#posts brought to you by driving in the foggy cold rain to get some books

[whataboutyouisamascot]

Hello my local library

My local library, I love you

I love you, hello my local library

[olympianpandback]

May 15

You are reading this entry so late because we were in several “dead” zones the last few days in or near the National Park that Verizon has service in but not ATT and Wi-fi is not very good in most RV parks☹

We took a walk in the misty, cold, damp and foggy morning with new recruits doing their PT across the parade field from us at the National Guard training Facility we stayed at. Brought back good and not so good memories. The walk around the parade ground was about a mile then we headed for mount Saint Helens.  Most if not all of the visitor centers at the national parks in Washington State are closed. A ranger gave us some information as we entered the park. It's hard to describe the destruction in words or pictures. After 41 years there is minimal forest growth or landscape blow the eruption. Below the crater it's more grey dirt or earth than brown dirt. It's amazing how calm it looks now. You can see how at least 1/4 of the mountain is gone. As you know it didn't erupt upward, it erupted outward and blew out the side of the conical shape of the Volcano. It took most of the day to get to mount Saint Helens and back down to a campground. It wasn't the nicest campground we have been in but it wasn't the worst. May 16

We headed to Mount Rainier. I guess that since it was Saturday there was a 30 minute wait to get into the park at the ranger station. We then zoomed up to the part we could see which is about 10 miles into the park. The road ended at the Paradise visitors center and café. We got lucky an and found a decent parking spot to have lunch before we went to look around. People were taking their sleds, skis other things to go up on the snow pack which was pretty hard and probably icy. On the way down, we stopped at a waterfall but didn't go down to the base because the trail is 3' of snow. We saw people who were slipping and sliding down to the waterfall but we just took pictures from above. If you have seen one waterfall you’ve seen them all. It was another long day but not very tiring and we got to a campground in Centralia Washington around 5 o'clock. It was very nice and we decided to spend another night just to catch up. The weather was nice and the cooked out on the grill.

May 17

In the morning, we decided to go to Safeway for shopping to get some provisions and then go to a local park which was a fort back in the day to have lunch and look around. Here's the interesting part. After lunch we decided to go back to Safeway to get some coffee and beer which we had forgotten. Everything went well until I decided to back out of the parking spot. Cars were racing by in the parking lane to get a spot and I was concentrating on them and missed a small car on my right side in my convex mirror. Unfortunately, the RV didn't miss it and my running light on the right side scraped the kid’s rear door. All we lost was the cover for the light and he will get a new door probably from USAA. My head is usually on a swivel and my eyes are everywhere, especially in a parking lot, but I missed this one. I always told the girls that a parking lot is the most dangerous place to drive!

May 18

I got a new running light at AutoZone, and the kid will get his 2006 Chevy fixed. I would buff it out and keep the money baby. I walked him through the process with the USAA representative so he knew I wasn't going to cheat him and he was happy because it was his mother's car. Lesson learned. Keep your eyes, ears and nose working when your back out of tight parking space in a grocery parking lot. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I just don't like to have accidents that are avoidable.  Hopefully we are paying for accident forgiveness. Our insurance won't go up for a year because we just paid a full year premium the 30th of April.

