Relaxing In Ubud
Coming back to a Ubud was great. I knew my way around and I had already ticked the tourist stuff off the list. It meant I could relax and really get to know the town. I spent 5 more nights here and didn’t leave the centre. No tourist activities. No scooters. Just me, my laptop and my Kindle. Walking up to the rice fields around Ubud is the most adventurous I got.
Ubud is a great place to wind down. After our first rather unrelaxing experience that’s exactly what I did. I spent my days visiting cafes and drinking coffee.
My favourite has to be Ubud Coffee Roastery. A small, new cafe with great coffee. It was all it sold. I visited most mornings. The perfect place to do some writing on my laptop. I even got some programming done! Solving authentication and authorization, a problem I have been struggling with for ages, for a project I am working on.
I judged cafes on their coffee, how often you were blagged to buy more drinks, the wifi and just the general atmosphere. UCR was top the best at all of these. By the end, I was a local.
Murda, just down the road was also a relaxing cafe. The advantages of this one being the lovely food. I often came for lunch and my afternoon. It also had great coffee.
Seminan was another regular of mine. They had a nice air conditioned downstairs room that I usually had to myself. The staff left me in peace as well. Great spot for some laptopery, as one of the cafes put it.
The only problem with moving from cafe to cafe was that I tended to drink rather a lot of coffee. Sometimes I ended up feeling charged. But there wasn’t much else I wanted on the menu.
Drinking coffee wasn’t all I did. Honest.
One night I played in a pool tournament, getting my ass whooped by some locals who were obviously regulars. Still, I had fun. It was in a decent saloon style bar called the Melting Pot with a selection of pub games. Although the price of a beer was steep.
I also met some sound lads from my hostel, including a Brit currently teaching English in South Korea. Me and him were the only ones in our hostel for a couple of nights. Most nights we would go for food and some beers.
I spent my last night in Ubud at Paradiso cinema watching the 2nd episode of Game of Thrones. Pretty epic!
Travelling on my own for the first time has been an interesting experience. Sometimes challenging, sometimes lonely. It certainly means I have plenty of time to myself for writing, reading and programming. You also spend a fair amount of time just deciding how to fill your days. Which I really enjoy. Knowing you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.
I think it is easier to meet fellow lone travellers when you too are on your own. You immediately have a connection with them in that you are both on your own. Not many people like being alone all the time. I personally don’t like eating on my own so always I’m always looking for an eating buddy. It is a great learning experience, let’s see if I can survive the next four months.
Next up Java. Which hopefully has none of Bali’s hyper-tourism.
