Sunday, March 30, 2025

Promptly at 6:00am — the official end of the Balinese holiday of Nyepi — we heard the buzzing sound of scooters ripping down the roadway outside our airbnb. The 24-hour day of silence on the island of Bali had ended.

Today was also the end of our stay in the city of Ubud. All four of us were ready to move on; nothing wrong with this airbnb (other than the sticky humidity and the constant presence of bugs), but Andi, Tory, Aden, and I were ready to see something new.

Around 8:00am, Andi walked down the road to a small cafe to pick up coffee and breakfast. The kitchen was on the roof of the building, he said. He found it interesting the way food was lowered down by a chain in a big, green box.

In addition to coffees, Andi ordered pancakes for Tory and fried rice for Aden. The food in Indonesia has been Aden’s jam; he could eat nasi goreng every single day — and probably has since we arrived to this country two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, I began packing everyone’s clothing and toiletries for our location move today. This felt like as good of a time as any to start purging items that we aren’t planning to bring back to the USA with us. So many of our clothes have snags or stains on them from repeated wear, and a Ziploc bag holds toiletry odds and ends that we’ve picked up in various places during our travels. Some of that could go.

Sanur, the next destination in our travels, will be our last for this trip. Andi booked our return tickets home to the United States for next Wednesday. We’ll have traveled for 11 weeks, all said and done. Andi and I considered the idea visiting one more country in southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, or Singapore) since we’re already on this side of the world, but I think we’re ready to go home. Visiting a new country needs fresh energy and a desire to learn and explore. Mentally, we’re just not there now.

Andi arranged for Kadak, the same driver we’ve been using in Ubud, to pick us up at 11:00am and take us to Sanur. Along the way, Andi asked him to stop in the central part of Ubud so we could grab lunch. “I just ate breakfast like an hour ago,” Tory grumbled under her breath. There’s always a weird time gap between the check-out of our current place and check-in of our new accommodations, so stopping for lunch fills the hours.

Andi picked a restaurant called Kebun Bistro for lunch. The restaurant had a European flair to the menu and atmosphere, but also served a few Moroccan dishes as well. Interestingly, there were almost all Europeans eating inside the restaurant. People are attracted to what they know, I guess.

The restaurant had a damp, musty smell to it. Tory was adamant about sitting inside the air-conditioning though. Probably better, because the outside patio was full of smokers. There are so many smells in Indonesia; it’s an assault on the senses wherever we go.

Anyway, we ordered a beet salad, Mediterranean omelet, hummus platter, and shrimp with couscous for our meals.

After lunch, Andi asked to stop by an apotek pharmacy to buy some common medications that aren’t available over-the-counter in the United States. The woman behind the counter was having trouble understanding what exactly Andi was looking for. “Sir, are you OK?” she asked Andi, with much concern in her voice. He assured her that yes, he was feeling fine; he was simply trying to build a first-aid kit. The pharmacist felt assured at that, and sold him the medications he was looking to buy.

Meanwhile, Tory, Aden, and I sat outside the pharmacy and watched the world go by on the streets of Ubud. There is so much activity in this city; I could sit on the sidewalk of a restaurant and people-watch all day long.

The drive to Sanur took double the time today; two hours by car. Traffic in Ubud was even more congested than usual because today was the day following Nyepi. As we sat at a stand-still on the roadway, we saw lots of tourists walking down the sidewalk with luggage. Yesterday, the airport was closed so I’m sure there’s an influx of people leaving and returning to the island today.

Finally, we reached the southern city of Sanur around 3:00pm. Andi reserved us two connecting hotel rooms at the Bali Beach Resort. We’ve decided that staying in hotels/resorts is nicer than renting airbnbs when traveling through in Indonesia. They’re cleaner, have restaurants on-site, and there’s no bugs.