18 May

 We drove to Forks, Washington to a campground just outside town and in shouting distance of the Hoh Rain Forest. We got there fairly early and got a campsite close proximity to the bathrooms and the office. It was warm enough to grill some hot dogs for dinner and eat outside for a change. We knew it will be cold in the morning but we didn't know we it would be 39. We drove down to the Hoh Rain Forest (It’s the largest rain forest on North America) about 40 miles South of us to look around the area and walk on some of the trails.  We took a 30 minute walk along the 15 mile trail that goes all the way up to the glacier and then turned around. We saw a lot of interesting Flora and some elk scat in the trail. We were excited but wished we had been 15 minutes earlier because the elk was walking toward us right on the trail. We had lunch and decided to go on the Mossy trail which was allegedly closed. The night before we went to the Hoh Rain Forest we went across the road to another campground just to look around and talked to the owner. She remembered talking to me after I mentioned my name because we decided not to stay there because the bathrooms were closed. We had a good talk and we found out she was born in Calumet, Oklahoma. She had moved to Montana after high school and met her husband who had left his home in Bremerton, Washington to move to Montana. They got married and had 3 children and ended up moving back to Washington to take care of his ailing parents. Then they found an opportunity to buy some property near Forks and they developed a campground. They usually spend part of the year in Alaska where they have another Homestead. She said that he really goes up there to fish and hunt, but says he’s going to work on the house. She's OK with that and flies up to meet him once in a while. They hope to retire one day, buy a smaller RV like ours and travel around the country. We agreed to bring our RV over to show her the morning we left but when we got to the office, she was not there so we motored on. We called her to tell her what we that we came by but she was out on the property and sorry she missed us. She was interested in the tables I fashioned for RV that are very functional.  After our hour long walk in the forest, we decided to go on the Mossy trail.  We went backwards on the trail because at the beginning of the one-way trail sign some people came down the trail and said they were some elk in the woods 500' North of us. Having been somewhat a contrarian all my life, we decided to go for the Elk sighting opportunity backwards. We saw a few cows but no bulls. We went backwards on the trail and we ran into another couple who were going the wrong way on the trail.  We ended up having nice conversation with them for 20 or so minutes standing on the trail. John and Falaah had a lot of interesting information about what to do in Eastern Washington. They live in the Seattle area. It started raining so we headed back to the visitor center and it started hailing. Small but hail. When we got back to the parking lot we asked John and Falaah to join us for coffee as it was about 3 o'clock. We all got in the RV and warmed up and dried off while we had coffee and a bread with walnut and cranberries. We ended up having a 2 hour conversation about our travels and work experiences cetera. It was almost like we've known them all our lives.  We laughed and laughed and related a lot of great stories from both sides. We gave them both our cards and Falaah emailed us the next day saying how much they enjoyed the meeting and look forward to seeing us again in the future.

  May 20th

 We took an hour and a half drive eastward along the 101 to Port Angeles. We saw a couple of interesting things but really wanted to get to a campground. We picked one at random and found out it is excellent campground with a very friendly camp post named David. He told us we could have all the lettuce we wanted for our dinner from the garden in front of the office.  What a deal. We had planned to have macaroni with sausages so having a fresh salad was right up our alley. We booked a whale watching tour out of Port Townsend and a ferry ride over to the mainland on Sunday and Monday. We did take a short drive to a waterfall and to an area that the visitor center people told us to go see where the Elwha river meets the Straight of San Juan De Fuca and runs in to the ocean. It was interesting to see a river flow in straight to the shore which had waves lapping against it and the river ran into the waves. There were even surfers trying to ride the 3-4 foot waves. While getting ready for dinner, a lady walked by and waved at us so we talked to her. She said are you the LTV Van that waved to us as we were coming North and they were going South and I said yes. We great conversation about Leisure Travel Vans (RVs). They live in Denver not far from Concetta and Matt. They got a great deal on their LTV RV from someone who had bought it new, travelled for several months during the pandemic and just sold it at a greatly reduced price. They have ordered a brand new LTV that suits their needs and will make money on selling the used one they bought at a discount. Sound like something that would happen to me but not this time. Jan asked us to come see them when were in Denver to sit around the fire and tell some stories. We can't wait except for the fire were not good with smoke.

May 21

I went to the campground office to make sure they had charged our credit card for the second night. Chris, the owner of the campground said that David had booked us for the 19th and 20th not the 20th and 21st. There was someone who had reserved our spot a year ago starting today for a week so we had to move. She was so grateful I came in because someone could have booked the site she moved us in and we would have come back to a full campsite after sightseeing. The world works in mysterious ways. She is also interested in seeing our RV because they want to buy one like it when they retire.

[lindoig1]

We are now on our own at last in our camper van. We collected it 2 days ago and drove straight up to Perth where we purchased a few necessities, including our dinner, then drove a few miles further to a nice caravan park in Scone (pronounced Scoon) - for about $50 a night! It is not cheap to travel in the UK!

