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02/18/18, Sentosa Sunday I love and hate that we travel so much on exchange because I love going to new places but my weekends in Singapore are also the best. Today was a good day!!! Sentosa on Sunday’s, are so fun. A bunch of expats come out and bring drinks and blankets and just chill on the beach. The beach club blasts music, and people play volleyball on the nets. There was a whole mix of us today. All the usual waterloo people but also Jojo and some NTU friends, it was a whole mix. We swam around in the water a bunch. Climbed rocks. Saw kayakers and rowers who were mad in sync and going right along the water by the ships. Brittney freaked out by the seaweed. Playing beach volleyball and LOVING it. Ah it was just so fun. We all got on busses back to VivoCity for dinner. I met Fergus and learned so much about New Zealand. I got such good Indian food (it’s kind of like Indian pulled pork burger but vegetarian that Meera recommended) It was just such a quality, low key day :)

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02/17/18, Singapore More Chinese New Year things!!!! Tonight I went with a bunch of Joey and John’s friends downtown for more Chinese New Year festivities. It was my first time hanging out with Joanne and Derek (people I’m going to Vietnam with). There was this UV light lion dance show at Gardens By the Bay and we managed to squeeze our way to the front-ish area to watch. It was pretty cool!! The UV lights definitely made it pretty exciting to watch. We stayed for the Supertree light show after. We all layed on the ground to look up at the trees. It was Chinese New Year themed this month so all the music was pretty traditional and relating to Singapore heritage. It was my first time watching the light show and I loved it!! I love that we just lay on the ground and you are just surrounded by all these magnificent trees. It’s pretty surreal. After the light show we walked to the River Hong Bao to eat food and enjoy the festivities. We got biiiig thai ice teas, found our zodiac signs, watched the Good Fortune man/god (not sure what it was tbh) spit confetti. It was cool. We were walking from the Gardens by the Bay and missed the fireworks, but the rest of it was still cool. When we had enough of the festival, we continued walking along the water. We eventually managed to all find ofos and we decided that we were going to teach Joey how to bike!!!! I never realized that it’s actually pretty difficult to teach someone to bike. We kept on just telling him to feel it out and find his balance but ultimately he just had to keep trying, but he managed to do it!!! We biked around the sidewalks and parking lot by the Esplanade for awhile and he literally learned to bike. It was wild. It took maybe an hour max. When he semi got the hang of it we all biked around the Merlion area and down to Clarke Quay. I love night biking, and especially in big groups. It’s one of my favorite things. There is something so liberating??? chill?? idk i love it. We were biking towards Clarke Quay in hopes to find a McDonald’s and we did!!! I bought Prian fries because I dared him to bike down these steps near city hall and he actually did it hahah. Biking is the best!!! Eventually we got an uber back to UTown, biked some more around UTown (lol) before Prian and Joey biked all the way back to PGP. What a quick learner zam An amazing night and end to a weekend full of CNY festivities.

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02/13/18, WeCinemas Clementi

After a full day of classes, Brittney and I went to see the premiere of Black Panther!! Honestly, not sure how we were able to see it on the 13th, considering it’s not supposed to be showing till the 14th, but hey, no complaints. 

Clementi Mall was POPPIN with Chinese New Year preparations. There were so many booths set up selling all sorts of things. People were getting haircuts, shopping for new clothes etc etc. Fun fact, in Chinese culture it’s bad luck to cut anything during the New Year celebration period -- cutting nails, hair, not sure what else -- so people are always in a frenzy to get all did up the weeks leading up to it!! There’s usually a Chinese New Year premium during this time too because it gets so busy. 

We walked around for a little bit, perhaps bought some things or two, and then made our way to the theater. The movie was so dang good!!! My favorite character was honestly Shuri, the sister. I’ll take a badass engineer any day. 

The showing we saw was pretty late so the buses and MRT stopped running. We decided to bike back but we could only find one Ofo and Brittney’s phone started to die. As a good pal I downloaded and paid for a $5 Mobike app (another bike share app), just so we could bike home. We love biking and nothing can stop that!!!!!

