A delightful lunch at our hotel with Lloyd and Fiona, Australian friends we met on our cruise to Antarctica

Every now and then a friend will tell us they checked our blog for ideas before planning a trip somewhere. That might be a good idea — advice we should have followed ourselves when planning this trip!

We decided to conclude this trip with a final stay in Nusa Dua, one of just a few spots in Bali with resorts that are truly beach-oriented. But nine years ago we did the same thing — ended a long stay in Bali with a beach stop in Nusa Dua — and then wrote a blog post that was pretty unflattering to the place.

Our complaint then was that dining options outside the fancy resorts were surprisingly poor. When we travel, we invest quite a bit of time researching restaurants. And the result is that we very rarely have a meal that isn’t pretty good. We love food, and a missed opportunity for a good meal while traveling feels like a tragic loss.

It turns out things had not changed here in Nusa Dua, and we find it very odd. There is a huge tourist population here, including a lot of people staying at pretty high-end resorts. Because we’re not the only people who tire of overly fussy resort food (and resort food prices), you can usually find good quality independent restaurants in places like this. But it’s strangely just not the case here.

That leaves us with three options:

1) Eat at nice resorts. This we did plenty of because our hotel had a truly excellent restaurant, just not the kind of place we want to eat every day. Plus a neighboring resort had a somewhat more casual poolside restaurant that worked well for lunch.

2) Take a car somewhere. We don’t always love the hassle of this, but the Grab ride-sharing system here is so good and inexpensive that we did this a few times. One night we even traveled 25 minutes each way to a pretty amazing place in Jimbaran called Cuca.

3) Give the local independent restaurants another chance. Many restaurants are clustered in a Nusa Dua development called Bali Collection. It’s a really bustling place with a ton of physically attractive restaurants with indoor/outdoor seating, good lighting, and a wide variety of cuisines. One night we went to an Indonesian place with decent reviews, but we left feeling like we’d had a decidedly mediocre dinner (i.e., a failure). A couple nights later we tried a nearby “French” place we’d liked the looks of. And the food was positively terrible.

Because we have good survival skills, we managed to have a lovely time here in Nusa Dua, despite these epicurean setbacks. We stayed at a St. Regis resort, where we had a beautiful room with a lovely deck with a heated private pool and direct access to a “salt-water lagoon.” The latter turned out to be a huge, sprawling, wonderfully warm salt-water pool surrounded by incredibly lush tropical gardens. And of course there is a big wide sandy beach.

Our living room at the St. Regis

In the “lagoon” looking back at our room, with the entrance to the left and our “bale” lounge space on the right

Lounging areas along the lagoon

There was also a big fresh-water pool

Our patio and pool, with the lagoon just behind it, after a morning rainstorm came out of nowhere. It poured fiercely for a few minutes, then cleared up like nothing had ever happened.

The resort grounds just after the rain came and went

But the highlight of our stay was a visit from our Australian friends Fiona and Lloyd. We met these fun people on our 18-day cruise to Antarctica last winter. We’d discovered back then that we had similar long trips planned to Bali, just barely overlapping. So we made a point to get together just after their arrival. It was so much fun to see them that we all marveled over the fact that we’d only just met earlier THIS year.

Lloyd and Fiona are travel maniacs who retired on the young side and are determined to make the most of their adventurous spirit while they can. While they still live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, they are on the road much more than at home. We don’t often meet people who travel more than we do (Looking at you, Aunt Debbie). Makes us long for our earlier days of full-time travel, when we never had to suffer that indignity.

Thus we wrapped up a fantastic five weeks on the magical island of Bali. I write this on the plane as we approach Singapore, where we will catch a quick 18-hour flight home. We look forward to being back in New York and taking a few more trips planned for this summer and fall. But I can’t help wondering when we’ll get back to Bali.

