We miss you Ubud, Hello Sanur!
My very smart, science-y, and blunt-talking friend Tom told me and Kevin before we got here that there were parts of he and Sara’s recent experience in Ubud that felt “magical.” I clearly remember thinking that this statement was quite surprising coming from such a straight shooting person; however, that’s the only word I can think of to describe this place. Enchanting and Dazzling come close, but Magical takes the cake (or Kue, since we’re in Bali). Ubud is buzzy, laid-back, chaotic, flowing, friendly, anonymous, vibrant, serene, and utterly unique all at once.
Ubud (and all of Bali)’s overwhelming spirituality is also quite a presence to be in – every day, at the same time, every home, hotel, gas station and convenience store puts out its beautiful little offerings made of flowers and fruit and incense, and Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love (whatever it was preparatory travel reading) wasn’t joking when she said that there’s a ceremony for just about everything. We witnessed a ceremony our very first night for the celebration of a particularly special full moon that happens only about every two years, and the ceremony for the moon continued for the next two nights. Amazing to watch, not so amazing to try to scooter home though.
Before leaving Ubud, we saw the rice paddies with 10,000 other tourists, tried to figure out how we could bring home 65-120 lbs of magnificently beguiling home goods such as 6-foot-round mirrors, dream catchers, wooden statues, and cupboards carved out of kayaks, and ate about 4 pounds of barbecue spare ribs (“if the moon were made of ‘me, would ya eat it!?!?”) and pork at Naughty Nuri’s in a section of Ubud that we didn’t even know existed and which we highly recommend.
We split this morning and now are in a badass and way-too-awesome-for-how-much-we-spent villa in Sanur, a sleepy low-tide beach town about 17 miles away with neon-painted boats lining the entire coastline and just as much vendor intensity as we’ve experienced everywhere else. Sanur has been a great respite from the go-go-go that’s been our trip so far, but the pause was also unexpected as we thought we’d be spearfishing the whole leg with barely any time to actually enjoy the beach. Sadly,
rough waters cancelled our Spearfishing adventures for us both days (it was supposed to be a “weather call” but we’re pretty suspicious that “bad weather” on an otherwise sunny and brilliant day might mean “I have something better to do so eat my shorts, idiot American tourists who probably can’t even swim!” so we found other means of diversion; namely making friends with Suzy from the vendor carts and buying all of her Bintangs (see below for more on Suzi), going to an awesome thing called the Sindhu Night Market (picture your local small-town Church Carnival with somewhat sketchy and rinky dink rides, lots of food and strange crap for sale, and a general convivial atmosphere but replace the cotton candy and popcorn stands with fried duck and saté vendors) and eating a great deal of fried meats on a stick, laying out in the sun and playing in the glorious pool that we had all to ourselves because no one else was staying in our resort, and staying out way too late listening to an all-Balinese Beatles cover band at the local expat bar and drinking more Bintangs than one should drink in one day if one doesn’t want to be really sorry in the morning.
One or more of the above alternatives to spearfishing also most likely precipitated the 24 hours of me being miserably ill and not being able to do things except take naps, go to sleep at 6 p.m and complain that my “skin hurt” which is usually the gateway for some nasty bout of weeklong illness for me; luckily whatever this was, it was a 24 hour bug and after breaking into a hot sweat under my sheets at 4 a.m. I feel like a million bucks and am ready to go again! Except that I probably have Zika. The silver lining to feeling liek crap is that I got to feel like crap in the most beautiful, serene, and let-me-take-you-home-with-me accommodations ever; at about $150/night Avillion Villa Cinta was one of the more insanely awesome places we’ve ever stayed. We had an 800-square foot 2nd floor tower villa to ourselves, with 20 foot ceilings, a multi-room bathroom that is about as big as our house back home, and a wraparound porch with panoramic views of the ocean, the beach village, and the beautifully manicured grounds of Villa Cinta. The pool was to die for, and even more so during our stay since we were the Only. People. There. Heaven, just Heaven. Go right now. Tell them their spazzy guest Liz sent you. And get the coconut jam french toast delivered to you FOR FREE for breakfast while you’re at it.
We’ve established our new Sanur vendor hookup, Suzi, who lazered in on us within 30 seconds of being on the beach and assessed her market perfectly: “Oh, hey, you two need something to drink, maybe some Bintangs?” and then all of the sudden we’re way off the beach in her little shop kiosk and she’s already made us promise that we can only buy things from her now and no one else. She and Look/Luke from Gili M are in cahoots. Suzi’s awesome though because she stays open later than everyone else and got us beers from someone else’s kiosk when she ran out because we asked for too many. We’re starting to suspect that we are the only people who actually drink Bintangs. We also bought a sweet Bintang coozie 6-pack from her and Kevin is laying the groundwork to bargain down a kickass wooden fish that Suzi insists is legit and not some lame factory crap (we’ll see, Suzi. We’ll see.)
Until next time here’s a cool picture of Sanur! It has a floating sign in the water that says LOVE!! Instagram heaven!!! (It’s obvs on my Instagram with a witty caption because I fancy myself clever.)