adventure of the night along the busy street with 2 way traffic and sections of no sidewalk with large open drops. So glad we had our flashlights.