Bali best bits: Eggs, monkeys and waterfalls.

All I knew about Bali before I went was that my friend Hannah looked great in a bikini there and if you drink the water you’ll lose control of your bodily functions and boff everywhere. The first is true, the second not so much.

Here’s my best bits of mental Seminyak and the ever so dreamy Ubud.

1. Walking down the main street in Ubud, you’ll see a tiny little wooden sign saying “Sari Organik”, turn right and walk up a gravel hill and you’ll see two men sitting on a wall.
Buy a coconut off them for 1,000 rupiah. (50p) He’ll chop off the top and you can drink the sweet water inside during the 20 minute walk through the rice paddies.
 On the dusty path you’ll pass shacks full of paintings, trinkets, hats and jewellery, before seeing a raised wooden cafe surrounded by lush banana leaves.
This place serves delicious vegetarian all organic food from soups and sandwiches to salads and the classic nasi goreng.  It’s pretty inexpensive and main dishes work out at about 4 quidsies. There’s no wifi here to make sure you take in the beautiful scenery and enjoy your food.
One thing to remember is that as its open there’s no air con and Bali is often 90% humidity so either walk down early in the morning or in the afternoon to avoid sweating so much you refill your coconut.

2. When me and my boyfriend booked tickets to Bali he casually threw into conversation that I could meet and hold an orangutan there. I immediately sunk into my chair, with my hand over my mouth and cried like a four year old.

When I was ten years old (OKAY EIGHTEEN) i’d sit and sob at nature TV shows because I wanted to meet a monkey. And this was really happening.
If you’ve seen Kristin Bell’s Sloth Meltdown that should give you a good gage of where i’m at with baby orangutans.
Fast forward to Bali, and after travelling from Seminyak to Ubud we found out the only place I could meet one was Bali Marine and Safari Park… and we were too far away to get to it. After the devastation subsided, I settled for Ubud Monkey Forest.
These Monkeys are smaller and feistier and you can’t spoon them. But you can feed them bananas and that’s enough for me.
It’s 40,000 rupiah to get in which works out as around twenty pounds, and bananas are a fiver for a bunch. An hour will give you enough time to walk around this ancient forest full of old relics where the monkeys just aren’t scared of humans. The babies may even come and sit on you, but look out for the big ones who will jump on you when they see you’ve got bananas. Shitifying.

3. In Legian, not far from Seminyak there’s a chilled out joint called Fat bowl. This place serves the. best. pasta. dish. I’ve. ever. eaten. The type of pasta that you basically make out with while you eat it. That you think about for days after. That after you get back from Bali, you spend 3 hours on the computer, drunk, trying to find the recipe for. I also don’t have a picture of it because I ate it too fast.

This was a silky, lemon grassy, coconutty, creamy sauce with a hint of chilli and soft prawns that fall apart in your mouth, wrapped up in al dente fettuccine that tastes like slivers of silky ribbon bursting with creamy delicate flavours that are so unusual you wish they’d never end ohmygod. Everyone on Trip Advisor is losing their shit saying it’s “one of the best meals i’ve ever had”, “to die for” and “amazing”. Seriously, I’m in Perth, but pass me a gin and a snorkel i’d swim to Indonesia for another bowl of this.

4. On our drive back to Seminyak from Bali we stopped off at Tegenungan Village to take a dip in the famous waterfall. This place was beautiful. A couple of hundred steps will lead you down into an opening where the noise of the water is astounding, you can swim in the rocky lagoon or sit on the rocks in the cave behind the waterfall. The force of the water is so strong you can’t even get underneath the waterfall… which is probably a good thing because it’d probably turn you inside out. You can also climb up to the top of the waterfall where theres a natural pool and chill out there.

5. There’s absolutely no way I could finish this list with involving the best breakfast in Seminyak. You’ll find the mysterious wooden door down a small alleyway just off main street. Opposite their kissing booth (aw cute hehe). We kept coming back to this place just because the breakfasts were so incredible. Every kind of egg you can imagine. They make a special breakfast salsa called AK-47 which is way better than eating an actual AK-47, but admittedly will blow your head off with flavour. The Charlton Heston milkshake was the best banana milkshake i’ve tasted and their Affogato is a scoop of vanilla ice cream drowned in a shot of rich hot espresso… it’s like nothing i’ve ever had. Before I just end up listing the whole menu, check it out here. 

