Kuta, Ubud and Jimbaran Bay

Bali has a reputation for beautiful beaches with great surf, Indonesian arts, crafts and culture – and of course the legendary Balinese hospitality. Convincing reasons to visit! As well, this small island is one of the few areas in Indonesia that is extremely low risk for Malaria – a fact which is extremely important for us since we decided to not take antimalarials!!!

The majority of Balinese people are of Hindu religion – which was an interesting change from the dominance of Buddhism that we saw in Thailand. It was great for us all to learn a bit about the Hindu religion. Every household in Bali has a personal temple which is used for offerings and prayers. We loved getting to experience the daily rituals which always involved morning offerings consisting of banana leaves, flowers, mints or crackers and sweet incense.

Mossy temple wall

Banana leaf offererings and incense

Batik fabrics

Offering with an animal cracker

A tray full of the morning offerings

Bali is located quite a bit farther south than Thailand, which meant much lower humidity and cooler temperatures. This was a welcome change from the hot days and nights in Chiang Mai!

Our first few days in Bali were spent in Kuta surfing and boogie boarding. This was a convenient area to start with since it’s located close to the Denpasar airport where we arrived – but Kuta is definitely a little too crazy busy and touristy for our liking!

The best part of our time in Kuta was to share an evening with the Rogers once again. It was great to see Kai and Vea’s huge smile when Tony snuck up behind them and pretended to be a vendor selling bracelets! We had a great afternoon and evening with the Rogers sharing more travel stories and lots more hugs before we left in separate directions the next day.

Surprise visit by the Rogers

Beach snuggles

Happy to be back on the beach

Balinese sunset – Kuta beach

Next we headed north and inland to a town called Ubud (this is where the movie Eat, Pray, Love was filmed). Ubud is filled with so much art, craft and culture – it’s definitely a much more authentic view of Bali than Kuta. The guesthouse we stayed at called ‘Den Den Mushi’ was run by a really nice family, and located just off the main busy street. It’s incredible how a narrow lane way can change the setting from a busy street to a quiet and tranquil residence. Family guesthouses are very common in Bali. Den Den Mushi was a large property which consisted of three generations of family living all together in separate houses – all sharing a common personal temple. We loved this idea of everyone living close together – as this of course fits right into how we live back home (although we consider Big Hubley lake as our personal temple)!!!

Floating flowers – Ubud

Street vendor – Ubud

Sunday afternoon in Ubud

Monkey forest – Ubud

Tinted alley way windows

Narrow alley ways

Silver jewelry shop

While in Ubud, we quickly immersed ourselves into the Balinese art groove with Kari and Vea enrolling in a silversmith class while Norrie and Kai took up a Balinese woodcarving class. Grandpa would have loved to see Kai and Norrie covered in shavings from the beautiful piece of Hibiscus wood they carved!

Ubud was also amazing for authentic Indonesian Cuisine. We enjoyed incredible (and cheap!) meals at some wonderful restaurants – and even found some Balinese wine that was pretty decent!!! Kai loved how most Indonesian dishes come with a fried egg on top (not that he doesn’t consume enough eggs already at breakfast). We only had one unfortunate culinary experience that left a bad taste in our mouth. While sitting at one of our favourite outdoor restaurants we noticed people walking by wearing masks while a huge plume of smoke lofted in the near distance! Kari quickly asked the server what was going on… who explained that is was part of the ‘normal’ chemical mosquito control spraying all over Ubud! With nowhere to run, we found a sheltered corner in the back of the restaurant and masked our face with our shirts while fanning our faces with menus – but the chemical smoke was everywhere. We left the restaurant with a lost appetite for dinner and retreated to our guest house to eat instant noodles inside!!! It was shocking for us to see chemical spraying in Ubud since it has such a reputation as being an organic health conscious town. We later found out this mosquito control happens all over Bali at this time of the year. Maybe this is why there’s such a low risk of Malaria in Bali!!!

One place in Bali we were all very excited to visit was a very unique school called ‘Green School.’ We learned a lot about this school before leaving Canada watching news reports and also viewing an inspiring TED talk by John Hardy about it. We hoped to enrol in a 3-day family camp at Greenschool, but unfortunately the dates did not work out for us – so instead we booked an afternoon tour. It was an incredible experience to visit this school and see first hand the amazing architecture of the buildings made entirely of Bamboo.

Bamboo pillars with painting on floor

Green School notebook

Classroom clock at Green School

After Ubud we decided to get back to the coast again and arrived at a beach town called Seminyak. Our afternoon on the beach here turned out to be a wonderful ‘world school’ moment for Kai and Vea. At around 4pm it seemed that all the local families gathered for Sunday afternoon beach time. Kai (with a bit of a push from Kari) joined in on a spontaneous beach soccer game that was set up directly in front of us by many older Balinese boys. While Kai was playing soccer, Vea joined in with a couple of local girls sandcastle building and later enjoying some puppy-time with one of the families that brought their 3 month old Pomsky puppies to the beach! Kari enjoyed chatting with all the local Mom’s and sharing in their Sunday afternoon family stories, while Norrie of course was enjoying documenting everything with his camera!!!

Pomsky beach puppy

Swingin high

Soccer camp training

Pickup beach soccer game

Our last couple of night’s in Bali were spent further south on the coast in Jimbaran Bay – famous for it’s seafood restaurants and spectacular sunsets. At dusk every day, these beachside restaurants set up tables with candlelight right on the sand by the shore. Smoke is everywhere from the grilling of the seafood with coconut shells to spike their fires all night long. We played lots of mini soccer games (Kai found a great field at one of the resorts that we ‘borrowed’), swimming in the network of resort pools (which brought on incredible hide-and-seek games between all of us in the water) and enjoying the sensational Bali sunsets!!!

Sunset dinner at Jimbaran Bay

Happy hour Jimbaran Bay

Sunset over Jimbaran Bay

Grilling fish at Jimbaran Seafood restaurants

Balinese dance show

My mobile office – Jimbaran Bay

We’ve been travelling in Southeast Asia for a bit over 6 weeks now, and we’ve truly enjoyed the culture and cuisine. It’s been demanding travelling here with Kai and Vea though. The cities we’ve visited are often very chaotic with crazy traffic and busy markets. We’ve been so careful with not drinking the water and watching what we eat – and we’re quite proud to say that none of us have become sick while travelling here!!!

Now we’re looking forward to the next chapter of our travels on to the Mauritius Islands en route to Africa!

All 4 now!