Jim and Fiona coordinated their outfits

Despite all those bad things I said about food in Nusa Dua, this was Jim’s stunning Tasmanian salmon dish at lunch with Lloyd & Fiona

One evening we trekked by car to a wonderful Japanese place

Walking along the sandy beach back from lunch at the resort next door

The scene of our “mediocre” dinner; we didn’t bother taking any pictures at the truly awful place later on

A frangipani blossom on the lagoon

You really should not dive into our pool. That guy looks like he is in some serious trouble.

Did I mention how amazing that lagoon was?

The view from lunch to the pool at Capella Ubud. Just to the left of the pool are steps to an opening in the jungle and the hanging bridge leading to our tent.

We’ve just completed our third and final stop in the Ubud area. We first came to Ubud 30 years ago when it was somewhat off the beaten track. We stayed in the center of town, where you could walk to the monkey forest, stroll through markets, visit temples, and be enchanted by just about everything.

Every time we’ve come back, the town of Ubud itself is more sprawling and traffic-choked than the time before. So we tend to spend time in the surrounding areas where countless magnificent resorts have popped up, surrounded by rice paddies, jungle, and cloud forest.

So here we are at Capella Ubud, where you stay in tents in the jungle and eat delicious food and experience the warm hospitality that the Balinese are so good at. They are not just any old tents; they are gorgeously crafted works of art with heated private pools, indoor and outdoor showers, every comfort imaginable. No hardship here.

We’d cross this hanging bridge to get to our tent

Our not too shabby tent, with a heated private pool

Contemplating the world from our little pool, unaware that Jim is taking a picture

Looking up from our pool at the canopy of trees overhead

One day we decided to take a taxi into the town of Ubud for lunch, in case we were missing out on its old charms. The closer you get to town, the slower and more tedious the traffic. Then we found ourselves walking in tourist-crowded, traffic-clogged streets checking out touristy, crappy restaurants. Not something we ever need to do again.

Our walk through town to look for lunch made us never want to step foot in the place again…

…unlike our first visit to Bali in 1996, when we were joined by John & Alma, my brother and sister-in-law, who lived in Australia at that time. We stayed in Ubud town then and were charmed by everything.

The next day our research led us to a lunch restaurant a 20-minute walk from our hotel. The walk took us across rice paddies, through real villages, and down temple-lined streets, to an unassuming place with good food and views of rice fields and people working and kids playing. That’s the Ubud area we love. You just need to keep a distance from the town itself.

Walkng through rice fields toward a lunch spot…

…and then through the village…

…and rewarded by lunch overlooking rice fields…

…where local farmers were working

The architecture and design in Balinese villages is so ornate that it’s hard to tell where the temples end and the houses begin

Heading back home after lunch

It’s worth noting the peculiarities of the weather here. This is generally the dry season in Bali, with little rain, low humidity, and very pleasant temperatures. But up here in the highlands of central Bali, little micro-climates seem to vary quite a bit. We’ve had clouds and rain move in for a while, then dissipate when they feel like it. It’s been pretty unpredictable these last couple weeks. But I rather like this moody weather.

One evening we took a Grab (the ride-sharing equivalent to Uber, ubuiquitous in much of Southeast Asia) to a nice restaurant 10 minutes away. Out of nowhere, a wind picked up and a torrential rainfall began. We couldn’t believe how hard it rained and for how long. It reminded us of a memorable rain in Kampot, Cambodia 13 years ago, the kind we’ve only ever experienced in this part of the world. It was still pouring something terrible when we called for a Grab to get back to our hotel. After just a few minutes our driver said, “No more raining,” and I was surprised to see that, indeed, the rain had let up entirely. In fact, the road was bone dry. There hadn’t been a drop of rain just a few minutes from one of the hardest rains I’d ever witnessed.

After 16 days in this area, we are now ready to head back to coastal Bali for our final 10 days. We’ll head south to Uluwatu for our a clifftop stay and then finally to Nusa Dua for a proper beach break.

A wonderful dinner at Upper Deck, a 10-minute drive from our hotel. At this point we had no idea about the unbelievable rain storm that was about to move in.