Table for one: Why Masturdating is good for you.

“Masturdating”:
Going out alone.
i.e. Seeing a movie by yourself, going to a restaurant alone.

“Dude I saw No Country for Old Men twice by myself. I’m addicted to chronic masturdating.”

I met up with an ex this time last year. I say ex, he was more someone I fancied when I was 16 and “went out with” regardless of not knowing what a boyfriend was (HAHAH DONT SNOG ME THATS GROSS). It was a great reunion. He’s a good guy and we laughed for hours, we talked like old friends do into the wee hours of the morning- discussing old school mates, what we’d done since and what had changed. His new love, and mine.

“You’ve completely come out of your shell… you’re so confident now” he exclaimed.

My immediate response was “Nah, i’ve always been like this…” because in my mind I had. But alas, i’m not sure this was entirely true. It’s only by looking back that we realise how far we’ve actually come to being a fully functioning human adult (woo!) and since that conversation, i’ve often looked back trying to work out if he was right. Quelle surprise! Obviously, he was… I mean hey, this is one of the major reasons why meeting up with old friends is so great; you realise how much has happened in between.

There’s a whole bunch of different things that have forced me to grow up and turn into the quietly confident person i’m hopefully becoming; boyfriends, new jobs, social experiences, difficult friendships and so on and so forth… but one of them, to me, is extremely important because I have to do all it myself.

Being alone.

I’m not talking about being single, even though I whole heartedly agree that it’s important to be happy with being alone in that respect too. I’m talking here about being physically alone.

I used to work as a cocktail waitress when I was in uni and I often turned up early (what the hell has happened to me) for work. There was a restaurant next door so i’d often pop in and have dinner on my own before I started my shift. I thought nothing of it until a guy from my year in uni who happened to be a waiter there came over and clapped me on the back “are you waiting for someone or have you been stood up?” These, apparently where the only two possible scenarios. This guy was neither a dick nor an idiot, but his immediate reaction was that I couldn’t possibly be eating alone by choice. That option didn’t even factor into his thought process.

Spending enough time by yourself and being okay with it has always been seen as an introverts game. They don’t like being in social crowds all the time right? Wallflowers love reading in coffee shops and going to the cinema alone right? Possibly, but so do I, and I’m just about the loudest most social person you’ll meet. Being comfortable alone is for everyone.

I’m excited to move to Greece, meet new people and go on adventures with strangers who will become friends, but i’m also excited about spending time on my own, blogging and eating at tavernas alone, because some of the most important things you learn about yourself are learnt in the spaces between the madness, the noise and the hectic work/social life you’ll inevitably have as a twenty something. In the last 5 years i’ve realised that the only way to be stable, happy and develop mentally and healthily as an adult is to know what i’m like, what I think, what I want to do/be/have in life and that only comes from paying attention to yourself… and how can you do that if you don’t set aside time with yourself? Eenmaal the Worlds first solo dining experience totally get where i’m coming from.

I’m pretty big on the idea (and I think i’m fair in saying that most people are) that the most unhealthy way to live is to not face your problems, to ignore warning signs and to not talk about how you feel and use the support systems around you. But before that even comes into play, you need to know how to recognise the issues and unhealthy habits that are making you unhappy before you can even try to begin to solve them. It might sound super simple “obviously i’d recognise if I was doing something that makes me unhappy GINA GOD” but it’s really not. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re doing it. Sometimes something that is making you temporarily happy is making you unhappy in the long run. The only way to avoid this is to spend time alone. With yourself. On your own, and I don’t mean for a night or an evening to prove to yourself you can do it, I mean being comfortable doing it as a life habit. Getting to know yourself. Reading books you love, books you hate and thinking about why you hate them. Sitting silently in a restaurant eating quietly on your own and genuinely not giving two shits that people think you’ve been stood up.

Someone who can go to the cinema alone or eat dinner alone is someone who knows exactly who they are and are comfortable with themselves. That’s the type of person I’d want to be around, and hopefully after filling up a Nandos card full of dates with myself, that’s the person I’m becoming.