The van is quite modern with a few innovative things to make life easier, but we are still trying to figure out a couple of things and one gas jet seems to offer only a little feeble heat - the other would take at least a month to warm a kettle. We booked in for two nights and went back to Perth to stock up a bit more and to sort out a couple of business things that we needed to do - to get Heather’s phone doing all the things we paid for and to see if we can arrange a tax refund on the new PC we had to buy. The phone is now almost working, but I have to arrange the paperwork for the refund through the Edinburgh store and I am not sure that is going to be possible.

There are elaborate stories to go with both these items, but I think I will try to post things a bit more regularly and then post the stuff about our cruise and our couple of days in Edinburgh once I can get them in order. I will probably post them in something of a block rather than confusing you (and me) by jumping backwards and forwards in time.

More to come as and when, but this will let you know that we are on the road, fully independent at last, doing our own thing with our immediate objective to head to the extreme north of Scotland - probably up the east coast from Inverness and across to the west from there.

Watch this space - I hope.

It is now Friday night and we are in Fortrose, a few miles north of Inverness. Everything is in Imperial measurements here and the GPS is a bit confusing swapping between miles, yards and feet and not giving you the directions until almost too late to follow them. I am finding driving here a little stressful yet. The signage is very different and some of the road rules are probably a bit foreign too, but I am sure the next few weeks will settle down OK. The camper seems very wide and the roads are very narrow so I have hit the kerb a couple of times, fortunately with no damage.

We enjoyed Perth. I spent a fair bit of yesterday within easy sight of a bird feeder a regular van park visitor has set up - and I identified 11 new species for us, mainly small birds - chaffinches, several tits, dunnocks, etc. Very interesting, but I realised again how heavy my replacement binoculars are. I can’t hold them up for more than maybe 15 minutes or so at a time.

We brought a cut lunch with us today and stopped off the road in a forested area for lunch and it was so quiet and peaceful. Even the wind was still so it was possibly the quietest hour or so we have had since embarking on the trip. Tonight we are in a park immediately facing the ocean and it is fairly windy so not quite as quiet, especially with lot of people nearby. I am looking forward to some free camping with just us and the birds if we can find such a place. The most common thing we have heard in Scotland is how wonderful the weather is - weeks of sunshine that people can’t quite grasp. Glasgow had its highest ever recorded temperature (40) a week ago and the collective Scottish mind is still reeling in the absence of fog, rain and cold. Even on the cruise, there was no rain - just a few foggy hours from time to time.

Tomorrow, we will head north again, sticking to the east coast as far as possible, maybe making it as far as John O’ Groats, but we are in no hurry and will just cruise along and stop when we are ready.

[sinangoral2017-blog]

[07.29.17]  i recognize that i am ridiculously behind on writing this post, so for those of you who have still been keeping along, i am very sorry! i can explain! let’s rewind.

the in-limbo period of time that i had in between japan and iceland was chaotic, to say the least. consumed with fixing things around the house (our ac broke so i had to readjust the fan unit outside), visiting mom at work, and gearing up for iceland, i got really busy. i was always hoping to write about my downtime in minnesota because, after all, it would’ve been one of the highlights of the summer (I LOVE MINNESOTA). ultimately, i just never had the chance.

in either case, wifi in iceland turned out to be far more limited than i had originally predicted. since i slept in my car most of the nights (more on that later), the only wifi i had access to was when i was filling up at a gas station. even those connections were weak, so the prospect of uploading any text entries, let alone photographs, were minimal. i was sad to admit to myself that the trip couldn’t be shared with you all as i lived it. instead, it had to be relayed after the fact upon my return to the states.

now that things have calmed down a bit and i’m living a slow and sleepy minnesota life, i can take some time to update you and share with you some of the trip’s highlights. though it’s pretty difficult to walk you through 11 days in iceland in one post, i’ll try to do my best.

it makes sense to start with the disappointing email i received from a mycology professor upon taxiing to my gate in iceland, saying that he had decided to take a last minute vacation and couldn’t meet up with me. understandably, these sorts of things happen, but i was pretty bummed that one of my connections had to back out. luckily, my other connections (who were a married couple at the iceland academy of the arts) and i were to meet towards the end of my trip, so in a matter of minutes, i was a free bird with no agenda. as such, i landed in iceland with a certain restlessness that, for some reason, urged me to just hit the road as quickly as i could.