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 02/12/18, Photoshoot with Vickii

I met up with Vickii today for a photoshoot for Bonia bags. I was supposed to meet her at the Rochor Centre, these colorful HDBs around the Bugis area, but the HDB was actually in the process of getting demolished so they wouldn’t let anyone in. I got on the bus to meet her, only to realize I got the wrong bus -- classic. I got off the bus and opted to bike from the Bugis area to the Clarke Quay area to meet her instead. We were meeting at the MICA building -- the old hill police station/rainbow building. I was dripping in sweat and probably smelled terrible when I met up with her but you gotta do what you gotta do. 

This is one of my favorite photoshoots!! She needed photos for her brand deal with Bonia bags, so we opted for the colorful windows of the building to be her backdrop. She sat in the windows and I was able to play with the angles to create some pretty cool shots. I wanted the money shot with her and all of the colorful windows as well, so I ran across the street to stand at the medium to take it. And I gotta say, very pleased with the shot!!

We headed to the WeWork after to take some more photos. She wanted some images of her at the WeWork and we also used some of the cool spaces as a backdrop for the other bags she had to shoot with. I loved checking out the WeWork space and get a little taste of what working in Singapore might be like. After working in the Pentagon City WeWork for a bit with Commonwealth Joe, I loved contrasting it to this one!! We went to lunch at this vegan restaurant after and they served vegan dumplings!! They were so, so delicious. Vegan Chinese food is the winner.

I went to Suntec City mall afterwards to try and find a Chinese New Year outfit, but no luck. I am hanging out with my family friends for the new year and she told me to wear red. In my closet full of black and white -- it’s a struggle. After walking around for a bit, I got back on the MRT to head back to campus. My friend Azyba invited me to come to her permaculture club at Utown, so I had to make it back in time for that.

The permaculture group was so dope!! As much as Singapore is known for being the Garden City, it lacks a lot of area to grow fruit, veggies, other produce etc. A lot of Singaporeans are also pretty disconnected with nature, despite Singapore being so green. With her club, they’re starting a little garden in between the residential colleges at Utown, doing composting, planting herbs. Everyone was so friendly!! I loved it. It was one of the club leaders’ birthday so we sang happy birthday and all had some cake.

yummmeh day!!

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1/13/18, Chinese Gardens

A really cool, tranquil little place away from the city that had so many beautiful gardens and cool architecture. Minus the rain ruining the experience a little bit, we saw beautiful pagodas, bridges, zodiac garden, bonsai gardens, waterfalls, tortoise museum...it was wild!! Definitely a place I want to come back to on a nicer, sunnier day.

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Central Library @ NUS

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1/19/18, Downtown Singapore

Exploring downtown with Brittney!! 

ArtScience Museum

Waterfront Promenade + Merlion Park

National Gallery Singapore

My 10,000+ steps days are goin steady 

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1/15/18, First day of class + Mustafa Centre

(well aware i’m very behind on updates, a full month to be exact, but tbh we all knew this was going to happen -- tryna make up time now!!!)

First day of classes and didn’t actually have any because I don’t have any Monday classes. I went to my roommate’s engineering class instead and oh my goodness I wasn’t ready to start classes.

We went to Mustafa Centre in Little India with my other 2 roommates (Brittney and Jeonghwa) to pick up some things for the apartment. I wish I got a photo of the inside of Mustafa but it’s basically a glorified Costco. Not everything is in bulk but they have literally anything and everything you would want. It’s something crazy like 5 floors and just floor to ceiling of things. From toothpaste to backpacks to snacks, literally anything. It was so overwhelming but we were able to snag everything we wanted. I brought my own bags to shop with because #sustainability but they give you plastic bags and put zip ties on all of them to make sure you don’t steal anything because it would just be too easy to grab something and slip it in your bag. This place was wildin’ but you do what you gotta do for good deals around here!!

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02/15/18, Chinese New Year Happy Chinese New Year!!!! Whoop whoop After class today, we headed over the PGP to pregame/hang out with friends before Chinese New Year celebrations. We met a lot of the other PGP friends that our Waterloo friends had made. There were a bunch of girls who were from Georgia Tech as well actually. We drank wine and played O hell for a little bit before heading off to Chinatown to participate in the festivities. Meera, Elaine, Rowan etc aka the people we usually hang out with wanted to keep hanging out and drink so Brittney and I left with some of the other PGP people we just met. Chinatown was crazy!!! There were so many people. We walked down the street and there were just a tooon of stalls. People were selling all sorts of snacks, lottery tickets, knick knacks. It was just a bunch of people walking down all the streets around Chinatown. When it was about to hit midnight we walked over to the People’s Park Complex area to watch the firecrackers and fireworks for the countdown. It was honestly a little bit underwhelming, and we didn’t get the best view because it was so crowded, but i’m glad I went. We walked around Chinatown looking for this wishing tree that was supposed to be by Chinatown point, but we never found it. The people we were with didn’t really seem like they wanted to do much, so Brittney and I just left them and walked to Clarke Quay on our own. We met up with Meera, Elaine and the rest of the crew at Fleek after getting some fried and just enjoyed the rest of the night with them.

