The time has come for me to move from Ubud to Padangbai. I feel a surprising sense of sadness at leaving the place where I experienced jet lag, homesickness and a savage mosquito attack.
After another enjoyably uneventful day on Wednesday, I wake on Thursday and pack to leave for Padangbai where I will spend one night before heading to Gili T for a few nights.
Click here to read my Bali diary from the beginning.
Saying farewell to Ubud
Honestly, I’m feeling a little relieved to leave Ubud. It is undeniably beautiful, but I’ve felt a little unsettled here. I sometimes travel to a place and simply don’t fall in love with it. I feel that Ubud is one of those places, and I hope that it is just Ubud and not Bali as a whole. The difficulty I have experienced getting around has massively influenced my impressions, with most of the places I wanted to go being too far away to reach on foot.
One of my favourite things to do when I travel somewhere new is to walk. Walk to my destinations, walk back, walk aimlessly, walk just for the sake of it. The sights we see and the things we happen upon while walking from one place to another can often be what we remember many years after the trip. The vibe and the atmosphere of a place, the energy we absorb from its people, the smiles and the smells and the sounds, all of these are things that no photo can ever convey.
These are the things that we experience only by actually travelling to a place and allowing it to take us in and show us its heart and its soul. This is why I travel. Of course it is great to see up close and personal the beautiful beaches, the cliffs, the waterfalls, but seeing these things only scratches the surface of what a destination is really about. I feel that perhaps I haven’t truly seen Ubud in the way that I had hoped to, partly because of the jet lag and the homesickness, and partly because of my transportation issues.
For this reason, it is with no particular sense of loss that I leave my hostel on Thursday morning to head to my next stop. I huff and puff my way down towards the Main Street with my backpack on my pack, declining offers of taxis every few seconds.
Feeling sad
I reach the tourist office and am relieved to discover that my the shuttle to Padangbai will collect me there. I have time to spare (a rare occurrence for me), so I pop to the shop next door for a cold drink and some crisps, getting completely ripped off in the process. I sit on the front of the step of the tourist office until my bus collects me and I am on my way to Padangbai.
As we navigate the Ubud traffic and make our way into relative countryside, I finally feel a pang of regret that my time here is truly done. I have met some very interesting and friendly people here. I have spent time with other travellers, and the locals have been very kind and helpful towards me. I feel that there must be some element of Ubud that I have missed, otherwise I would surely have fallen in love with as I had expected to, and as so many others have done.
I don’t have much time to dwell on this though, as I am soon in Padangbai. With the help of some directions from my bus driver and a local lady on the street, I find my guest house without any trouble, although obviously not without several offers of taxis from random men on mopeds.
Padangbai
I walk through the gates and into the yard and am met with one of the most chaotic scenes I have seen in quite some time. There are chickens and cats and dogs running around the yard, an unknown number of mopeds parked here and there, and a homemade clothesline in the corner. I look around for someone to confirm for me that I am in the right place (although honestly, a not so small part of me is hoping that I’m not), and become aware of a small woman wrapped in a towel hanging clothes on the line.
She calls her daughter, who escorts me up a steep, narrow stairs, deposits me in a Balinese style living room, and goes back downstairs. I see a bedroom leading off the room I am standing in and presume that is where I am supposed to go. I investigate the room. It is bright and spotlessly clean with a big bed, a balcony, and a private bathroom. I leave my backpack and head back downstairs with the intention of finding somewhere to eat.
Downstairs, I encounter the lady of the house again, this time fully dressed. She checks me in, makes my breakfast arrangements for the morning, and tells me that the living room upstairs is for me as well. She also invites me to a Balinese dance display at the beach later on, and loans me traditional clothes to wear.
Unfortunately, the dancing never happens. While I am sitting in a nearby restaurant, the heavens open for the beginning of a storm that is to last all night, flooding my room and knocking down a big tree in the yard of the guest house. I dash back to my room during a short break in the downpour, and this is where I will spend the rest of my evening, resting and preparing for whatever new adventures tomorrow will bring.
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