When you find your home away from home

Without being said, one of the hardest parts of traveling is being away from your family, friends, and all of your loved ones. The best tradeoff though, is when you find a genuine connection with new people and you find your family away from home.

Ron and I have been lucky enough so far to meet some amazing people in Bali that we have been exploring with and meeting on and off in different cities. I have not been writing a lot lately because these last two weeks have been filled with adventures as well as just chill time, and hanging out with people who we now consider our second Balinese family.

This family all started out with our couch surfer host Mayo. For those of you who don’t know what couch surfing is, it is a great community of people who offer to host travelers coming to their area. Whether it is a couch, floor, spare bedroom, or extra home, people offer up their personal space for budget travelers to come stay and explore the area. Ron and I have met some great people through Couchsurfing so far and have even hosted quite a few travelers back at our own home. We have always had a great experience with couch surfing but when we met Mayo, he went above and beyond as a host and as a friend.

Honestly, I don’t even know how to put the type of person that Mayo is into words. Mayo’s generosity is never-ending. He has such a big heart for others and puts everyone else’s needs and well-being ahead of his. I loved having conversations with him and I feel that he has taught me how to be a more giving person. I don’t know what Ron and I did in this life to be blessed to have met such a wonderful, generous, and kind person, but I can tell you one thing, and that is that we will never to be able to repay Mayo for all of his kindness and generosity that he showed us while in Bali.

Mayo and all of the other couch surfers we have met while staying with him have become like a part of our second family. We first stayed with Mayo for about 6 days and then went on to explore two other cities for another week and when Mayo offered to host us again, it was like coming back home.

The first week with Mayo was filled with exploring the local cuisine, toes in the sand and sea, Ron learning how to surf, beautiful sunsets, dancing, lounging and quality time spent with our amazing Balinese family.

 

 

Not to mention that Mayo was hosting us in an amazing Villa with a private room and pool! As a budget traveler, rarely do you get a private room because you do not want to spend the money, but a villa with a pool on top of it ?? We were definitely spoiled!

This Villa became the hang out spot for our little family to just relax and chat. Which brings me to my point of if you are ever in Bali in the Seminyak area please look up Sweet Dreams Villa to rent!! It was amazing! As nice as the accommodations were and as much as we loved spending time with friends, Ron and I decided to take a few days to visit different cities and explore on our own. We almost felt like we were getting lazy some days just hanging out at the pool and chatting with friends rather than going out and about! So as hard as it was, we said our first goodbyes and headed down to Uluwatu area to explore on our own.

This is the time I like to call “the in between time” when we did not spend it staying with Mayo and our Balinese family.So in true “Cally” disorganized fashion, I will get back to the “in between time” in another post, but for now, I will focus on the time we came back to Couchsurfing with Mayo!

So after a few days of exploring on our own, we came back to our little family and even got to meet a few new members who had joined the group to couch surf and stay with Mayo. The first day back started off with a road trip to Ubud. Although Ron and I had already stayed in Ubud at the beginning of our trip, we were eager to go again! With Mayo behind the wheel, 5 more of us crammed into the car and we were off to Ubud!

Our first stop was monkey forest. This was our second visit to the forest but it was still cool to see. From there we ventured by the rice terraces again and headed to a Luwak Coffee plantation. This time I knew it was my chance to try the famous coffee coined “the most expensive cup of coffee in the world” ☕️

To be completely honest it was actually pretty good. It was very strong but it tasted good. Bucket list check for trying Luwak Coffee! I even got the chance to get up close and personal with the animal whose poop coffee I had just ingested 😂😂cute little thing …

I was so happy to have Mayo educate me on how this whole eating the poop coffee even started and who would come up with an idea like this in the first place.

He explained to me that during Dutch Colonial rule in Indonesia the locals were forced to start coffee plantations but the local farmers were forbidden from using the coffee for their own use. One day a local had found the poop from the civat animal  contained the coffee bean that had passed through its digestive system but not digested. The locals decided to clean and roast to beans and the result was a stronger “better” tasting coffee. At this time it was permissible for the locals to drink this coffee digested by the animal but after a general who happened to be passing through tried the coffee, the popularity soared.