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02/14/18, Clementi + NUS

Happy Valentines Day!!! Haha nah -- actually Brittney bought me this cute and handy reusable bag w/ my name on it that she randomly saw as a Valentine’s day gift for me -- freakin sweet of her.

I went to Clementi in the morning to go grab some Chinese New Year snacks because I had to bring some to my family friends’ house when I visit. Apparently Bengawan Solo is a place a lot of the locals like, so I kind of just randomly chose a couple to buy. They were DANG expensive but oh well. Clementi was still poppin with Chinese New Year things, so I walked around a bit more just to check out what kind of things they had. I bought a 红包 (hong bao) to give to Brittney and a fun Chinese New Year gift, because that’s what you traditionally do for the New Year. The store gifted me these 窗花 (chuang hua) in the shape of dogs in addition to my purchases. It was super random but I loved it. I brought them back and hung it on our window in our apt. 

Still on the school grind!! So of course I went to class and then Brittney and I decided to venture to the Yale-NUS library to study. We’ve heard things about how great the library was so we decided to check it out. It’s right off of campus, basically connected to NUS actually, so it was just a short walk. They had a pond in the middle of their campus, so random. The library itself reminded me of a Ivy League library tbh. It was old styled and grand so Yale, I suppose. We were kicked out of there at 6pm because it’s only open to Yale-NUS students after that, so the productivity was short-lived, but it’s okay!!

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02/11/18, Sundays @ Buena Vista

First Sunday in Singapore!! So trying to be a good lil Christian gal I decided to find a church to go to. I found one called New Creation Church that looked super modern and young. I looked at what time the services were and found out they have about 5 and even had satellite locations and you had to REGISTER for the early services. At this point I should’ve known I wouldn’t like the church but I went along with it anyway. I decided to go to their afternoon service because you didn’t have to register. 

The church was at The Star Vista Performing Arts Center this MASSIVE concert hall at the Buena Vista MRT stop. I was early so I wandered around the mall (of course it’s also a mall because what isn’t in Singapore) before service. I walked into the church’s bookstore without realizing it was for the church and spotted a Joel Osteen book and I knew it was downhill from there. I walked upstairs to the performing arts center and was immediately overwhelmed by the number of people. I was waved up some stairs and into a row of seats so I quietly followed and sat down, pretty close to the front. Not going too much into it, 1) weird being in church after not going for awhile 2) I was so tired, I fell asleep during service oops 3) there were so many people and yet when the pastor came on to preach we were watching him on a screen, indicating there was a whole other room that he was actually preaching too 4) he started talking about how divorces are always the woman’s fault..ok and that was just the beginning 5) it was freezing in the room. Because of all this, I left halfway through the service because I just couldn’t listen to what he had to say.

I left the Star Vista and decided to hop on an Ofo bike. I checked on my map and I saw that Holland Village and this HDB that I’ve seen cool photos of wasn’t too far away so I biked away. HDB stands for Housing Development Board but people in Singapore also call the apartment buildings that people live in HDBs because they’re under the Board. I love how symmetrical all the HDBs are and I’ve always seen people taking cool photos of them with #straightfacade so I really wanted to go explore them too. I biked up to the Holland Village area and immediately spotted this yellow and blue HDB. I parked my Ofo and started walking around the void deck area of the building. There was a bunch of art painted on the walls of the building. It was an Andy Warhol feature. It was pretty cool to see art in the HDBs. I wasn’t really sure if I was allowed to go up the buildings or not, so I kind of wandered around the building trying to feel out the situation. I finally built up the courage (lol) to go up the elevator of one of the buildings. I’m so glad I did!! Nobody really understands my obsession with HDBs but I LOVE them. I took the elevator up to one of the top floors and it was just so cool to see the way people lived, with their clothes drying on the racks outside their windows and to see how crazy compact and symmetrical the buildings were. After snapping a couple shots, I took the elevator back down and got back on another Ofo and biked around Holland Village.

