Honeymoon Part 1: Ubud Edition

I’ve been having a hard time getting back into the swing of my blog.  It could be the jet lag…we’ve been totally wiped out!  Poor Courtney actually got an intestinal bug of some sort and was just about as sick as I’ve seen him– not even able to eat this past week.  We’re really just now getting back to normal, and now he’s off to South Carolina for work!

I’ve caught a bit of a bug myself… a travel bug.  Whenever I go abroad I get the urge to travel more.  These two week stints just aren’t enough!  I must find a way to travel for extended periods while remaining gainfully employed.  I’m thinking my options are either to find a way to clone myself or get a job with Lonely Planet, which I imagine are equally difficult prospects.   Regardless, with our recent Indonesian adventures, I’ve now knocked all but two continents off my bucket list.

Bali was a truly beautiful place.  It’s pretty amazing because the island is only the size of Delaware, but you drive a couple of hours and feel like you’re in a completely different land.  We arrived in the cultural center of Ubud at about 2:00AM.  I didn’t regret for a second the decision to go straight to our private Villa at Kajane Mua, it was the perfect place to wake up the first day of our honeymoon.  I could get used to gourmet breakfasts delivered with freshly blended juices, and to being called Miss. Johanna.

Our second day we took a course in Balinese cooking, which I will get into more detail on in the ‘food edition’.  But the trip to the market was an experience in itself.  When we went the previous afternoon, the only customers were tourists like ourselves, bartering for cheap watches, sunglasses and trinkets to bring home.  But the early morning crew is cab drivers and shop owners looking to buy offerings and housewives shopping for the ingredients for the day’s meal, which is generally cooked once mid morning and eaten throughout the day with rice.

The next morning we must leave our villa and head to the homestay that we have reserved for our final night in Ubud, hoping to get the true cultural experience of staying with a Balinese family.   Traditional Balinese complexes includes a family temple, a sleeping pavilion for the head of the family and a number of guest pavilions surrounding courtyards.  We stayed in one of the guest pavilions, which in this case were all rented out to tourists like ourselves who are looking for a cheap place to stay.  The beds smelled like cat urine and this ‘villa’ resembled a jail cell, but the grounds were quite beautiful and the family very nice and accommodating, so for < $20 a night we really couldn’t complain.  Except for the rooster who must have also had jet lag and cock-a-doodle-dooed from midnight straight on through dawn.  That I will complain about.

Our final day in Ubud is well spent with spa treatments and yoga.  We get massages (Courtney’s first professional massage) with a body scrub and yogurt rub.  Then we head to the Yoga Barn for what had to have been the best yoga class of my life.  The open-air studio is almost like a stilted tree house; the breeze feels amazing and you have a view out over rice paddies.  The teacher is also phenomenal and really focuses on the mental and spiritual aspects of yoga, which is something that is too often overlooked in classes in the states that tend to emphasize changing your body over changing your mind.  Ultimately, I think I could have spent at least a week just in Ubud and the surrounding areas, seeing the sites, doing yoga, and just chilling out at night to the live music at the little cafes.

Johanna