The pathways through the jungle at our hotel

Dinner at our hotel one night featured a Japanese egg custard dish with some kind of dramatic smoking jasmine tea. A little Swedish kid nearby, who’d been bored by the dinner up to that point, shouted, “Can I get more of that?!”

We loved the “gym tent” decorated with Balinese wood carvings and fabric

A small temple on the hotel grounds

The pool at Mandapa resort near Ubud, overlooking rice paddies, jungle, and river

There are places in the world that impress you the first time you visit them. Then there are places that keep drawing you back because they make you feel something very special. Bali is one of those places for us.

What we love most about Bali is its extraordinary natural beauty. The island is impossibly green. There are towering palms, rivers cutting through deep jungle, volcanic mountains that seem to appear out of nowhere, and rice terraces sculpted into hillsides that look more like works of art than farms.

The path through rice paddies to get from the pool to our room

Got a hair cut!

Our view of the river from lunch. This may well be the same river where we first tried white water rafting 30 years ago.

But the beauty isn’t just natural. The Balinese have an almost remarkable devotion to beauty itself. Every morning, tiny offerings of flowers appear outside homes, shops, temples, and restaurants. Shrines are draped with fresh cloth. Gates are carved with astonishing detail. Even ordinary places seem to have been designed with an eye toward grace.

We’re not remotely spiritual people, but it’s impossible not to notice the spirituality here. It isn’t tucked away inside churches or reserved for holidays. It seems woven into everyday life. The island has an atmosphere that suggests the sacred and the ordinary comfortably coexist. I once heard that the Balinese are the only people in the world who believe the afterlife is very much like the place they live now.

One thing that surprised us this trip was the weather. We’ve always visited Bali during our own winter, when it’s also Bali’s rainy season. It’s always very hot and humid, which is okay because we are escaping winter at home and we enjoy cooling off by a nice pool. But here we are in July, during the dry season, and the climate is perfection. Days have been in the 70s and low 80s with little humidity. Even more of a tropical paradise.

When you move from place to place things looks rather chaotic. It’s a relatively small island — about twice the size of Rhode Island — but home to well over four million people, making it one of the most densely populated islands in Indonesia. Drive almost anywhere and you’ll find yourself inching along narrow roads packed with scooters, cars, delivery trucks, and an endless procession of little shops, workshops, cafés, and roadside businesses. There are stretches where it feels like one long, endless town.

Then, almost without warning, you turn down a side road.

Suddenly the traffic disappears. The noise fades. You’re surrounded by towering bamboo, ancient banyan trees, emerald rice paddies, rushing rivers, and temples that seem to emerge naturally from the landscape. Every village seems to have several temples. Every valley seems more beautiful than the last. It’s astonishing how quickly Bali can transform from chaotic to serene.

Bali is also home to innumerable wonderful places to stay. From stylish boutiques to ultra high-end resorts, the choices are almost daunting. We decided to divide our stay into 6 stays of 5 or 6 nights each, giving us half a dozen experiences in hotels and parts of the island with very different personalities. After our initial stay in quiet Eastern Bali, we’ve now moved to our first stop in the Ubud area, the physical center and spiritual heart of the island.

Jim crosses the rice paddy

A heavenly lunch overlooking the river

One day we walked 10 minutes down the chaotic Main Street to a neighboring resort for lunch

And quickly stepped into yet another stunning and peaceful landscape

Walking past one of the ubiquitous temples after lunch

Can’t stop taking pictures of this landscape

Another day we walked to a lunch place overlooking this beautiful spot. We ordered a bottle of rosé but were quite surprised when the lovely waitress tried to serve it. She kept struggling to twist the top off the bottle, until Jim explained that it required a corkscrew.

The temple on the grounds of our resort

The pool in our room after a quick afternoon rain storm rushed in. The river rushes by just below the pool, and we frequently hear the excited shouts of the rafters going past.

The resort has a special beauty under the sudden rain storm

Crossing the rice paddy

The entrance to our room

We really love Bali