Holland Village is an area pretty close to campus that a lot of people go out to drink at. It’s pretty popular among the expats. We always go to the Clarke Quay area so I hadn’t been yet so I wanted to explore a little. I found an overpriced salad and acai place and even though it was expensive I decided to splurge because after having fried noodles and rice for so long a smoothie bowl sounded so good.

I thought about going back to NUS after this but biking around was too fun so I kept going. I stopped once more around Holland Village to see this other HDB I passed. I decided to head toward the Clementi direction to bike home. I happened upon this random trail near Clementi that was beautiful!! It was by this river and there was a big path for bikers and joggers. It was around 5 or 6pm at this point -- almost sunset time, and there were so many people out and about!! It was cool because a ton of the people walking and jogging were older folks. Singapore people are so dang fit, I love it. I was so happy -- the weather was beautiful and I was just enjoying myself on the bike!! The Singapore roads don’t usually have bike lanes, so when you find one it’s a big deal. 

As the sun was setting, I found this other brightly painted HDB, so I hopped off my bike and ventured up it. I watched the sunset from the top of the HDB, took some pics, and then biked to Clementi mall. I snagged some food and then took the bus back to NUS. 

Ticked off HDB exploring on my list, found a dope bike path, saw Holland Village, went to church (lol). Smiles all around.

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02/09/18, Downtown Singapore + Blue Jazz Cafe

And this is Pt 2!!!

That night, Rowan convinced us to go to this art showing (?? not really sure what it was supposed to be) downtown near Orchard but we were running late. It was free entry till 9pm and we were rushing on the MRT trying to get there. The whole time we were on the MRT we were discussing whether or not we would make it or if we would have to run. 

When we stepped out of the MRT, there were three Ofos just sitting there and it was fate. We had to grab them and go. I forgot to mention that the other best thing about Ofos is that after the first free ride, we only had to pay a one time fee of $2 (I think, it was so cheap I don’t even remember) and we get 180 days for free for all ridges up to an 1hr long. CRAZY, right? It’s the best. Anyway -- to continue the story. We hopped on our bikes with Rowan mapping and we made our way to this art showing, only to find out that the exhibit closed altogether at 9pm, it wasn’t just free entry before 9pm. Lol oops. It’s okay. We met up with Jojo (Rowan’s gf who goes to NTU) and her local friend, Ola. We sat and chilled at this outside bar that the art showing had set up. The outdoor portion of the exhibit was still open. There was a bar and this very vibey electronic music playing with a video and DJ in the background. Ola told us her favorite place to go with her friends was Blue Jazz Cafe, so we made our way to the bar after chilling for a little bit at the art showing. 

Blue Jazz Cafe is in the Arab neighborhood in Singapore. It’s one of the hipper areas. The walls are all covered with street art, it was pretty sweet. We snagged a table outside of the cafe and just enjoyed the jazz music and chilled. Blue Jazz Cafe is this 3 level place. The first floor is chill jazz, the second is a club, and the third is a fancy lounge. None of us were really feeling drinking, but we wanted to check out the other floors just to see what they were like. The club was a lot but the third floor lounge was pretty cool. We later found out that it was someone’s farewell party that we were crashing lol. Exhausted but content, we called it an early night and caught the MRT home. 

The NUS buses had stopped running at this point so we didn’t have a way of getting from Kent Ridge to UTown, so of course as we do, we got ofo’s and biked all the way home. Lol we are ridiculous. and ridiculously obsessed with ofo. 

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A ridiculous video I took of Brittney and I on our bike ride :) This was as we were reaching Mount Fabre Park.

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02/08/18

Been on the hunt for some good vegetarian food at the canteens here and it’s been hard. It’s easy to be vegetarian/vegan when you’re eating Indian food, but branching out from that is difficult. I found a stall at the Faculty of Arts & Sciences canteen (The Deck) that has all vegan food. They sell a lot of mock meat which I’m not a huge fan of, but once in awhile I’m down for it. She gives a really good amount of food as well, which I love.

