I awoke at 8:00 with new mosquito bites, as well as sore legs from the bike ride two days ago and all the walking every day (better than feeling it in my back!). I laid in bed with my phone, feeling another rest day happening.

I went out to my table, where Jeff and Janet were already enjoying their breakfast. We greeted one another but took space to sit on the veranda in silence.

I spent some laptop time at the table until about 1:00, composing and finally publishing a post about my birthday two days ago. I love that I’ll have these posts to look back on years from now, so I’m not willing to forego them, and while I didn’t intend to write so much detail, I’m not sure what other format they would take now. Which leaves me anxious that I struggle to keep caught up with my trip, which would in turn interfere with actually doing things on my trip if I had an agenda here. Bali has been a welcome respite from all the touring of New Zealand and what will surely be a busy trek around Japan, and yet it’s difficult to spend time on the computer with so many beautiful surroundings I haven’t seen yet. Sigh.

Each time I’ve walked north on Jl. Monkey Forest, I’ve turned right upon reaching the end at Jl. Raya Ubud. When I set about deciding what to do today, a few different things pulled me to the left. My niece, 18 when she set out and now 19, has been traveling for 4 months during her gap year and was in Ubud almost 3 months ago. She enjoyed a meal at Yellow Flower Café that I commented on at the time she posted about it. I didn’t think I’d make it up that way as it’s a solid 30 minute walk from the listing, but there’s a yoga studio next door (and it’s not the Yoga Barn) and I figured I might have my passport revoked if I didn’t do yoga in Ubud, plus another geocache on the way.

I first walked up and around to Jl. Bisma, parallel to Jl. Monkey Forest but not accessible by a cross street. It had a completely different feel to it, with far fewer buildings and people and an arty vibe, including cement squares with inscriptions running through the middle of the road.

The geocache is “hidden” in a flower vase in the front window of a tourist information shop. The description says there are two people inside who know about the cache, but I found one man who knew and one woman who didn’t know and started asking him a lot of questions about what the hell I was doing. I retrieved the Tupperware box, signed the log, and replaced all of it. Some caches are more interesting for where they bring you than for the hide itself.

I turned around and went back to Jl. Raya Ubud, continuing until it turned into Jl. Raya Campuan, which is where you take the Penestanan steps, a long and steep set of stairs up above the main roads. I came across Intuitive Flow yoga studio first, and I checked the schedule to make sure it aligned with what I’d read online. It was about 2:30 and a 90-minute class would begin at 4:00.

Next door was the Yellow Flower, an organic and vegetarian cafe that supports local farmers and grows their own food and has an open-air, cave-like structure. I love all of that, and it was cool that Nika had been here, but the service was very slow, which I found annoying even though I had plenty of time to sit before yoga.

I realized that I was tired physically, and tired of being sticky with sweat and sunscreen and bug spray, and tired of itchy mosquito bites. This happens every time I visit a tropical destination, and I must will myself to forget so I can keep exploring beautiful and/or relaxing places. Bali has been stunning to the eye, but humidity is not my jam!

I’d forgotten to ask the yoga studio whether they accept credit cards (I imagine they do not). Yellow Flower does not, and I had brought IDR 200,000 with me, which was more than I usually carry but not enough for the yoga class and a lunch dish and a beverage, which was unfortunate because the Yellow Flower smoothies sounded pretty darn good.

I walked over to yoga just before 4:00 and took a mat for our hatha class with Putu Purnama. I haven’t done yoga in at least a year, probably longer, so I modified quite a bit, particularly with any flexion. Delightfully, the session ended with some laughter medicine. Putu said Balinese don’t do yoga every day, but they do laugh with intention and gusto. When he demonstrated, it was contagious and we could not help but follow suit.

A fellow Airbnb employee on his Recharge who also happens to be in Bali (in different parts than I’ve been) recommended an app for the local taxis called MyBlueBird. I registered before I left the listing with the intention of using it to get back. But when I used it to order a cab, the app searched and searched for a driver and I started thinking that the driver I was eventually matched with might not arrive for a while, and Monkey Forest being a one-way I might get home at the same time as in a car, plus maybe walking off the yoga would be good for me. I have not shied away from walking on this trip, and while my back has incurred some inflammation in other ways, it has not failed me in the walking department, which is such a relief after it only lasted 4 of 10 full days in Barcelona last year.

Walking south on Monkey Forest, I dispensed with the sidewalk shuffle and instead walked nearly in the middle of the street, alongside the parked vans and facing traffic. No pedestrians to sidestep or curbs to step up and down from. Just forward motion, and quickly because it was dusk and I hadn’t brought bug spray.

I arrived at home to find Jeff and Janet at their table on the veranda, and we chatted for a bit. Jeff asked how I was getting on eating meals alone, which caught me by surprise, if only because I haven’t experienced anywhere near the level of loneliness on this trip that I did in Barcelona last year. It helped that my fellow solo female travelers shared with me upon my return from that trip their own experience that moments of loneliness are part and parcel of solo travel. It just happens. From there, they invited me to join them for dinner, and I happily accepted.

We all weren’t quite ready to go yet, so I laid on my bed and grabbed the laptop, this time to submit a request to our IT department, which is the initial step in getting a reimbursement for a hardware expense. Oh, yes I am submitting a request for the $21.37 I paid for the new charger cable — it’s not my charger! I took a photo of the bad cable and marked it up to show the fray, and I “scanned” the receipt using an app on my phone that PDF’d it. Amazing what we can do with mobile these days.

Jeff and Janet are much better at finding restaurants than I am, both in terms of actually seeing them from the road and in looking past the pizza and burgers on the menu to find the Indonesian mains. I’d passed Bali Pesto I don’t know how many times without looking at it (probably because Pesto). I had what has become my signature dish in Bali — not the well-known nasi campur but rather nasi goreng. I love me a fried egg on top of noodles or rice.

I’d told Jeff and Janet that I was checking out in the morning but not leaving for the airport until 21:00 and would be storing my bags with our host and then bumming around, maybe taking an Airbnb experience in which you make your own silver jewelry. Walking home from the restaurant, they invited me to join them on a half-day tour of Tegenungan waterfall and Goa Gajah, an ancient sanctuary site. So nice! The catch was we’d be leaving at 7:45 and I had to be completely out of the room.. ugh. They left me to play it by ear, but I knew I wanted to go.

Back at the listing at 10:00, I did just a few press-ups but having done yoga I opted not to do a full set of stretches. I mostly packed up, leaving out a few things I’d need in the morning. And I shared an Instagram post about making an effort to volunteer in Ubud for Airbnb’s Week for Good, during which every single employee gives time to a non-profit or charitable organization. Unfortunately, the Bali Animal Welfare Association requires a 5-day commitment, so the closest I came was doing the bicycling experience as a portion of the guest fee benefits the primary school we visited.

Lights out at almost midnight.