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London: Five things i’ll miss.

I spent a lot of time as a kid in cities… Paris and New York particularly, but as a teen from up north, the thought of moving down south to live in  London just didn’t appeal to me. However, now that i’m going to travel Greece I’m realising now much i’m going to miss the big smoke and all of it’s quirks. To be honest, there’s no city quite like London.

Breakfast

If you’re anything like me, you slide out of bed hungover on a Saturday with such an insatiable craving for a specific kind of breakfast you might as well be a chef in her third trimester.

The London Menu:
Every type of egg possible,
Breakfast burritos,
Maple bacon pancakes a la New York,
A fry up for £4.00,
(Pretty much) every cereal ever made,
Coffee and brunch in the company of cats

…and the list goes on. It doesn’t matter what you fancy, London has every breakfast you could ever imagine, and if there’s one thing i’m gonna miss it’s grabbing my best friend and devouring Eggs Benedict while pissing ourselves over last nights embarrassments.

Last Minute Nights Out

There’s always something going on here. London Cocktail Week is just about over, but we’re gonna have to plaster on our makeup to cover the hangove,r because oh look, FRIEZE Art has just popped up! Oh, there’s an after party you say? I couldn’t possibly, i’ve only  just about moved on from the excitement that was London Fashion week *cut to me dancing to Nicki Minaj at 8pm with a gin*.

Yes, it may not be great for your liver and yes you may not be able to do your best work on Monday, but jesus christ London is a good night out. After 2 years of living here i’m still discovering countless amazing little bars, pubs and underground lairs like i’m Pan from the friggin’ Labyrinth. Plus, if like me you’re looking naaat so good from the night before getting ready is half the fun of going out… and hey, you’re in London! Book a blow dry to come to your work or run to Topshop on Oxford Street, grab a dress, keep the label on and give it back the next day! (I don’t do this) (read: BECAUSE I ALWAYS SPILL WINE ON IT)

THIS GUY.

BECAUSE WHERE ELSE CAN YOU SEE A 7 YEAR OLD READING THE FINANCIAL TIMES IN AN ANORAK LIKE HE’S GOING TO BUY SHARES.
(picture taken with the permission of his lovely ma, who was also into shares)

Soho *crying emoji*

I can’t talk up Soho enough. It’s the love of my life. I’ll miss walking to work every morning past record shops that have been there for 50 years, grabbing a coffee from a bike shop full of aussies or pissing myself at the house next to Wardour that has “THIS IS NOT A BROTHEL THERE ARE NO PROSITUTES HERE” engraved on the door.
The road off where I work is the cover of “What’s the story morning glory” by Oasis, Our local Italian lunch spot down the road is Bar Italia, a tiny Trattoria that has been passed on through three generations of the same family. John Hurt and Rupert Everett are just some of the interesting and obscure characters that wobble in for a slice of pizza on a Friday. This place just has so many stories. Queen, Elton John, David Bowie and the Beatles recorded here. And it helps that i’ve spotted Sacha Baron Coen, Eddie Izzard, Graham Norton, Rupert Grint, Meryl Streep, Kit Harrington and DUMBLEDOR on these few streets either having a pint in the sun like I was, or on their way to make TV, Movie or Radio history. There’s just a serious vibe about this place, and it’s what i’ll miss about London the most.

Dogs on the Tube

There’s one thing I won’t miss and that’s the inability to talk to a stranger in London. Averting eye contact on the tube or the hostility people have towards tourists who stand in the way etc etc. It’s just not nice. WHY CAN’T BE ALL BE FRIENDS? Ahem. There’s one thing though, that completely smashes down this barrier and that’s a dog on the tube. We’re a city of dog lovers and there’s million of these cuties around (that you can now BORROW). If TFL put a puppy in each carriage your commute would be 80% better, because it’s impossible not to exchange a smile and a scrunched nose with the stranger opposite you when a snuffly puppy is confused by the moving of the carriage, or licking a sniff necked banker and his loafers.

I love you so much you big beautiful smokey scary city that I call home. I’ll miss you, London. Line up the Gin’s for when I get home.

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