Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

Sanur has been a nice chill place that’s a lot less touristy than a lot of the other towns we’ve visited in Bali. Once we checked out of our Ubud hotel we took an hour taxi ride to Sanur. (Side note: Bali is the only place we’ve been to that spells taxi taksi. I guess they thought it was more hip?). Tyson and Marshall slept the whole way there while I caught up with a few friends back home via text message. It’s been a little tricky chatting with friends and family while we’ve been abroad due to the time difference. I’m sure I’ve accidently woken a few people up at 3am with a message just saying hi. Sorry ‘bout that!

Once we got to Sanur we had the driver drop us off at a hotel that I had found on booking.com. We wanted to stay in Sanur for a few days so we were hoping we could negotiate with the hotel to get the room for cheaper. Unfortunately they only had the first night available and were booked the other two days so we couldn’t negotiate; however, they did offer us each a free 15 minute foot massage. We didn’t feel like walking all over creation with our bags trying to find another hotel so we decided to stay there one night and spend the afternoon looking for a hotel for the next two days. We ate lunch at our hotel, and by the way the restaurant only plays American country music. First time we’ve heard country music abroad…and hopefully the last. Haha! Marshall said he loved it though.

That afternoon we scoured the beach looking for another hotel for the next two nights. We walked into a couple of them near us and they busted our budget so we went back to the hotel and looked online. We actually found one online that we had looked at in person and for some reason it was over 50% cheaper online so we jumped on that bad boy. The hotel was right on the beach, with a huge kid pool that had three waterslides and water squirty things. Sweet! We ordered dinner to our room and while we waited for our food I gave Tyson a bath in our outdoor huge jetted tub while Marshall got his free foot massage. When he came back we tagged teamed it and I went over to the spa to get mine. By the time I got back our dinner was on its way to our room. Perfect timing!

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and walked our stuff down the street to our new hotel. The first thing Tyson wanted to do was check out the kids club room that happened to be right next to our room. They had all kinds of toys including a rocking horse, trampoline and coloring table. Tyson was having a blast playing with all new toys. He especially liked dumping the Legos all over the floor and watching the lady running the club pick them up. I think he just enjoys putting people to work, lol. After a while we were ready to show him the kiddie pool area. Dada took him down the slide and it was so slippery that Marshall landed about 5 feet from the slide right on his tailbone which is still sore. Poor guy. Needless to say we didn’t last long playing at the kiddie pool so we went over to the restaurant to each lunch before heading back to the room for Tyson’s nap.

It was Indonesia’s 70th Independence Day celebration the following day and we heard there was a kite festival going on in the afternoon so we walked down the beach to see all the kites flying around. They actually make their kites out of bamboo in Bali and they’re about as big as a truck. So cool! One we had enough kite watching we headed back to our hotel and ordered dinner in the room while we watched the movie Blended on TV. Bali has a lot more English channels than a lot of other countries we’ve been to which is awesome. For a while there our only options were news and trashy MTV music videos, haha.

The next morning we walked over to an Irish restaurant for breakfast. We had delicious banana pancakes along with a cappuccino. Once again Tyson immediately made friends with the servers. It’s so awesome for him (and us) that he can make friends of all ages wherever he goes. After breakfast I took Tyson to the kids club to play for an hour while Marshall had some relax time in the room. Then Marshall took Tyson to the kiddie pool to play while I went to a free cooking class that the hotel offered. I had no idea what they’d be cooking and when I got there I learned it was fish skewers. Yum! (Sarcasm there) As you all know I’m super picky and only eat chicken breast as far as meat goes. However when they offered it to me I politely said no and asked if I could take two with me to give to my husband and son. I wasn’t sure if Tyson would like the skewers but he gobbled his right up and even took Dada’s before he could grab it. We sat by the beach and ordered a bigger meal and enjoyed the scenery for an hour or so.

After lunch we stopped back into the kids club to play for a few minutes. The lady at the club kept commenting on Tyson’s hair and playing with it putting it in (girly) hairstyles. We laughed, but it definitely wasn’t the first comment we had on his shaggy beach boy hair. We also felt bad that it was in his eyes sometimes, so we figured we’d get it cut a bit now that we’re about done with our ‘beach bum’ time and moving on from Bali next week. She told us they had a salon at the hotel and she said the hair stylist would trim Tyson’s hair for super cheap. Tyson was pretty still for the most part but got a little antsy towards the end. The lady did a great job and it only cost about $3. Tyson and I love it, but Marshall is still getting used to it and how much older Tyson looks now.

Later that afternoon we walked out to the beach and watched all the kite surfers. The tide goes WAY out in the afternoon so the water gets super shallow for hundreds of feet from the shore. Apparently that’s prime time for kite surfers because there were tons out on the water. We were sitting on beach chairs and a guy in a tiny red speedo pulled up a chair in front of our view and laid down facing directly at us with his legs wide open. Not exactly sure what his goal was unless it was to creep everyone out so he could have the beach to himself. It worked for us anyway. We started walking down the beach and were getting hungry so we stopped at a restaurant next to the water that happened to have a live DJ playing soft jazz music to provide a nice romantic ambiance. There were tons of dogs playing on the beach so Tyson was having fun dancing and watching the dogs play while he ate his hot dog. One of the dogs actually came up to our table because Tyson had dropped some scraps. When we were done, that dog ended up following us all the way back to our hotel while Marshall fed both Tyson and the dog some leftovers on the way. Tyson and Marshall (and the dog) were getting a big kick out of that.

After dinner I wanted to try out a yoga and meditation class that was a few doors down from our hotel. The studio was on the beach, overlooking the water. I had only done yoga once before and honestly I got a little bored last time, but I was interested in learning the meditation part of the class. I never mentioned this in previous blogs because I didn’t want to worry anyone (Mom) but back when we were in Dubai I had anxiety so bad that I had to go to a doctor there. Not a big deal, I mostly went to the doctor because I thought I was having some heart issue or something more serious. After a thorough exam and long discussion, he said there was nothing for me to worry about and that I just needed to watch how much I do in a day and make sure to eat/drink plenty throughout the day. One of the things he recommended to me was doing daily meditation to help reduce the stress that is associated with so much travel (especially the way we’re doing it) and with a toddler. I figured what better place to learn meditation than Bali. So I went to the 90 minute class while Marshall stayed in the room with Tyson. The first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes were meditation and the middle hour was yoga. The teacher called the mediation style love meditation. When we closed our eyes she told us to focus on loving ourselves, our family and friends, and even the people we don’t really care for. Then at the end we all bent down to kiss mother earth to thank her for allowing us to practice meditation. I really enjoyed the class and was glad I signed up for it.

Tomorrow we’ll be driving about 20 minutes back to Kuta and actually to the same hotel we enjoyed staying at when we first arrived in Bali. Awesome restaurants, cools shopping, and tourist central…here we come!