Bali – July 2023 (Part 2)

We spent three days in Ubud, Bali’s spiritual and artistic center. Characterized by lush vegetation and rice fields almost everywhere you look, Ubud also distinguishes itself as the artistic center of Bali. Silverwork, crystal jewels, rich wood carvings, colorful quilted bedspreads, unique home furniture and accessories, linen clothing, everything is amazingly affordable. You have to see for yourself.

However, My attraction to Ubud was not its shopping venues but the meditative, grateful, and spiritual state I constantly found myself in. I was experiencing a stirring familiarity with my childhood memories of growing up in the southern part of Ayiti. The range of mountains, the extravagance of flowers, the ever-present water and high humidity, the flora, and the scents were unearthing a nostalgia buried deep down from all the years spent living abroad.

I will not bore you with all the details of my vacation in this Balinese City, but a few experiences are worth sharing. The cooking lesson with a family from the countryside stuck with me. Our host gave us a lesson on the customs and traditions of the Balinese people. Family is everything; children are raised by their grandparents from age two until they reach puberty at 13, and all generations share common accommodations on the family compound. The Balinese people believe that grandparents are more suited to raise a child to achieve their destiny and full potential than parents who try to influence the child’s destiny through the wants and desires of their egos. Thus, the reason to separate them from their progenitors. The family lives off the land, and meat is seldom eaten. The Balinese people will tell you that food is considered medicine and plays a strong role in preventive care. They live a long time, although they are unsure of their age. They are prescient when the time arrives to transition. They, then, go to bed and wait to make the ultimate trip, with no fuss significative of a life well lived. Their life is a lesson in simplicity and detachment.

We visited art galleries, the Hindu Tirta Empul water temple built around 1910 on a spring water believed to hold healing properties and where locals and tourists bathe in a strict ritual explained to you by the local staff. We treated ourselves to a full day of meditation at a site where, in the morning, our spiritual guide taught us techniques to help quieten our minds, detach, and soar. We spent the afternoon on a sound-healing meditation session where we all fell asleep in a cocoon of harmonious sounds and love-filled air.

All this is among flowers, statues, ponds, trees, and signs of beauty everywhere. It was exquisite.

And every evening, the conversations, the laughter, the sharing in an easy ambiance with the spiritual tribe, the sisterhood.

And it gets better – when we left Ubud for the famous Lemukhi waterfalls, we thought we had witnessed Bali’s beauty and serenity. Boy, were we wrong? On the next leg of our journey, the ecovillage in Sibang awaited us with a fantastic visit to the neighboring waterfalls. It took us an entire day on foot to reach the waterfalls and return home at dusk. The natives will tell you that you will take 365 steps to reach the falls, but they will not tell you that the stairs are about half the journey and you have to walk to and from them to reach the falls. Further, you go down 365 steps, but it also takes stepping up 365 flights of stairs after a day of trekking and a bath, and still, we are only halfway back to our ecovillage.

At first, I hesitated, but I am so glad the owner of the ecovillage tricked me into making the entire trip – his words: the fall is around the bend……, but there is always another bend in the road after the first one, the second one, and so on. Another trick that made me reminisce about Ayiti. The destination is never far when you ask a local. It is always around the corner, but it sure is a large curve or bend, and you can walk over an hour before you finally arrive at the end of the bend.

Once back at the village, it took me no time to reach for my bed, where a giant cicada was waiting for me on the net of my bed. I knew I could not kill it, for I did not want to face the disapprobation that would be written on the locals’ faces for extinguishing a life. I called the owner, who came and gently took away the critter that almost gave me a heart attack. The owner thanked me profusely for preserving its life. Yes, that is Bali, alright.

After the visit to the fall, we headed to a life of luxurious laziness, fun, and relaxation on the beach. After an early start to our day and a two-hour bus drive to the northern coast, we caught a ferry in Padang Bai to the island of Gili Trawanga. Gili T., as it is called, is the most lively of the three Gili islands, where no motorized vehicles are allowed and where we enjoyed the beach, abundant seafood, a partying atmosphere, and the best mojitos on that side of the world. Let’s say everyone had a good time.

We ended our trip in Seminyak, a touristic part of Bali, with dream accommodations, shopping, good food, and sightseeing. Although it takes an inordinate amount of time to go to Bali, I look forward to returning for a more extended stay.

It has been already five months since I returned from Bali. I have kept up with my meditation practice and kept my promise to myself to detach from outcomes and the chaos around me in the world. I also started thinking of my golden years and what I wanted them to be. I want them to be joyful and full of life, so stay tuned as I plan to live my dream. Meanwhile, I am happy to keep my promise to maintain calm and serenity and lead a life that pleases me above all.