Blogs from Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, Asia - page 48

Helloha!! We have left the Gili Islands! What an achievement! We have now arrived in Ubud - Bali. We have 10 more days left in Indonesia before flying back to Bangkok from Jakarta so we are taking the slow and scenic route by bus to cross the whole of Java. Our one months stay on Gili Air was great and we really felt very comfortable around everyone there.. but all good things come to an end.. We also still wanted to see Java so it was a wise decision to move on. I will give it another try to upload some pictures but even Bali internet isn't the greatest so it might just be a few pics only. More to come when I get back! Ciao! XX ... read more

Well, it's been exactly 6 months abroad now. I left my job 8 months ago and spent some time in the US before and over Christmas/New Year's. Part 1: South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile), Part 2: Asia (Thailand, Vietnam), Part 3 Australasia (Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia). Here I will briefly sum up part 3 as I have done with the other sections, but I will also sum up my final impressions, since this is "supposedly" the end. New Zealand may have to be the winner for natural beauty. This is extremely tough to make the call on, but it does seem everyone is asking me for my favorite. Every turn in the south island seemed to hold something completely new and still astonishing. The people were warm and easy to be a quick friend. The attitude ... read more

A yoga teacher training program brought me to Bali. It was a one month intensive and they weren't kidding about the intensive. To my surprise, it was more emotionally and spiritually challenging much more than physically challenging. I underwent everything from fasting on Thursdays, vows of silence, 4 am yoga classes, 6 am meditation daily, lack of sleep to a new diet (raw vegan only) that didn't work well with my body. The group was 40 women and 1 male....I had a roommate and 6 women in the house. Privacy was rare and estrogen was high. Week 3 was a digestive cleanse entailing 80 pills a day (40 in the morning and 40 at night) which completely weakened my system while I was still doing hard physical yoga classes. This cleanse was worse for others than ... read more

The next time and only other time I had a day and a half off, I spent my time a little differently from climbing the volcano. I opted to check into a spa and be pampered, not only a spa, but one of the top in the world. My faithful companion, Robin was much more eager to join me this time. We kept with the healthy theme we'd been livng, but were so excited to have cooked vegetarian food, verses raw we have at the yoga retreat. We had massages, facials, delicious food and simply relaxed in the most gorgeous tropical setting. Here, I found a slice of heaven! ... read more

Sorry its been so long since i sent a blog but the place where i have been for the last 12 days has had pretty suspect internet as well as being very costly so i just decided to skip it until i got to a place that was much easier to send pics etc. But with all that I had a great time in the Gilis. I mostly stayed on the biggest one (Trawangan) the biggest and most geared toward backpackers/people who wanted to party (i.e Me!) and i made full use of all its facilities (i.e bars) Yes it has been a pretty hazy few days to say the least. I did get something other then getting drunk and dancing accomplished. The islands were really great for snorkeling and I pretty much did that on ... read more