On the flight from Amsterdam to Denpasar I started watching a show called “Mare of Eastown,” it was pretty good. The KLM food once again did not disappoint, some of the best vegan food I have had on a flight. We thought we were on a flight that would fly directly to Denpasar, but after 12 hours we disembarked the plane in ….Singapore.

We waited in line and went through security, showing our vaccine proof once again before reboarding the same plane and even sitting in the same seats. The plane was very full, so we once again missed our take off spot and had to wait quite awhile in the plane. This final flight was two hours long, but they served us another meal (another Indian curry). We landed in Denpasar at 8:15pm and it took forever to get off the plane. We disembarked and went through a checkpoint to ensure we were vaccinated. Next we paid 500,000 each for an Indonesian visa on arrival and then stood in line for two more hours waiting to clear immigration. The two Indonesian immigration officers were flirting with one another so the line took so long. A lady in line (whose bare butt I had seen on the plane earlier) was vaping into a ball of kleenex in line for immigration. After immigration we went through customs which also proved to be shitty. We had been on an airplane for four days, so our customs declaration form had expired at some point. We had to search for wifi in the airport to fill out a new form (which we found out after waiting in another line for an hour. We finally exited the airport to try and find our ride to the hotel. This proved to also be difficult. In a sea of people with names on paper signs, our driver had grown tired of waiting for us (understandably) and was lying down behind everyone. We searched for our driver for quite awhile and finally found him, he told us to wait and he would go get the car. We waited another 30 minutes before finally getting into our last mode of transportation on this epic four day journey. It was our driver’s first time picking people up at the airport, so he made 4 circles around a roundabout before finding his way, but he was so nice and friendly.

The drive to Ubud from Denpasar took about two hours, it poured rain the entire time, and we were treated to a very bright lightning show along the way. The roads narrowed and we finally arrived in Ubud at “Ubud Luxury Villa” at around 12:45am. It was officially November 5th, and we had left home on the 2nd. The hotel was beautiful, like a dream with lanterns and flower petals on the narrow walkways. Our room was really nice with a huge balcony overlooking the pool and rice fields. We had a quick shower and passed out.

I woke up at 5:30am and made a jasmine tea to drink as I sat on our balcony. Jive woke up not long after and we had a coffee together. We headed down to breakfast around 8am, which was included in our stay. Breakfast was at a restaurant attached to our hotel called “Look Bee”. I had the Look Bee set with a sticky rice and coconut dish, papaya, watermelon juice, coffee and a rice porridge with cumin, nuts, a boiled egg and beans. The dish was very savoury and delightful. Jive had the American breakfast with watermelon, toast, an omelette and papaya juice.

After breakfast we set out on a walk into town.

The walk was beautiful and so interesting, there were so many little things to see. We walked by a weird space orb and some little stone figures. We stopped at a convenience store along the way to sit and have a coffee in their front seating area. Next we crossed the big bridge into Ubud city and saw a huge ravine underneath the bridge. We decided to take a sharp left after crossing the bridge to explore the ravine area.

The pathway down into the ravine was lush and green, covered in moss and plant life and lined with many stone carved statues with bizarre expressions. The pathway took us down into the river valley. The river was beautiful and we had it all to ourselves. We crossed a bamboo bridge and climbed back out of the valley on the opposite side. After climbing quite a few steps we found ourselves at Pura Gunungh Lebah, a beautiful temple with the traditional step towers. We then followed the river and came upon the entrance to the “Ridge walk” so we decided to do that hike.