Ubud Day 3, A Day Trip to a School, Coffee Plantation, Waterfall, and Rice Terrace

July 23rd, I woke up kind of late for yoga, setting my alarm for the wrong time which wasn't ideal because I also had to get ready for a day trip I was going on today that I booked through the hostel. We weren't leaving until 8:30am and I really wanted to still do the morning yoga class, so I was able to catch 45 minutes of yoga, leaving a bit early so I could finish getting ready, and then get my free breakfast, of course I ordered the pancakes again. I was ready at 8:30am on the dot. We had a solid group from the hostel, but we went to pick up some people from two other hostels. We were headed on a four part day trip, the main attraction being the rice paddies that we all likely came to Bali to see and experience. 

When we picked up everyone from the other hostels, this nice and incredibly outgoing girl from Arizona sat by Charlotte and I, and she so happened to also be living in Korea at the time so we chatted all about that and heard about how she mustered the courage to make the move I hope to do of the sort in my life. 

My drove a good distance, away from all the tourism and crowds around the hotspots in Bali and into more the local areas. Our first stop in the program was to visit a school. I wasn’t sure what to expect or what we would do while visiting one, I had a feeling it would give us a better look at what local life is like here on the island. While in Bali, I have stayed in areas in which there are more visitors than locals and surrounded by restaurants and hotels that have adapted to attract the western travelers. Although it is a paradise for me, I have been missing out on experiencing the culture of the island, but now this is my first opportunity to do so.

We walked into this cute school house that hosted grades one through six. As we walked through the gates, the kids swarmed us, waving and welcoming us into the courtyard of the school. Soon, some of the students walked up to us and started talking. Most of the older kids were in charge of entertaining us and showing us around the school. No one walked up to me so I approached these two girls with a question I knew that they would know in english, “what is your name?” They didn’t know much english so they ended up recruiting one of their friends to help translate and talk to me while they gracefully left. It was interesting to see the difference in language skill level just at this school. The first girls I chatted with knew about as much english as the average American knows Spanish phrases such as “donde esta el bano?” So, as they weren’t able to communicate with me, I felt so bad that the universal language wasn’t something they knew and could use in their future to boost them in a career. But the second girl that chatted with me, she had great english for her age, an accent in which the english words were spoken so clearly, and she was able to understand the context of almost all of my questions if not the full meaning. Of course, it is so intimidating to talk to a stranger at that age, so she pulled in another friend and those two then showed me around the school. 

Each grade had their own classroom, and the girls showed me theirs. They had some balinese writing on the board and on all of the signs around the classroom so I had no idea what they were learning, but it was cool to see that the setup was like your typical room, longer wooden desks that sat 1-2 people, backpacks on top them all as everyone wanted free rein to roam about on their recess. Coming from the perspective that I’ve never split from my backpack in the past two years, a good habit I picked up while living in Europe, it threw me off to see that at first. But of course, these kids aren't holding onto expensive laptops, cameras, wallet, and phone so it makes perfect sense and was just another similarity to the schools I grew up going to. I walked past the other classes, seeing the rooms were in almost an identical layout, but once I got to the younger grades who were in session at the time, I got to see them learning in action. I passed the second graders and they looked over at me and had to continue on with their studies, but once I got to the first graders and peered into the room and gave a little wave, modeling the sixth graders who were by my side, I got a wild reaction from these kids. 

There were two girls that had their jaws on the floor when they saw me. I don’t know what was so surprising of my being that these younger kids were in pure shock to see me and spur them to leave their desks and run over to me. I kid you not when I saw about 20 kids swarmed the entrance of their classroom to meet me. I felt like I was Beyonce as they all surrounded me and jumped around, trying to get my attention, greet me, and even wrap their arms around my waist. All of them gave me a handshake greeting, grabbing my hand and bringing it up to their forehead and touching it to their third eye before letting go. The first student that did it surprised me a bit, but as I saw that each student shook my hand in this matter, I learned that it must be a proper greeting in their culture. One of the girls was so excited to see me, she gave me three hugs and said she loved me. I have never gotten a reaction like that from another human being and I truly felt like a celebrity, yet a title unearned because I had no practiced talents or have accomplished anything to deserve that. If anything, I just got lucky with the gene lottery and their shock came from my appearance, from my blonde hair and light skin, all things that I did nothing to earn this high praise for. That single interaction with the kids made this stop all the while worth it because it was a feeling I’ve never experienced before, and again such a reminder that there are so many people around the world that idolize western culture and long for our natural traits, yet we go every day and our whole lives without realizing how lucky we are to be living in the skin so many others wish for. 

