Bali, Indonesia {Day 3} – Ubud & Monkey Forest

We were surprised how well we slept that first night and that we both woke up ready to start the day around 7am-ish. Breakfast was included with our stay and we were impressed. A nice buffet and several hot meals options as well. 

The setting was lovely.  I think the grounds of our hotel are the prettiest we've ever experienced. The hotel is set smack dab in the middle of the jungle and is surrounded by so many different varieties of plants, trees and flowers. Loved having the sounds of the jungle surrounding us.

We planned to catch the complementary hotel shuttle into Ubud at 9am, but instead decided to take a taxi to the start of the Campuhan Ridge Walk. It was a beautiful walk albeit already quite warm and humid. 

local carrying grass on his head

amazing how much stuff (or people) they can fit on a scooter

The houses on the hill sides were so picturesque

I was really concerned about the heat (and mosquitos) in Bali but both ended up not being an issue. I sweat like crazy, but it was bearable - although I would have appreciated much less humidity. The mosquitoes were also manageable. I slathered myself with some highly rated repellent all day, every day and only got a handful of bites all week. Mosquitoes love my blood, so I'm calling that a grand success.

Our walk ended in the center of town, next to the Saraswati Temple.  We roamed around a bit, checked out the Ubud Palace and got some gelato for a little treat.  

We then headed towards Monkey Forest, or so we thought. After 15-20 minutes of walking Justin realized he'd been leading us the wrong direction. Doh! Not a huge deal but let me remind you it is high 80's with 90% humidity. We got more of a tour of Ubud that I’d have preferred.

We thought these little petro stands were pretty interesting

With a little help from TripAdvisor I found us a little massage parlor along the way and we both enjoyed a 90 minute Balinese massage. Very relaxing and very inexpensive. This was Justin's first massage ever and of course our first couples massage.

We knew we were likely getting close to Monkey Forest when there were monkeys walking along the power lines.  

Justin really wanted to go to Monkey Forest. I wasn't overly thrilled about the idea but I was happy to let Justin have his fun. I saw plenty of monkeys in Hong Kong and found them aggressive and didn’t enjoy feeling on guard. It was fine.  Justin thought it was cool.  Enough said? 

Justin found a random driver on the street to take us back to our hotel. At 3pm in the afternoon we were his first customer of the day. Needless to say his car was dang hot and it didn't even have seat belts.  Going forward we learned to ask two important questions from a potential driver – do you have air-conditioning and do you have seat belts?

We thought we'd have enough daylight hours left to catch some rays back at the hotel; however our little pool at the room was completely shaded by then and most of the main pool as well. 

I think I laid out for 10-15 minutes before deciding to go to the complementary yoga class. The yoga pavilion overlooked the lush jungle valley. Perfect setting. And yoga in Bali seems like a must do, no? The yoga instructor even walked around during class to help correct our positioning.  It was a legit workout.

While I was doing yoga, Justin watched a movie outside at our place. Again we decided to stay at the hotel and enjoyed dinner at the Asian restaurant, which is also where breakfast is served. It was good, but I was reminded that I should never order chicken outside of the US. It was early to bed tonight as we only had a few hours to sleep before starting our next adventure.

Bali, Indonesia {Day 2} – Arrival at the Como Uma Ubud

We arrived in Bali around 3:15pm on Monday, May 13. Completely skipping over an entire day.  We missed Mother's Day entirely this year. No better way to celebrate the joy of motherhood than abandoning your children for 10 days, right? I don't think the kids minded too much, although Katie commented they sang the customary Mother's Day song with the primary "to nobody".

Sommer arranged us an airport transfer so it was nice to get through security and see someone holding a “Justin Fletcher” sign. Made it super easy and ended up being a great price. We had a 1.5-2 hour ride from the airport to Ubud, which was longer than we expected due to it being late afternoon and there was quite a bit of traffic. We were surprised to see that they drive on the "wrong side of the road". There are more scooters than cars and both drive wherever they want. It was crazy and we were grateful to not have to deal with driving ourselves around at all.

Our first hotel, the Como Uma Ubud was relatively small but we were impressed with the how hospitable the hotel staff was. They quickly learned our names and it felt very personal and welcoming. We were upgraded to a garden villa which had a small private pool and an outdoor koi pond between the bedroom and the bathroom. There are a lot of mosquitoes and other jungle critters in Bali so having to go outside to get to the bathroom isn't necessarily ideal, but it's a fun novelty.  

I pulled these photos off of the hotel website of our room.

We were greeted with a yummy little dessert.

