A Bali Sunday

Yesterday was a day that reminded me why it’s good to live in Bali. After waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am, I was picked up by a friend and we drove up to Ubud for a morning trek. She was actually working, rehearsing a trek that she would lead later in the week for a group of colleagues who are visiting from New York. I was happy to tag along. So with 3 other teams doing the same thing, we set off with a Balinese guide and a bunch of green paper flags to mark the trail so that my friend would be sure to find the way when she took her guests next week. Well, we quickly discovered that green is not the best trail marking color!

We departed from the Four Seasons, which is gloriously situated on top of a ravine overlooking a river. We ascended and descended the ravine’s steep slopes, walked along its crest, forged the river, and struggled to maintain our balance along the narrow ridges of the rice terraces. The smell of moist tropical greenery rekindled memories of previous visits to Indonesia and reminded me why I love this country. Living amidst the relative urbanity of Seminyak, I’ve lost touch with the sense that I do live in a beautiful tropical place.

The trek terminated at the home of my friend’s boss, where we reunited with the other teams and ate a delicious breakfast of fruit and Balinese porridge. Perched above the ravine, his house resembles a massive luxury longhouse. His wife told me it was constructed with mostly recycled telephone poles from Kalimantan. I believe the place has been documented in several architectural magazines and books about “Bali style.”

After the trek my friend and I drove down to Gregor beach, a quiet clean beach on the Nusa Dua peninsula. We spent a few lazy hours dozing and watching the European families, topless sunbathers, and seaweed farmers harvesting great big bunches of green stuff. I didn’t get to swim unfortunately, as the tide was out and the water too shallow to do anything except lie down in it.

Then I practiced yoga for an hour and a half.

Now that’s a perfect Bali Sunday: a jungle trek in the morning, an afternoon at the beach, and a yoga session in the evening. Yummy. I think I’m going to refer to this period in my life as “my spa year” as sometimes I feel like my life is a series of spa treatments, yoga sessions and healthy meals, interrupted (of course!) by regular bouts of toil at the office!