This last weekend Scotty, Jessie, and I joined our new friend Theiry for a day trip to the center of the island, and the cultural capital of Bali, Ubud! We started in the rice fields for a hike through the famous stepped terraces as local Balinese planted fresh sprouts for harvest a few months later. It really was stunning. Then it was off to meet the civets and drink the Kopi Luwak coffee. Supposedly the best coffee in the world, it’s grown on the island, then eaten by the cat-like creatures and pooped out, before being cleaned and roasted. The coffee was indeed a deep rich coffee flavor. The best part was relaxing in the huge tree-house like structure over the rice fields and tasting all the local coffees and teas together. 

After the strong kick of caffeine we were ready to venture deeper into the forest to the Water Temple. This gorgeous 1000+ year old temple was built around natural springs and is a sacred Hindu place of purification. Nothing I can say will do it justice, just check out the pictures. After that it was time to grab some lunch and head to the Sacred Monkey Forest!!! 

They may be cute as hell, but these monkeys are aggressive little fuckers. After a few failed attempts at giving them bananas (they just came up, yelled and grabbed them at first while I screamed like a little girl), we finally managed to get a few pics and get out. Everyone got bit at least once, we’ll let you know if rabies sets in. 

We closed out the day with pictures at the palace in the center of town, and yummy gelato. There are gelato shops here on almost every corner, but no one has flavors like Gelateria Uli in LA. 

Monday was super chill, and last night we decided to head to the party town about 20 minutes away, Seminyak! So far I’ve spent about $250 total on my trip, not including housing and airfare. I nearly doubled that on last night’s crazy adventures. 

It started with some pre-gaming at the villa with whiskey and coke and OG Redbull (so much better than American Redbull). Then we hopped in a cab for the gay party street. IT WAS HOPPING!!! This is a legit gay party block, from drag queens to table dancers and loud bumping dance music we were having a blast from the moment we entered. Drinks here are three times as expensive as Canggu (where I live), and after buying a few rounds I was already $50 in. That’s when I noticed that MY PHONE HAD BEEN STOLEN. 

The worst 10 minutes of my trip so far were spent running from club to club searching as Scotty used his phone to track mine. It was speeding away from us towards the next city over. FUCK! That’s when a super sweet Japanese dude, Kenji who we’d been dancing with offered to drive me on his motorcycle and go get it. Jessie and Scott hung with his girlfriend while we raced down twisted streets and back alleys into what was obviously a thieves den in a residential neighborhood. About 30 guys were sitting around drinking and genuinely SHOCKED to see me. I told them that I had tracked the phone there, and it was my fault for loosing it and offered $500USD to get it back. 

The phone promptly appeared, I took it, handed them everything I had, about $30USD, and we hopped on the bike and got the hell out of dodge. Once back at the club I promptly borrowed money from Scotty to buy everyone another round and danced till the club closed at 3am. Overall it ended up costing $100 for a great evening, a crazy adventure, and a new line item in my budget - phone bribe. Small price to pay. LOL

I love Bali.