Usually, cost deters our family from staying in hotels when we travel because we need two hotel rooms, but the US Dollar is so strong in Indonesia that it’s cost-effective to do so here. Andi splurged on our stay at the Bali Beach Resort and booked rooms for $2,500,000 Indonesian Rupiah ($150/night USD)/per hotel room. That’s around $50 more than our usual per/night travel budget, but Andi said he’s done messing around. “Nothing but the finest for my family!” he said with a big smile.

“Ooh, I like it here!” Tory said as we walked through a grand hallway that led to the hotel’s reception area. The kids like hotels because they have bellmen who carry their heavy backpacks for them. Ha ha! As we sat down, a woman from reception brought us cold towels and refreshing juices to sip while we checked into our rooms.

We chuckled at the sight of this guy sound asleep in the hotel lobby. “I feel the way this guy looks,” Andi said, jokingly.

Our two connecting hotel rooms were very nice, each with two beds and one bathroom. A big, floor-to-ceiling window showed a grand view of the toilet. Ok, that part was a little weird…

Our hotel rooms overlooked Sanur Beach with a nice, paved beach boardwalk outside the hotel. Andi knew how much I loved walking on the boardwalk when we stayed along Australia’s Gold Coast, so he specifically booked this hotel for that reason.

Andi and I were excited to go outside and see Sanur Beach for ourselves, but Tory and Aden wanted to relax. We decided to go for a short walk and leave the kids behind at the hotel.

The Sanur Beach Promenade, just outside our hotel, extends over 5 km (3 mi) along the coast of Sanur. Along the boardwalk, there were lots of restaurants for dining, ramshackle shacks selling street foods and drinks, bike rentals, and beachside massage tents.

Toward the end of the boardwalk, we arrived at the mega Icon Bali Shopping Mall. Who would have guessed we’d find a place like this here?! Tory has talked obsessively about Bali’s one and only Subway Restaurant being located in Sanur, and Andi and I found the restaurant at the mall as well as dozens of food offerings for sushi, Japanese BBQ, and even a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant.

It’s a fun cultural experience to visit a shopping mall in another country. Things about malls are the same in every country, but there’s always unique characteristics as well. The open-air mall was very nice inside, with tons of international food & clothing brands. Andi and I browsed each floor of the mall, and then stopped at Starbucks on our way out so Andi could get an espresso.

One of my weird quirks is that I have a fear of running out of drinking water, and that’s been a big stressor for me while traveling through Indonesia because I can’t drink water from the faucet here. Our hotel provided four small complimentary bottles of water to our room, but this isn’t enough for me. Knowing this, Andi took the liberty of ordering a Grab food delivery to our hotel room upon our return, with three big jugs of drinking water and some snack foods for the kids. Very kind of him to think of this! It made me feel better not burning through all those small glass bottles the hotel provided. I already drank the four bottles provided in our hotel room, plus the kids’ — oops!

We decided to have dinner at the hotel’s restaurant tonight simply out of ease, then bring the kids back to Icon Mall tomorrow. Our food was surprisingly good quality; better than we all expected. Interestingly, the menu pricing was 30% higher than it had been in Ubud.

Aden ordered his usual nasi goreng entree. He thought about branching out to mie goreng, made with noodles instead of rice, but defaulted to his usual food order in the end. Tory ordered grilled chicken strips from the kids menu which tasted good, but she was disappointed by the very-small portion size. No worries though; I shared some of my grilled chicken wrap with her.

Andi raved about his roasted chicken meal. His meal portion was generous, and he said it was delicious. Overall, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the food options in Bali. It’s easy to find Western-style foods in addition to classic Indonesian dishes.

The four of us returned to our hotel rooms after dinner. It felt heavenly to crawl into the crisp, clean sheets of our hotel beds.

Tory convinced Andi to order dessert from one of the food delivery apps in Bali. Thirty minutes later, warm cookies were delivered to our hotel from a place called Cookie Lover. “I didn’t think you’d actually order dessert,” Tory said with a smile. “It was just one of those things that I threw out there to see if it’d stick.”

We ALL enjoyed the cookie delivery — warm chocolate chips cookies the size of our heads, plus a red velvet cookie with cream cheese frosting.