Bali Getaway

I had talked to Matt about taking another trip to Bali while we're on this side of the world and he wasn't interested in taking the entire family so he encouraged me to make it a girls' weekend with some friends. Little did he know that I would take him up on that offer! Didn't take me long to talk a few friends from Singapore into meeting me there for a wonderful long weekend. I got in late Thursday night, slept in Friday morning, and we all lounged by the pool and caught up since I hadn't seen them in nearly a year. By mid-afternoon, we'd finally mustered the energy to get dressed and do some shopping. We stopped in a few places in Seminyak then made our way to Ku De Ta, a beachside bar and restaurant, to catch the sunset.

Anne was enjoying the bliss!

Laura, Kim, and Anne. We're all American, have been overseas for 3-4 years, and had our youngest children in Singapore. These two girls made great travel companions because they're so much fun and so easy-going. Anne was our tour guide so she did a fantastic job of organizing our excursions and Kim was our official photographer so all these pictures are from her. I just showed up with wine and Tim Tams...what a slacker!

We didn't even have to leave the comfort of our table to haggle with some hawkers over cheap dresses.

Our sunset dinner was perfect and even more enjoyable because we got to eat at our leisure without yelling at kids to eat, breaking up fights, getting more milk, yada yada yada...


Bintang tattoos! The best kind to get.

On Saturday we slept in again (more bliss!) and then headed straight to Ubud for lunch at Casa Luna.

A little more street shopping...

...then a couple of hours at the spa! The best thing about traveling in Southeast Asia is cheap massages. We got 1 1/2 massages and body scrubs for about US $15.

Indonesia is predominantly muslim but the island of Bali is buddhist. Buddha is all over the place and he's always decorated.

Next stop was Tanah Lot, a centuries-old temple built on a rock on the water. At high tide it is a small island.

Gotta love the long-arm self portraits!


It was a great place to catch another sunset.

Anne braved the waves for a little yoga!

I think this wave caught her by surprise!

Finally, we headed to Jimbaran on Saturday night for a seafood feast by the water. This place was a total surprise to me because our driver dropped us off at the restaurant, we walked through the building, and then out on the sand they had all the tables set up by the crashing waves. It was an amazing experience.

Cracking into some crab.

We even got serenaded by this roving band. They had some US top-40 in the repertoire and sounded great, but their English was hilarious. It would be like me learning the syllables to a Japanese song off the radio then trying to sing it back when the words meant nothing to me. Like when they were singing "Stand By Me" it went something like "whenever you're in bubbles won't you stand by me".

We didn't fly out until Sunday afternoon so we got to enjoy a nice brunch at the St. Regis. Rooms start at about $500/night so we could only pretend this is where we stayed!

The grounds were absolutely gorgeous.

We didn't exactly leave right after breakfast because it was too fabulous!

Good thing we had flights to catch or else I may have still been sitting right here:

Bali will probably always be one of my favorite places!

Thanks, Matt, for holding down the fort at home and letting me go play for a few days! It was refreshing and relaxing and so great to see old friends who are traveling a similar path to me.