Hotel Hapel Semer Kerobokan

... girl that works here gave me the 2 min introduction to riding a scooter &#8211; there&#8217;s nothing to it really, except remembering which hand manages the brake and which manages the accelerator &#8211; something which got me into minor grief only once, as I was 50m away from home!<br><br>Anyhow &#8211; I had a blast scootering around the island! Firstly, I headed up north to the mangroves, and hired small boat to take me through the mangrove canals. As the ...

... life but im in Bali so what do I care :o) My last couple of days in Bali were pretty much spent topping up my tan, aside from the day after Nyepi day which was by far my best day in Bali and one of the best I had had so far on my journey. During my time in Bangkok, I met a young Vietnamese woman called Ana who has is very very well travelled due to her line of work in jewellery design. She told me about this supposedly amazing bar in Bali called Kut De Ta which is apparently ...

We had a set schedule of the week from Tuesday to Friday of teaching at our Ubud school, so I could really plan out my days ahead of time and actually make a schedule for myself. I woke up at 5:45 to get a run in and get to school by 7:30. Today, we were teaching Grade 1 and then Grade 3 in the morning at our Ubud School. Grade 3 and Grade 4 would be later in the afternoon at the Sayan school (a village nearby). We began our lessons of the week with Grade 1 and went over the ...

... small lanes linking the temples together and there were lots of individual ceremonies going on with the temples. During these ceremonies a temple would fill up and then they would shut the gates until the ceremony was over and then let the people out and let a ...

... begs the question as to why so many people are running around in flip flops and swimming trunks, carrying surf boards. There is no beach here!! It does have the additional million or so handicraft shops where I purchase two wooden traveller braceletty things. I have to do the obligatory haggling - why so much effort? Tanah Lot and some japanese Final stop of the day is Tanah Lot - the Hindu temple atop a cliff which is ideally ...

... and is more relaxed than Kuta. I personally hope they have less taxi drivers there (since it is such a small place) because I am getting tired of saying "no" to the taxi drivers of Kuta nearly 100 times a day. Nobody ever needs to look for a taxi in Kuta because it is hard to walk more than 10 meters without being asked if you need "transport?" As I pick up on this journal, we are no longer in Kuta and are sitting in a comfortable bungalow in Ubud. We stayed in ...

... even harder. Finally we had had enough of the rockstar treatment, thanked everyone for their hospitality and went back to our guesthouse. The next morning we were woken up by the sound of drums--it sounded like a parade was going to march through our room. Seconds later a guesthouse worker pounded on our door to alert us that their was indeed a parade passing by. We looked outside and saw a huge procession heading to the Hindu ceremony. We put on our sarongs, batik and sashes and headed ...

... been seen as the artistic center and it is still revered today as the cultural center of Bali. This may be the reason why it has attracted so many of the global wellness tribe for a few years now who have either benefited from or helped to enrich the many yoga, health food, homeopathic, meditation, and other new age businesses. This trend has only been amplified by the publishing of "eat, pray, love" which we guess is why there were gaggles of women eating, praying and loving looking ...

... some local surfers to give me some lessons. Surfing is hard work but in Kuta youve got the advantage of the beach always near you to have a rest after some hard peddelig to come in front of the waves. After two days i was already trying to stir the 6.2 surfing board, not that it went anywhere, just trying.. After the surf i went as usually to the paddy's bar and the cocconut bar next to it. Lot's of australians out here, the ...

... soft-focus when riding. Instead of specifically focusing on a particular vehicle on the road, I sometimes unfocus and become more aware of the flow and the gaps that are opening and closing. Then I move fluidly through the openings, weaving in and out as the opportunity arises. I assume that the other cars and bikes will continue in their existing motions without severe change. And I wonder what I'll come back as in the next life...?