It was already pretty late and we were tired from traveling over 24 hours so after showering we ate dinner at the hotel's Italian restaurant and called it a night.

Bali, Indonesia {Day 1} - Travel Day

So how did a trip to Bali, Indonesia come about? Justin and I knew we wanted to go somewhere fun to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Hawaii was at the top of our list, because you can never go wrong with Hawaii.  We were hoping we'd get an offer from Westin offering us a great deal to stay in one of their beachfront properties in exchange for attending their sales pitch. We seem to have received these offers every six months or so, so we figured there was a good chance; however, Westin recently merged with Marriott and we weren’t fully confident they would continue to offer the same type of promotions.

Then came snowmaggedon in February and we were cooped up in the house for several weeks and getting antsy to get a trip on the calendar. My close friend Sommer recently became a travel agent and had been sending me information on various trips. She was already planning a trip to Bali for some mutual friends for this coming August so I looked at airfare options and found reasonably priced flights to Bali in May that would work perfectly with our schedule. So we booked it. Totally impulsive. Bali wasn't even on our radar, but we did it. It’s funny because just a few weeks before we left on the trip I looked at a map and noticed how close Bali is to Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand is high on my bucket list but we figured since it was so far away we would need to wait to go there. Come to find out that traveling to Bali would be about the same as had we traveled to New Zealand.  

We wanted to maximize our time in Bali so we booked flights leaving the day that Abigail was supposed to play in KingCo, her last tennis match of the season.  And we would arrive back home the night before Drew’s birthday.  We were gone 10 full days – the longest we’ve ever left the kids and the longest we’ve ever left the kids without any adult supervision.  Thankfully, we have incredibly responsible kiddos so we weren’t worried about it.  The time difference (15 hours) basically took us out of life back in the states.  

Sunday, May 12

We had a 1:50am flight outta Seattle early Sunday morning. We had Abigail drop us off with her friend Nicole just before 11pm. We hit up Wal-Mart on the way to pickup some snacks and sleep medication for the plane. I have free access to several airport lounges through a credit card perk so we made lots of use of those this trip and were able to fill up on free drinks and snacks while we waited for flights.

We had a 12 hour flight to Taiwan. Then a 5 hour layover before the final 5.5 hour flight to Bali. It was a long day of travel, but Justin and I both slept fairly well on the longest flight. Justin, as usual, switched his seat to the exit row for leg room. I kept my window seat so I could rest against something. We usual end up seating apart from each other when we fly because Justin switches his seat for any seat with more leg-room.

I was excited that we’d get to fly from Taiwan to Bali in a Hello Kitty airplane.  We didn’t leave from the actual Hello Kitty gate, but I made sure to show Justin where it was.  I thought it was the strangest, coolest thing when I first saw it on my way to Hong Kong seven years ago.

Being in a window seat myself, I didn’t have the legroom that Justin did, nor did I feel like I could get up during the flight to stretch out so my ankles were quite swollen after our long flight.  Yikes!

Even all the pillows, utensils, and pamphlets were Hello Kitty.  I love a good theme.  

Kaitlyn’s Wedding Weekend in Utah

We had our first niece/nephew get married in May – it was a long time coming 😀  Kaitlyn and Juston had been dating for a while and we were excited when they got engaged in October (at Disneyland) and looked forward to their wedding.  Kaitlyn is my oldest niece, the oldest daughter of my brother Tyrone.  When Kaitlyn chose May 4 as her wedding date we knew it would be unlikely that our family would be able to attend.  The kids were still in school, Abigail had the final KingCo tournament to conclude her tennis season that weekend, it was also our stake youth conference, our ward youth temple trip, etc…  You get my drift.  So we decided that I would fly down and represent our family on my own.  I’d have loved the kids to be there, especially Abigail and Carly, but it just wasn’t in the cards.

I booked my airfare on the dates that it would be the cheapest and ended up with a pretty sweet long weekend sans-kids and sans-husband.  I arrived in Utah on Wednesday, May 1 and came back to Washington on Monday, May 6.  I thought about attending BYU Women’s Conference on Thursday and Friday, but in the end decided I didn’t want to travel down to Provo and sit in classes all day.  It would’ve been a good experience no doubt, but I opted for a less scheduled weekend and really enjoyed it.

Wednesday, May 1

Brenda happened to be near the airport when I arrived and since we were meeting up anyhow she swung by and picked me up.  I wanted to do a little hike if possible, Brenda was having some asthma issues so we kept it pretty easy and went to the Red Butte Gardens and walked around. Brenda is a gardening guru so it was fun to check out all the plants and flowers with her.  We also walked up to the Quarry House which was built back in the 1930’s.

