Week 11

Let’s start with this: I’m totally rocking the yoga pants!

This week it’s been a lot of relaxing, yoga, a bit of sightseeing and a lot of beer….!

I explored our neighborhood, found this lovely market with lovely fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and so much more. Here the people are so friendly and helpful not like the vendors on the street or beach who are very pushy. So this week I finally got all the stuff to cook my own meals for a change. So nice to cook again, I didn’t know how much I missed it until I did.

The beach here is a surfing spot, what means that the waves are so strong that you can’t swim. You can jump a little in the sea to cool of but no proper swimming. So me and Ola, this lovely girl that is staying at the same guesthouse, went to The W retreat & Spa for a day of swimming and relaxing. This retreat is ridiculously big with some amazing infinity pools. All we had to do is buy a drink and then swim the whole day for free. Now here is the part that’s going to sound unreal: The whole day it was cloudy and we were treated to some proper rains. Normally you would think that that is a bad thing, here it’s the opposite, so nice and refreshing, just perfect!

On Friday we were invited to a bbq at the co-working space were Stefan is a member. We invited our neighbors, Coredelle & Erica, very cool and relaxed couple from Atlanta, to come along. We had a great night! Good food, amazing people, after-party at some deluxe house with swimming pool and DJ and a after after party at the beach… The next day our host Ngurah took all four of us and on a day trip so I was very happy I skipped the after after party.

Ngurah took us first to the Taman Ayun Temple. This temple is close to the royal palace in Mengwi. It’s so special because it’s surrounded by an amazing garden (Taman Ayun, literally translated: Beautiful Garden)  so the king could have a romantic walk. After that he drove us up north, and up to about 1000 meters above sea level, for an amazing lunch with a view of the Gunung Batur, an active volcano at the Batur lake. The best thing after a good lunch is a great cup off coffee. Bali is famous for it’s kopi luwak coffee so a visit to a coffee plantation was the next stop. High up the mountains with a view on the rain forest (so beautiful because it had actually started raining) we got to greet the Luwak cats and see how they roast the beans by hand. This whole experience made the coffee even better! Last stop was a silver shop in Kuta owned by Ngurah’s cousin where we could see how all the pieces are hand crafted.

We ended this amazing weekend with some lazy chilling at the beach, going to the market, Stefan cooking for the four of us and sharing some beers and laughter with our other neighbors and Ngurah.