Kate's Point of View

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Bali and I thought the answers to those might be helpful to people planning vacations for there.What’s it like to travel in Bali during the rainy season, specifically, during late November?
My husband and I travelled to Bali the last two weeks of November 2013, which fell into the earlier arts of their rainy season. We travelled in the following cities, skipping the northeast part of the island entirely: Seminyak, Munduk, Pemuteran, Ubud, Sanur and back to Seminyak. Although we certainly saw some torrential downpours, they didn’t last long and we were able to get around and see sites just fine. We also had plenty of sun so we got our fill of beach and pool time. The exception to all of this was Munduk, where it rained particularly hard and was pretty chilly. We still did a great hike, but it was a muddy affair.

Overall, I think the timing was fine. Also, some sites were still quite crowded. I can’t imagine what it would have been like had we visited during peak season!

Is Bali safe? Did you ever feel scared?
I felt safer in Bali than I have in most places I’ve visited. Everyone we encountered was friendly. There were several occasions when I would go into towns by myself and I was never concerned. The most aggressive people we saw were shopkeepers trying to get out business, but you just have to stay strong to that.

What was the food in Bali like?
Yum, yum! Wonder Boy and I are both vegetarians and we ate better in Bali than we do here in the states. Everywhere we were able to choose from multiple vegetarian options, most of them featuring tofu or tempeh – so protein packed. We ate everything places on our plates and even ate at a night market from food stalls. Our first meal in Bali was Gado Gado, which quickly became one of our favorite and most frequently ordered dishes.

Would you go back to Bali?
Contemplating revisiting locations for vacation is a tough thing for me. There is so much of the world that I want to see! I would revisit New Zealand in a heartbeat because there is still so much of that country I want to explore. I’d go to Costa Rica again because it’s relatively close and simply gorgeous. Bali was beautiful but sooo far away (24 hours of in-air time but 31-36 hours of actual travel to get there). I wouldn’t pass up a free trip to Bali, but I probably wouldn’t go back. I’d pick other, nearby islands instead, just to expand on the places I’ve visited.

What was your favorite of all the things you did in Bali?
So I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that holding Evelyn the four-year-old orangutan was my favorite part of visiting Bali. Holding her and getting so close to her to take pictures was just awesome. But if I were to pick something more authentically Balinese and not from a zoo, I would say that hiking in Munduk was pretty awesome. It was rainy, muddy and messy, but exposed us to such cool plants, bugs and beauty. The Munduk Waterfall at the end of the hike was stunning.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Wonder Boy and I spent the last two weeks of November in Bali, which was, to me, the ultimate in exotic sounding vacations. I’m glad we went there because the trip was full of high points

Star Sightings
Our flights went from Cincinnati to Chicago to Qatar to Singapore to Bali. On the way back it was the same, in reverse, only swap out Chicago with New York. It was a solid 24 hours of in-air travel. The cankles those flights gave me!On our flight from Chicago to Qatar we were accompanied by Shaquille O’Neil as well as Jim Bob Duggar and one of his daughters. Very exclusive.

Animal Encounters
We’re not picky on our trips about animal encounters. We’re perfectly content with cats, dogs and everyday farm animals. In Bali we did have some good kitten interactions.

But monkeys shmonkeys. That was trumped by elephants. We visited a place that had several and we got to get so close!

But elephants shmelephants. I got to hold an orangutan! And pet a tiger!

Nom Nom
Bali is a total score for vegetarians. We were able to eat pretty much anywhere and the food was always delicious. One of our favorite meals was in Sanur at a night market. To us, it was very much like someplace Anthony Bordain would visit. In a parking lot, all sorts of food trucks and vendors had set up. Wonder Boy and I stuffed ourselves with delicious food. On our way back we added up the total cost. $1. That wAs our combined total. Amazing.

Nature
the longer Wonder Boy and I live in a city, the more we’re moving away from city-focused vacations and more towards one with outdoorsy stuff. In Munduk we went on an amazing hike. In Pemuteran we went snorkeling. Bali is a beautiful country with so much to see!

