Made it to Paradise

 For our last night in Thailand a few from the group went to the Ao Nang night market for dinner. It was a collection of food stalls so I was a bit conservative and just had chicken fried rice. 

I also made a stop at one of the numerous tattoo shops and had a bamboo stick and poke tattoo done. It was a pretty cool experience. And I’m very impressed how little it hurt and how quickly it’s healing compared to machine tattoos. 

In the morning the group flew back to Bangkok where we said our good byes at the airport. I had to take a shuttle to the other airport and wait way too long for my flight to Bali.  Along with that it was after midnight when I landed, and a long drive to my hotel in Ubud. So I was tired. 

But it was all worth it. My room is gorgeous, with a deep full bathtub.  My resort is fairly new, but designed to fit into the area with weathered grey stone, lots of statuary and niches with statues to the Hindu gods. Water is a big theme as well, with fountains and water running along the paths. 

Some of the fancier suites were built using old wooden houses, and have their own private pools. Two actually over look the river valley.  The main pool is also well placed with a view into the valley where you can watch white water rafters go by. 

I arrived pretty late the first night, so woke up on New Year’s Eve. I lounged but the pool all day before having a fancy dinner with Balinese music and dancing before ringing in the new year overlooking the valley. 

The next couple days followed suit with more lounging and eating. I had dinner one night with a lovely Dutch family who were visiting the hotel too. They told me they have a tradition of inviting single travellers to dinner to chat and get to know more people. It thought it was a great thing to do!

I took a break from relaxing one day to go scuba diving on the coast. I might not have gone if I’d realized how long the drive actually would be- narrow roads, lots of traffic and just slow going!!

But the diving was really good with Dive Concepts in Amed. I got lucky to be on my own with the dive master. We did three shore dives, the visibility wasn’t amazing, but there was so much bright coral you didn’t have to look very far. We saw tons of fish and a sting ray. We also dove the wreck of the USAT Liberty from WWII. It originally was stranded on the shore after being damage. But a volcano a few decades later pushed it out to sea a bit. 

I also spent one day in Ubud exploring. It was the GXXXXX day so all the locals had put up bamboo poles to house special offerings. There were also people playing music with dancing animal mask/puppets. 

I also went to the Sacred Monkey Forest. It’s a well cared for sanctuary with over 1,000 monkeys roaming around. They aren’t tame, but are used to humans so we just have to be careful around them. I got some fun “monkey selfie” pictures that the staff help pose for a small fee- and a couple shots of some monkeys curious about my camera bag. Though I bolted when the second monkey got a bit angry. Not sure if he was mad at me or at some one coming close to me, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out!!

That was my last day in Ubud. I did lounge around the pool before catching my shuttle back towards the airport. It was raining but that doesn’t matter if you’re swimming!!  I spent my last night in a hotel by the airport for an early flight the next day. So I walked along the beach and had dinner at a nice little hotel. 

I ended up buy a bottle of wine with my dinner and taking it back to my hotel. The classy place didn’t have glasses in the room, so I sipped my wine from a mug!! Just a little different from the last place!!

But change is good- and it’s time for one more big one. I’m off to Australia, where I’ll get to meet some more cousins, and I’ll be setting foot on my final continent. (Yes, I’m excluding Antarctica.  It’s way out of my budget right now!)