But after the poo Coffee experience, we headed to the holy springs called Pura Tirta Empul. Pura Tirta Empul was a sacred temple where the locals would come and bathe in the holy water to cleanse themselves and their sins. (This was pretty much the equivalent of going to confession). The process was very interesting watching the locals bring up an offering to the gods and then partake in this ritual. (Out of respect, no pictures were taken). We explored around the temple taking everything in and capturing some moments with pictures. Mayo, Ron and I even walked under the “coined” friendship bridge. Mayo told us that, legend says that whoever you pass under this bridge with, you will be friends for life. Aww I love this corny stuff- even if it is made up!

 

On our way out of the holy springs we ended our visit by sampling some of the local fruits. This was my first experience with trying Durian which is known to be the worst smelling fruit in the world.

Please see the video below to capture my full durian experience 😂😂

So besides the smelly fruit we also tried jackfruit and soursop.The jack fruit was ok while we all ended up sharing a soursop smoothie which was pleasantly good.

After Holy springs and our fruit sampling extravaganza, it was on our way back home but first a stop at holy cow steak house to all enjoy a steak. Needle to say since none of us actually ate the Durian, Mayo packed it up and brought it home for a friend. This however caused quite the controversy on the way home because the smell of the Durian in the car was so strong that every once in a awhile we all had to roll down the windows and hang out heads out for some fresh air.

The perfect day was completed by a visit to a few famous beach bars including
Old Man’s and the Sand Bar. We all had a few drinks, danced on the beach and enjoyed the fireworks.

The day after our Ubud trip was a nice relaxing day with beach time and a family trip to the movies at night to see The new Robin Hood movie.
Then came Thanksgiving…
This was the first thanksgiving that I have spent away from home or at least not in the US. Most of the day went normally like it would with exploring down the streets and relaxing by the pool but Ron made sure that we found a piece of apple pie in town to celebrate the holiday since pumpkin pie was not a common thing in Bali.

 

To celebrate Thanksgiving differently with a bang, I had planned for a group of us to go to a full moon party on the beach at one of the beach bars. Definitely a different spin on Thanksgiving but we had to do something special! Unfortunately, Ron and I never made it to the full moon party because food poisoning hit me hard that night.
For dinner, there was a group just hanging out at the villa and Ron wanted to order yoshinoya beef bowl which was some of his favorite food when he was in Japan. So we ordered, we ate, and some more friends came to the villa to socialize but not more than a half hour after eating, I was hit hard. Details spared, the rest of the night and day after was spent dealing with pretty violent food poisoning, trying to get a few winks of sleep, and rest my body. Although no one is ever happy to get food poisoning, even while I was sick, I was trying to look at the bright side of the fact that I was in a comfortable nice place, with a private nice bathroom.
We could have easily been stuck in a hostel with no Air and a shared squatty potty for a toilet but that was not the case so I was incredibly grateful.

Thankfully after a good 24 hours of clearing my system from the bad food, I was able to make it outside to join in on our last family dinner together for our last night in Bali. Although I only munched on dry crackers, I was so happy to was able to make it out. A group of us went to a local warung a few cities away. Our friend Archie, who we had first met in Bali was also able to join us so that we could say our goodbyes. It was great just spending time with all of the people that we had met and made connections with in Bali. If I wasn’t so tired and exhausted from being sick, I could have stayed out all night just chatting but the night had to come to an end sometime with our sweet goodbyes to all of the wonderful people we had met.

The next morning was early to rise as we had a 7 am flight into Malaysia. Which brings me to today. We have arrived in Malaysia and I find myself incredibly behind and unorganized with my writing and keeping up with adventures in Bali! I’m hoping to make one more post about Bali to get all caught up so we can focus on Malaysia! So for now, I will still be resting, recovering, and catching up on my writing !