Luxe
I’ve always been very vocal about embracing mid-range hotels and nicer hostels when I travel. Mainly because I’m cheap. The cost of things in Bali was such that we got to stay in some FANCY places. Our own villa in the middle of a rice paddy. Our own cottage with an outdoor bathroom and rooftop deck with daybeds. A tree-house like hotel room with three walls of solid glass. If I weren’t so cheap, I could get hooked!

Gobble Gobble!
On actual Thanksgiving weekend we spent the day nursing hangovers while sunning ourselves by an infinity pool, eating some delicious Indian food (we have a vacation tradition to eat Indian food wherever we go) and visiting a drag queen bar called Bottom’s Up. A pretty nice day!

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Ask either Wonder Boy or I and we’ll tell you that we take very normal, but exotic sounding, vacations. Ask many people we know and they’ll tell you we take adventurous trips, a la The Amazing Race. I’m not sure where the discrepancy lies, but folks’ perceptions of what we do thinks maybe I have some credibility in advising your typical traveler on upping their adventure quotient.*For me, having an adventurous vacation is about releasing control. In my everyday life, I have to maintain whatever semblance of control I can at all times. Tightly scripted schedules, calendars of social events, to do lists, smartphone reminders. So when I pack my suitcase, I say let the control go and enter into a little of free fall.

That free fall starts for me in how I plan, or don’t, for a trip. Wonder Boy and I plan each trip the same way. We buy plane tickets, book our first and last nights’ hotels.

That’s it. The rest of the trip schedule happens organically.

I can acknowledge that it is sort of a luxury to be able to wing it. I know I can always afford a hotel somewhere, even if it falls outside of my financial comfort zone. But even when I was less financial stable, right out of college, I still let myself go into travelling free fall. Instead of hotels, I just relied more on hostels. This system can work with any type of budget. During our trip we find hotels using our Lonely Planet guidebooks, asking people or, now that wireless is so easy to come by, travel apps like TripAdvisor on our phone.

So this free fall? It’s not only lodging but also day to day activities. If you don’t pre-plan a trip, you can adjust where and what you do based on what’s interesting, the weather, the cost, etc. For instance, when we visited Turkey, we intended to enjoy some beach time and the Augean Sea. The weather in Northern Turkey was cooler than we anticipated. Since we had no schedule or reservations to maintain, we were able haul our butts south and enjoy southern Turkey and a nearby Greek island. Similarly, on a recent trip to Bali we went to Munduk, which was beautiful but also really rainy. After making the most of things and hiking and sightseeing in the rain, we split town.

Another aspect of adventurous travel is trying to find the right mix of touristy and non-touristy things. Old Kate would have said there is no value in touristy things, even if I was actively partaking in them. I see the value now, in moderation.

It’s easy to always eat at restaurants frequented by expats and tourists, where you know the food is more likely to be safe and familiar. The flip side is that it’s also pretty much guaranteed to be more expensive and less authentic to the place you’re visiting! When I travel, I will ask locals for recommendations on cheap, non-touristy places. Wonderfully, people are apt to refer you to their personally preferred bars and restaurants, where you get to experience inexpensive, delicious local food in an authentic atmosphere. In Bali in the city of Sanur we ate at a night market full of food stalls serving local cuisine to locals and we stuffed ourselves with deliciousness for a total cost of $1 (combined). The same philosophy works for hikes, parks, beaches, shops, etc.

All that said, I’ve been trying to embrace some touristy things. Without doing so, this would never have happened!

I feel like I’m not doing a fair job of explaining what Wonder Boy and I do because it’s what we don’t do that makes all the difference. You want adventurous travel? WING IT. It will be okay.

* I fully acknowledge that many people take way more adventurous trips than I do, involving physical challenges and truly dangerous places. That’s cool but probably a little out of reach for your average person. I think what I can offer is a way for a typical beach-goer, Disney visitor to up the ante a little.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.