my shuttle bus from the airport to my rental car location was 6 hours late, so i had to bum around the airport. i know – first world problems – but with that agitation that was boiling inside of me to just get rolling, i started to go nuts. nonetheless, several hours later, a sweetheart girl, who couldn’t be more than 19 years old, picked me up. she insisted on carrying my duffel bag and backpack. i could tell that she could tell that i felt a little weird about it. seemingly reciting a speech that she likely gave to many idiotic american males before me, she explained to me how iceland is one of the most feminist, forward-looking, and optimistic countries. as we drove off in the 14 passenger van and she slam-shifted the burly van’s gear shift, i couldn’t help but notice that she was enjoying my slight surprise.

well, i picked up my rental car (a five-speed fiat panda that was a joke compared to my female friend’s bus), bought a map, and hit the road, traveling north towards reykjavik. the only plan i had decided on was to drive through reykjavik and ignore the city, promising myself that i’d spend ample time there upon my return. and so, i kept driving north on the ring road (highway number 1), taking my time, stopping every couple of kilometers or so to soak up the scenery. i took about an hour to stop at a “bonus,” which was the equivalent of a small-sized costco, to pick up sandwich meats, bread, and preservable food. i had heard the horror stories about the food prices in iceland, so i made it a goal to live off of my own concoctions for at least the first six days.

since i knew i would be living out of the panda for the majority of my eleven day trip, i made it a goal to compartmentalize the car into different zones. blame it on my architectural brain, or occasional obsession with specificity, but i had to get comfortable in the car.

the front passenger seat was dedicated to brushing my teeth, trimming my beard, making coffee, and changing clothes, while the driver’s seat was for… driving. nothing too weird up in the first half of the panda.

the rear seat was dedicated for sleeping, but only sort of. since my rather large body didn’t fit easily back there, i would sleep on my left side and swing my legs up through the center console and rest them in the passenger seat. when i’d get tired of this position in the middle of the night, i’d switch sides and sleep on my right side. strangely enough, it felt too awkward to let my feet rest in the driver’s seat when i was in this position, but after the third or fourth night, i found it pretty comfortable to hang my foot off the gear lever if i parked the car in first, third, or fifth. the miserable techniques of an aspiring architect.

the rear hatch was dedicated solely to food, as i ate out of a ‘kitchen’ that i built in the trunk of the panda. two cardboard boxes housed all the plastic cutlery, toilet paper, and rolls of paper towels that i had stolen from the airport. after all, i had to do something productive with my 6+ hours, and i had made the mistake of finishing my book on the plane. i kept all my deli meats, cheeses, jelly, and spreads inside high quality ziploc bags inside an equally heavy duty plastic bag, which i hung from the exterior rear windshield wiper of the panda. this way, i could prevent insect buildup. in addition, the weather was pretty cold overall, so i took advantage of the icy rain and cold wind while i drove and slept to naturally refrigerate my food. with the exception of some dirt that entered the bag on the eastern parts of iceland, this technique worked out pretty well for me.

to compliment my weird program divisions inside the panda, i developed a strict routine of eating, resting, refilling fuel, and begging for free hot water for my french press that i had brought along. strangely enough, it was through this chronology that i was able to tell what time of the day it was, since the all-day brightness was so disorienting. all in all, i charted my travels, favorite locations, and quirky experiences on the aforementioned map, notating for myself as many things as i could recall from the day. i’m hoping to pin up this map on my apartment’s wall when i return to pittsburgh.

i’m going to sound stupid if i try to describe what i saw - it was just too beautiful. color was surreal, mostly because the abundant grays made everything else feel so saturated and accented. while i’ll let the photographs speak for themselves (there’s just no way i can try to explain how beautiful iceland’s landscapes actually are), i’ll share with you two existential moments that i had along my travels, which adequately color the trip for what it was. the first involves a bunch of multicolored sheep at 4am, and the second involves a hitchhiker that i met along the road.