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happy birthday brittney!!!!

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02/26/18, BALI!!!!

click to view the BALI PHOTOS :))

Let me tell you about Bali though...

A lot of people (at least I definitely did) think Bali is this beautiful oasis. First thing that comes to mind is yoga retreat, vegan heaven, crystal blue water, zen type vibes, but our experience was very different. There were 10 of us so if that doesn’t already set the scene for how crazy it was... traveling with that many people just makes it a mission to make any decisions or get anything done. 

On Friday we flew into Denpasar (Brittney and I were on a separate flight bc we of our spontaneous booking lol) and we went from the airport to our Airbnb. The roads are wild!!! There are basically no traffic laws and everyone rides their scooters and just goes. We drove through so many different areas to get to our Airbnb. It was so interesting to see the mix of the very poor, developing areas contrasted with the modern, hip shops you see on Instagram etc. Even just the contrast of our very cute Airbnb to the housing around it. Our Airbnb was hostel style kind of with multiple rooms. Our room was 2 double beds and a bathroom. It was super cute with the owner’s house right by it -- filled with loud roosters and dogs. From the Airbnb we walked to Batu Bolong beach to meet the others. First impressions: It was so so hot and the water was a nasty brown. The sun is crazy bright there. The sand was literally too hot to walk on barefoot. I don’t ever burn tbh but my shoulder burned a little this trip and that was crazy to me. I experienced peeling skin from a sunburn for the first time and for sure lathering on the sunscreen from now on!!!!!! Always!!!! We paid for a couple lounge chairs and umbrellas in front of a restaurant on the beach because there was no way we would be able to just lay out on the sand. This beach is a prime surfing location, aka the waves will knock you flat on your back (which admittedly happened to me multiple times). For some reason all of us still loved it. It was fun just to run into the water and being KO’ed by the wave idk. This first day was our chill day. We spent majority of the day by the beach and then we chilled at our group’s villa. The villa was wild. It had an incredible pool, open concept roof business, right by all the shops and restaurants, about 5 min walk from the beach. We showered and went out for food. We ate at a ‘warung’ as it’s called in Indonesia. It’s basically a small, family style restaurant. I got so much food and I can’t remember that last time I’ve been that full. I could barely stand up straight. Yet, we walked by a vegan ice cream place and of course I had to get one. I got tumeric ice cream and it was so good. Worth every inch of bloated belly lol. We spent the night chilling in the villa -- drinking, catching up, in the pool etc. 

Saturday was our busy, busy day. We hired a private driver who took us around to all our different locations. We visited the Ubud Monkey Forest (Sacred Monkey Sanctuary) and it was our first close experience with monkeys in South East Asia (at the tree top walk I only really saw them from afar). These monkeys were so clever and quick!!! If you had food they would just snag them from you. The sanctuary had a bunch of rules to follow to help prevent monkey attacks -- ex. don’t look them in the eyes!! We saw the monkeys pick out bugs from each others fur (including around the butt area) and eat it. You could pay to feed them bananas and they absolutely devoured them. The monkeys just roam freely around the park so if you’re not careful they’ll just snatch things from you. At one point we were in this open area and we were all taking turns feeding the monkeys. This girl just got peed on by a monkey and I had just fed another monkey. I was backing out of the circle of monkeys eating when I accidentally stepped on a baby monkey’s tail and lemme tell ya, commotion ensued. There was an AWFUL awful scream from the baby monkey and then literally everyone else who was in the area backed away until it was just me and the monkey, and the big daddy monkey. He looked so pissed I was so scared. He started punching my leg, of course it didn’t hurt, but I really was terrified he was about to bite my leg off. I apologized but of course it didn’t understand...it was so scary alright. 

