Onto Ubud

Today is a bit of a transit day for us as we have our driver picking us up at 11am to head on over to Ubud with a few pit stops planned along the way. It’s been quite humid so far today, more so than usual – we all woke up relatively early and made our way on foot out for breakfast at a cute little café down the road. Pete really surprised me with his meal choice of fruit pancakes this morning, usually he is all about the pancakes topped with ice-cream & yummy unhealthy stuff, not so much the fruit - I was very impressed but not influenced as I smashed down a good ol’ big breakkie!

After breakfast we quickly made our way back to our villa, packed the remainder of our bags and loaded on into our transport vans ready for Ubud – we needed more than one due to our luggage so Allan, Ian & Tracey were in one and Pete, Nat & myself in the other.

Our first stop was at a massive swing. Basically it’s in a bit of a rainforest location with a few swings you can sit on and be pushed really high so that you are soaring over a cliff edge

amongst the trees – it's honestly the most serine thing I have ever done & would highly recommend anyone going to Bali to do this!

We then made our way to a lovely waterfall that was about an hour further down the road. Unfortunately, our driver kept wanting us to make pit stops at all these other random places - jewellery making, arts centre etc We kept telling him we weren’t interested & just need to follow our parents van (because we really weren’t into it and it is honestly that humid we just wanted to get to the waterfall and have a swim!) but he decided to pull up at an arts centre anyway, gah. We hopped out, reluctantly and then Allan flew over to our driver and blew up at him for being told exactly where we were going but choosing to decide for us anyway….let’s just say it was a very awkward ride over to the waterfall from there.

Once we got to the waterfall it was so beautiful, there were little market stalls everywhere and a huge amount of rather steep steps we needed to walk down (& of course back up) in order to get to the waterfall. The view from the top of the stairs was incredible and we could hear the water from the falls rushing through, I honestly couldn’t wait to get down there and have a nice dip in the cool water. Once we made our way down to the bottom we had a nice swim, took some happy snaps around the area, dried off then made our long trek back up the dreaded stairs..If I wasn’t fit before this holiday I definitely should be going home ha

We decided to stop off just on top of the stairs and have lunch at this cute little café overlooking the waterfall. It was soo lovely, the food was great, the view was amazing & our waitress was the nicest little Balinese girl. She spent a ton of time with us at our table, just having a chat to us & teaching us some Balinese in exchange for us teaching her a bit of English (although she was already very good at speaking it!) It was just lovely.

I bought a nice little tank top on our way back to the van from the market stalls, and we came across some cute little puppies that we just HAD to cuddle before leaving, then onto Ubud. Once we arrived at our accomodation, we were greeted at Reception by the loveliest of workers right as we stepped out of the van - all offering to take our luggage so we didn’t have to carry them around to the villa which was about a 5 minute walk away. At the Reception area, we had some alcoholic beverages waiting for us & everyone was offered a quick shoulder/neck massage whilst we waited for our villa to be ready. I truly felt like royalty! Lol

After we checked into our villas (which are also beautiful) we made our way back out to Reception to book in some massages for the

following day then walked into the centre of town for some drinks and dinner. We stopped in at a few local restuarants/bars - the thing I like most about Bali so far, is that everywhere you can stop in to have drinks or food there are just these casual as chill out areas where you can sit on bean bags, or relax in lovely outdoor seating with beautiful lights & coloured lanterns. It just makes the atmosphere so much more relaxing!

Just before heading out to dinner, I decided I needed a quick stop at the loo. I followed Ian, past this cute little moat filled with live fish swimming around and out to the back to use the toilet. I asked Ian to wait for me to go to the toilet so I wasn’t walking back on my own & I’m glad I did because the lock on the door got stuck and I couldn’t get out of the bathroom, ah! Haha it was so funny, but eventually I was free after near panicking that my last moments on earth would be in a public toilet.

We then ended up eating dinner at a little Italian place, the food wasn’t actually that great & I had ordered a martini but when they bought it out it was literally just the martini glass mixture with no actual alcohol in it. Definitely a bit of translation issue there, so I had it returned & swapped for a coca-cola but they made us pay for both anyway...

After dinner we made our way back to our villas for some night swims then onto bed ready for more adventures tomorrow