after around the fifth night, having a full night’s rest became a great difficulty, and i started to have lucid dreams as i fell in and out of sleep. this particular night, i woke up to find that what i had thought was an ingenious plan to hang black tshirts from my rollup windows to block sunlight was actually a horrible decision. a zillion mosquitos were in my car. not 10, not 100. a bagilion. just like the horror movies. i had idiotically parked near a marsh/swamp for the night, and all the stupid insects had crawled through the gaps in the windows. here’s an excerpt from an email i wrote to an important friend about the event, which adequately captures my inner turmoil:

despite the success of this leg of the trip with camping inside the car, last night was a disaster. i woke up to ten thousand mosquitoes inside the panda at 445a because i'm an idiot and fool and i left the windows open because i'm an idiot and fool. i knew nothing else than to drive like a madman with windows down for two hours to get rid of them, eventually ending up in little town. weather is overwhelmingly foggy and don’t want to drive because it's a bit unsafe. i can't see these ****ing suicidal sheep that come out of god's **s onto the road and baaaaaa and bleep around. and the farmers spray paint their butts to know whose is whose so i just see these little pink and blue and red butts galloping towards and away from me through the fog. it's slightly poetic but also so maddening. and i guess, at this point, i break down, knowing that this hell is sent from the gods and that they're rightfully directed at me. ***k ***k ***k stupid sheep ***k.

i don’t think i can look at sheep in the same way, to be honest.

several days later, on a random impulse, i decided to pickup a hitchhiker that i found just outside of hella, iceland. jeanne, who turned out to be a total sweetheart, was french-canadian. we stuck together for the whole day, visited a couple of waterfalls, and talked about the weirdest stuff. later, we stopped by the side of the road and pet some random horses. wouldn’t you? it’s amazing how comfortable you can get with someone you don’t know and know you likely won’t see again, simply in light of the fact that you are both blank slates to each other. you have nothing to lose. so those several hours we spent together were really nice.

my time with jeanne also made me realize how lonely a solo traveler can feel in iceland. again – first world problems – but a reality for me, nonetheless. iceland, no matter how grateful i was for the experience, should’ve been absorbed with someone else, at the very least. it was just too beautiful and esoteric to have been lived through alone. i find that relaying my experiences with my mom and minnesota friends has become quite difficult, because the picturesque scenery i’m trying to depict seem exaggerated. and as cathartic and uplifting as iceland was for my health, i wish i had shared that with someone else as well.

when i finally finished the long loop around iceland, i had three to four days to soak up reykjavik, so i checked in at the cheapest hostel i could find and explored the city by foot. i had great beer, good grocery-store food, and occasional splurges on drip coffee. it was during this time that the married couple i was scheduled to meet informed me of a sudden family emergency – one which forced them to fly out of the country last minute.

this brings me to the guilt that i felt about missing out on my mycology connections in iceland, despite how much it was out of my control. i keep asking myself: what if i had planned for just one more resource? was three really enough? of course, i know that these things happen, and that i should learn from this, but an underlying sense of embarrassment still resides. originally, i had hoped to visit japan and iceland to soak up 50% of research and knowledge from both, but i’m now realizing how naïve that was. iceland, in the end, turned out to compliment japan as a therapeutic release from my everyday worries – something that arguably is extremely important, especially as i delve into my fifth and final year of school – but also something which admittedly steers away from the original thesis-based proposal i had put forward to carnegie mellon.

i was lucky enough to fly through boston, both on my way to and from iceland, and see several important people in my life. i stayed with nick, who was my best friend and roommate at grinnell college before i transferred. though i wasn’t able to see the wonderful temple rea, i got to annoy his awesome sister, walton, for an afternoon. i even got to see the handsome and well-dressed kyle wing in the city, which was a blast. the rest of my time was spent soaking up the boston public library, perusing random bookstores, and gawking at MIT’s media lab and campus. ultimately, boston was a wonderful reprise for me as i get ready to return to pittsburgh.

i have spend quite some time wondering if i should keep this blog going or not. i likely will for thesis, but i’m not sure if i’ll start a new one or just continue on this platform. more on that after i talk with my advisers on the matter. i think i need a springboard for thoughts, i just don’t know if i should start over or not.

nonetheless, i’m so incredibly grateful for the opportunities i’ve had throughout this summer to travel, learn, and live. i still cannot believe how this fantasy became a reality, so to my donors, department, university, and mom’s patience, thank you.