We picked up Fox afterward and went out to dinner at Cubby’s.  I stayed at my Mom’s house but she was out of town until Thursday so it was a quiet night to myself.

Thursday, May 2

I always look forward to eating out while in Utah.  They have so many options.  I enjoyed my dinner with Brenda at Cubby’s so much that I decided I needed to try their breakfast.  The brioche french toast was delicious – lots of yummy fruit!

Utah also has lots of shopping options and that occupied most of my day today.  I ate a late lunch at Waffle Love and then walked to Swig for a drink & cookie.  

It felt weird to be walking around the main streets of Draper.  It seemed I was pretty much the only one.  Not something I would have necessarily noticed before but back home people are always walking along the parkway or city streets, especially when the weather is nice.

My Mom’s ward temple sealing assignment was tonight and I was happy to tag along with her and Val. This was my first time to the Jordan River Temple.  Another difference I noticed between Utah and home is that the temple was busy, the waiting room for sealings packed – on a Thursday night.  Not sure if this is simply because there are that many more members or whether the members actually attend more, but it was a happening place to be.

Friday, May 3

I met up with my childhood friend Chrystie today for lunch.  No picture – Boo!  It was so nice to catchup with her.  On the way back to my Mom’s I couldn’t resist taking a detour to crumbl to try some cookies I’d heard rave reviews about.  Flavors pictured are the butterfinger*, chocolate chip, twix* and sugar cookie (*featured flavors).  I thought they were all good, especially the two candy bar ones and the chocolate chip.

Tonight my Mom’s ward had an adult progressive dinner that I joined them on.  It was fun to spend that time with her as her daughter and not be in my own mother role.

Saturday, May 4

Today was ALL wedding.  The sealing was at 10am, but we needed to be at the temple early and we arrived even earlier than early.  I am my mother’s daughter in that regard.

The Ogden Temple of my youth is long gone and the new temple was a beautiful place for a wedding.

The sealing was sweet.  It’s been ages since I’d attended a sealing and to see my niece marry her eternal companion was a neat experience.  

Juston’s family is huge and they seemed to occupy most of the post-wedding photo opps.  Not even sure I’ll ever see a picture from the Hipwell side, but a least I got a casual picture with the Hipwell ladies.

Tyrone and Kaitlyn have a special relationship.  Loved seeing them interact today.  Tyrone seemed very supportive her decision to marry in the temple.  It can’t be easy to see your little girl grow up and get married.

There was a luncheon after pictures.  Kaitlyn and Juston never made to the lunch (they stayed at the temple for more pictures), but our family had a great time and ate well.

We had some time to kill in the afternoon before the ring ceremony and reception. So we went to Robyn’s house in Bountiful to hang out.  On the way to Robyn’s I noticed we were going to pass by an old high school hangout, Jake’s Over the Top and I couldn’t resist asking Val to stop so I could pick up a shake for old times sake.  I certainly wasn’t hungry, but I had no problem emptying that giant cup of ice-cream.

the inside hasn’t changed a bit in 20+ years

My Mom, Val, Brynn and myself went for a walk in the heat of the afternoon and then relaxed at Robyn’s until it was time to head down to the wedding festivities.  The ring ceremony was sweet.  They had a director friend officiate and Kaitlyn and Juston shared their own vows and there was of course singing and seranding. The reception was beautiful.  The weather was perfect.  Such a fun night!

Dylan caught the bouquet though he had no idea what that meant

Here’s a really rough compilation of videos from the night…

My adorable little flower girl was a beautiful bride today!  So glad I could celebrate their big day and couldn’t be happier for her and Juston!

Sunday, May 5

Church this morning and then the family came down to my Mom’s for dinner.  I really enjoyed spending time with the family on my own.  There was something different about being there without Justin or the kids.  I felt I was able to be more personal and just be their sister/aunt/daughter.  Tyrone and I ended up having an intense (and emotional) discussion as he was getting ready to leave.  The specifics don’t need to be shared, but in the end I really felt it brought us closer and that I was able to say some things that resonated with him and I came away with a better understanding of him as well.  Intense, but really good.

Monday, May 6

It just so happened that one of my besties, Camden, was also in Utah this weekend for a family event.  Turns out she was staying just 3 miles away from me so we met up early this morning for breakfast at Kneaders before I needed to head to the airport home-bound. I sure love this girl and I’m so grateful for near daily Marco Polos shared with myself, Camden (Atlanta), Laura (Dallas), and Sommer (Snoqualmie) have so we can keep in touch so well.  I have some of the best friends a girl could ask for.

So long Utah. It was a wonderful weekend!