After the monkey forest we went to the Tegalalang Rice Terrace. We had lunch along the rice terrace and hiked in after. The restaurant had this super cute swing that you could take a photo with and then when we walked in it was so cool to see how far the rice terraces extended. Honestly, so beautiful. We visited the Tegenungan Waterfall after. It wasn’t the waterfall that we wanted to visit, but our driver took us to the wrong one (lol ty driver). It was really brown because it was winter so there was a ton of water and took a lot of mud with it. We didn’t end up swimming in the big waterfall because of time, and because the water was just flowing too fast, it was kind of dangerous. There was a baby version before you reached the big one and we spent some time in that. It was so refreshing!!! But I also think this is where I got my worst mosquito bite /: (which I am convinced is how I got mild dengue fever bc I had a mild fever that made me skip all my classes and sleep for a day two days after we got back. Prian scared us all about dengue and that was all I could think about for a lot of the trip tbh)

We wanted to catch sunset at the Tanah Lot temple so we were rushed for time from the waterfall. We ended up getting there a little early and snagging some food. I tried this sticky coconut rice snack that was so delicious. The temple itself was honestly not that impressive. There were way too many people, it made it really hard to enjoy our time. There were too many clouds so the sunset was eh as well. The temple is supposed to be really cool because you walk on this sort of natural bridge path to the actual temple that is surrounded by water, but we couldn’t reach it because water levels were too high (aka not really ideal time to visit Bali tbh). That night we were beat but I will say I had a dank meal that night. Mi goreng!! Mi goreng is an Indonesian fried noodle dish that we got for nearly every meal and was so good. 

The next day a couple of us wanted to rent scooters and ride around. The area that we were staying in was pretty mellow so we figured it wouldn’t be too dangerous to ride them around. However, the rental guy wouldn’t even let us get them. It was actually really sweet of him. He said that if he rented them to us he would make a bunch of money and if we got injured or ruined the bike he would make even more, but he didn’t care about the monkey, he didn’t want us to get hurt. In the end we tried the scooters in an alley way but didn’t get to rent them /: probably smart though...definitely smart actually.

We hired a driver that the other part of the group (everyone minus me and brittney) had from the airport for the rest of the day. Apparently he was really cool and would Facebook live their journey (kinda weird tbh), let them hotspot his wifi in the car, and was just a cool guy??? We didn’t spend that much time with him this day so I don’t really know. We were leaving this day but we wanted to spend the morning seeing a beautiful temple and experiencing some actual clear blue water. We drove to Uluwatu Temple which was so beautiful. It was a temple on this rocky cliff with amazing blue water below. One of the most stunning views I’ve experienced if I’m being honest. Before we walked into the temple though, there were these SAVAGE monkeys on the outside parking lot. I’m telling you, these monkeys are so feisty and conniving!!! The monkey came and snatched this women’s glasses out of her hands and then proceeded to snap them in half. Two people in my group also had glasses and immediately became super cautious, but even still, one of the monkey’s jumped on Prian’s back and swiped his glasses off his face. He was just biting and playing with the glasses for awhile and we were all praying that he wouldn’t snap them in half. Eventually, our driver called over one of the local temple workers and she gave the monkey a banana bunch and he finally dropped the glasses, unharmed (minus a couple bite marks). Strong start to the day ya know. For the rest of the time at the temple, we all clutched on to our stuff to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Also, random fact but the temples have weird rules like if you’re pregnant or on your period you can’t go in...

After the temple, we ventured to Dreamland Beach. All we wanted was a beautiful clear blue water beach like we saw from the temple. Dreamland was a resort, private beach and we decided to splurge (when I say splurge I mean it was $3 entrance fee instead of free basically lol) on this private beach. From the outside it really did look incredible, but once you looked closer there was trash everywhere. We didn’t even spend time in the water because we ended up just swimming in trash. It was really sad actually. There was a river type deal that the ocean ran into and it was FILLED with trash. The sustainability side of me was really torn up by it, I almost got a bag to help clean up, no lie. It was heartbreaking. The worst part was people at the resort who were just tanning in the sun, taking these Insta photos with no regard to the trash around. Insta vs real life has never been more real. Post beach we drove to the airport, blasting some Canadian jams (Drake and “Out for a rip”) and listened to Prian belt some Jackson 5. 

Bali, man. Definitely not what I expected, but also as always no regrets. 

There were just a lot of annoying admission fees. The people weren’t the nicest. Dengue fever paranoia. I was just overall on edge because it was my first trip out in the real Southeast Asian area and people kept freaking me out about getting hit by a scooter or getting cholera from the water or dengue from the mosquitoes (mossies!!!), it made it hard to enjoy the trip. But Bali was still very beautiful. We didn’t have time to see Heaven’s gates or climb Mount Agung but I would for sure come back to do a more retreat type trip and do those things :-)

an eye opening experience to say the least. first trip done and I am STOKED for more