[travelinglight10-blog]

Bali, Indonesia | June 3rd-June 17th

Where do I start? I was in Bali for two weeks, the longest vacation I’ve had since moving to Thailand. And yes, I live in Thailand, so you might be thinking, “Erin, your life is a vacation…” but I do work Monday through Friday and my vacations usually include a lot of traveling to spend a short amount of time at my destination. In no way am I complaining about this, but having two weeks off was a welcomed change of pace. I didn’t feel rushed, rather, I felt I really had time to enjoy myself without worrying about being at work a few days later. Since this was quite a long trip, I’m going to try my best not to go into too many details and give you some of the highlights.

When my friends and I were booking flights, we decided to take a 6 a.m. flight to Bali and a 12 p.m. flight back to Thailand two weeks later. We had been searching various flights, hostels, and things to do in Bali, and somehow in the midst of that, I booked the wrong flight there. I realized this a week later when I was looking over my itinerary, and saw that I had purchased a ticket for the 12 p.m. flight both ways. I lost a few extra hours in Bali, but gained a few extra hours of sleep and all was well! After a 4-hour flight, I arrived in at Denpasar International Airport around 5 p.m. Saturday night (Bali is one hour ahead of Thailand) and went in search of a taxi to Seminyak. That night, we all went out to the bars and ended up at a club called La Favela. We drank and danced all night then hit up the 24-hour grocery store across the street for snacks (genius placement for a 24-hour grocery store). I bought a bar of Balinese chocolate. The following day, we woke up and headed to Potato Head Beach Club for the day, where you could grab drinks at the swim up bar and relax poolside with an incredible view of the massive waves crashing onto the shore. There were some wonderful vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Seminyak, including a place called Divine Earth, which had a huge selection of delicious, raw vegan dishes. Most of my time in Seminyak included lounging by pools and eating delicious food.

We made a day trip from Seminyak to Canggu, a town crawling with surfers, and spent the day on the beach there. We also got breakfast at a beach bar called Old Man’s, where I got a huge bowl of oatmeal. After a day of roasting in the sun, we grabbed lunch and headed back to Seminyak to grab our things from the hostel before going to Ubud for the next five days.

Because we were traveling in a group of 5, we were able to afford a family sized room at a nice resort in Ubud. It was one of the nicest places I’ve stayed while traveling in SE Asia and it felt good to have more than a bed in a hostel to come back to after the day. The resort had three beautiful pools, one of which over looked over the jungle. We spent 5 days in Ubud. One day was spent visiting the rice fields, where we had a nice Indonesian lunch overlooking the rice fields, before driving to see a waterfall. We also took a yoga class at Yoga Barn, walked around the city center, ate, shopped, and went to bars. At one of the bars, a man started playing guitar and singing at the table next to me so I joined in and started harmonizing with him. We ended up jamming to a few songs together and another girl at the bar harmonized with me on a few songs. It was awesome! Later that same night, we were at a different bar and were trying to catch a ride home. It was raining and the taxis were trying to rip us off. Side note: In Indonesia, they have what the locals call a “taxi mafia” who will beat up Uber and Grab drivers if they see them. Sketchy, I know. Anyway, we were looking for a taxi when a car rolls up and drops someone off, so we run up to it thinking it’s a taxi. It ended up being the guy who I was singing with in the previous bar and he recognized us. We asked him for a ride home and learned that he was actually the owner of the first bar! He drove us home and we gave him some money and thanked him.

One night we went to a Kecak Fire Dance performance, which consisted of a large group of shirtless male performers sitting around a fire chanting to accompany the story being acted out by other performers in elaborate costumes. I was impressed by the vocal control and stamina of the performers.  During the performance, I honestly had no idea what was going on and the chanting almost put me into some sort of trance. I later looked into the origins of this type of performance and discovered that Kecak originates from a trance inducing dance…. and that the drama being portrayed was a battle from the Ramayana, an ancient Indian poem about the battle between a prince and an evil king. It was quite the experience.

We celebrated Darian’s 25th birthday with a 2.5 hour hike up an active volcano. To do the hike, we woke up at 2 a.m. and hopped in a taxi for an hour from Ubud to get to the volcano. Once we were there, we met our guide, a 23-year old Indonesian man who made a living as a guide to help support his wife and 3 children. I can only imagine what his sleep schedule is like. When we were researching this hike, we read it would be cold at the top of the volcano, but the warmest thing I brought with me was a light cardigan and a pair of leggings. Luckily, you could pay to rent used jackets (that smelled like B.O.) to wear on the hike. When we got to the top of the mountain, I was very thankful for that smelly orange thing, even though I had worked up a little sweat on the way up, it was cold at the top. We hiked up the volcano with the light of the full moon shining down on us. There were at least one hundred people doing the hike, separated in small groups with their own guides, and you could see the light of their flashlights on the path, behind and in front of us. When we had reached the top, we sat down to wait for the sun to rise. There was a small shack selling food and beverages and people ate while they waited for the sun to come up. As the sun began to rise, the monkeys started to creep out in search of food. I was thankful I didn’t have any food, because if you’ve read any of my other posts, I am not a fan of monkeys. They were running around snatching sandwiches, opening water bottles and drinking out of them, and taking any other form of food they could get their hands on. I prayed they would stay away from me. They’re super cute from afar, but that’s it. They are creepy, small human-like creatures, with no moral compass, that stare at you with knowing eyes and steal your belongings. I was able to keep my person away from the monkeys and waited for the sun to fully rise. It was very foggy at the top of the volcano, so the sunrise wasn’t the best, but once it was up and shining through the clouds, the view was breathtaking. The view, coupled with the feeling of accomplishment from hiking to the top, made for an unforgettable experience. After hiking/half running down because of the steep path, we climbed back into a taxi and asked to be dropped off at a restaurant in the center of Ubud, where I downed some coconut banana pancakes before heading back to the resort to shower and pass out for the next 5 hours. When I woke up it was time for dinner, Yay!

After spending five days in Ubud, we took a taxi to Uluwatu and from there, Gili Air, one of three smaller islands off the coast of Bali. We spent two nights in Uluwatu, another surfer destination, where I ran into a childhood friend, who was there to catch the huge waves the area is known for, and discovered we were staying at the same hostel. Talk about a small world! The first night everyone went out to the bars, but after week of traveling and being out, I was in need of some “me time” and went back to the hostel after dinner to lay down and listen to my audio-book. The next night, we grabbed dinner then headed back to the hostel to hang out for the night, where I ended up jamming with some Brazilian guys who had a guitar. The next morning, we woke up early to make the drive to the pier where we were taking the ferry from to get to Gili.

When we got off the ferry and stepped onto the island, I noticed a bunch of horse-drawn carriages. The only means of transportation on the island were horses and bicycles. So, we walked about 20 minutes almost to the other side of the island to get to our hostel. Out of all the places we stayed on our trip, Gili A was my favorite. We had been staying in nice hostels and a fancy resort for most of the trip. At the hostel on Gili A however, I slept on a mattress, outside on a platform, next to a bunch of other mattresses, each with their own mosquito net. I loved it. Being there felt like having an island almost to myself. It was so quiet, peaceful and serene. There were even organic vegan restaurants! More than one, on this tiny little island. I didn’t want to leave. I’ve added it to the list of my favorite places on earth.  Overall, I loved Bali and the Gili islands and hope I will be back soon!

I tried to make this short… I’m going to list some of my favorite restaurants, bars and places we stayed while in Indonesia. I talk about food so much, so I feel I should give recommendations of the magical places I go to eat, just in case any of you take a trip to Bali anytime soon!

As always, thanks for reading! Peace and love <3

Restaurants

Seminyak: Zula’s (middle eastern, veg/vegan/gf), Divine Earth (raw vegan/gf), Nalu Bowls (smoothie bowls)

Potato Head (beach club), La Favela (bar/nightclub)

Canggu: Old Mans (beach bar/restaurant)

Ubud: Atman Kafe (veg/vegan/gf), The Elephant (veg/vegan/gf), Tukie’s (amazing coconut ice cream)

Happy Buddha (bar, live music)

Gili Air: Pachamama (veg/vegan/gf), Green Earth (veg/vegan/gf)

Accommodations

Seminyak: Kosta Hostel

Ubud: Beiji Resort

Gili Air: Begadang Backpackers