They sat us down and performed a balinese dance for us, and then we joined them on stage and danced the Macarena. We said our last goodbyes to our new friends, I got a photo with the girls that showed me around and gave them a big wave and little hug as I left the school and hopped back in the car to venture onto our next stop of the day.

Just down the road a bit was a coffee and chocolate plantation. We walked through a garden as we made our way to the sample tables. We were shown the different plants and trees that grew the ingredients of their coffee and chocolate, and were given mini lessons and thrown fun facts about each one. We saw the different types of coffee beans, a lady roasting the beans, and the famous poop beans. Yes, you heard that correctly. There are coffee beans that apparently a specific animal, I cannot think of which type it was anymore, that eats the coffee beans and only selects the sweetest ones to consume. Yet, when eaten it completely passes through their body whole and they poop it out and it is just like a regular bean, but it was handpicked to be the best flavor. They wash it off and roast and grind it up to make an expensive yet quality cup of coffee. I had a sip of it and I won’t lie it tasted like a normal cup of coffee, the quality not being a noticeable enough difference for me to select it as my daily cup of coffee, and especially now after knowing the source and process it endures. 

We tried a few different types of teas and lots of different coffees. My favorite cup of coffee was avocado coffee and my favorite tea was rosella. Rosella is a type of flower from here and they use it in a lot of drinks to add a sweeter flavor. It was delicious and I was so tempted to buy both of them, but they only came in large bags and I sadly knew it was too early in my trip to have to pack away such a large souvenir in my bag that was already squeezed tight. We were given a lot of time to try all the different cups of coffee and tea, and the same when in the gift shop trying the different chocolates and debating if we want to make a purchase. I was able to eat all of the chocolate because they don’t add milk to them and instead use cocoa butter to make it creamy. They also had so many amazing flavors, my favorite being the vanilla chocolate and the salted one. I thought it was hands down better than normal chocolate, even swiss chocolate because it was really soft and would melt in your mouth, yet it stay solid even after sitting in the heat of the open air shop. 

We left the coffee plantation around 1:00pm and I thought we would be going to dinner as it was the perfect time. Instead we drove to a waterfall and had an hour there to roam around and see a famous and iconic Ubud landscape. We had an hour here, and I was starting to get pretty hungry, having brought no snacks so I pushed down my hunger with a distraction of the gorgeous views in front of me. Walking to the waterfall, there was this incredible walkway that connected the stairs to the actual place it was at. A path of large gray square stones with shallow water surrounding them paved the way, the water deep enough for koi fish to swim around. I was blown away this was outside and the path that led us to the waterfall because it was so gorgeous. The waterfall was so pretty and cool to see, it wasn’t anything to grand or spectacular, but it made for a good photo. So many people were lined up to take their iconic shot, it lost a bit of the charm to the place, so I continued on to explore more of the area around the waterfall. There was a path along the stream that carried the crashing water farther down the way. I liked that area because it was less packed and a different beauty that I admired just as much. 

We were supposed to be back by 2pm to go to our lunch spot in the rice fields, I was so excited to leave and get some food in me. But, while we were all in the car waiting to go, there were a few tour mates missing. Sadly (my hangriness overtaking my kindness), the car did not leave without them, and we ended up waiting in this packed van for over 20 minutes while the guide went to find them. Around 2:30pm they finally came back to the car with the guide, they had gotten lost as they deeply explored the areas around the waterfall. We understood once they told us that, but again the hunger made the anger in all of us return quite quickly as we were now more delayed from getting a meal. 

The drive wasn’t that close by to the lunch place either, getting their around 2:50pm and immediately crashing into our seats and pleading the waiters to take our orders and bring them out pronto. It was a big restaurant and we were in the queue like the normal customer, so we all sat in silence dying from our deep hunger, and finally at 3:30pm we got our meals and inhaled them. I got fried rice with tofu, it a decent proportion but not big enough to fully curb the deep hunger state I was in for most of the afternoon. 

I saw the rice paddies from my spot at the table and I summoned the energy to walk to the viewpoint and experience it from there. But I didn’t walk around the rice paddies and get a closer look at it, like the program was designed for us to do. After our food was finished and we felt complete of our small talk with each other, we just decided collectively to migrate back to the van for it to take us home. We left the beautiful rice fields with not enough energy to fully appreciate the place and the beauty it holds which really disappointed me about this day trip. 

We got caught in some traffic on our way back, so we got dropped off a bit away from our hostel and walked 10 minutes back, but I knew that would be 10x quicker than waiting in the van for it to bring us to the doorstep. It felt so good to be back and have access to rest, some food, and be able to chill. I went straight to my room and caught up with Liv for a while, talking about our plans for the rest of our time in Ubud, seeing if there was anymore of it we wanted to do together. It was so cool that I got to know her so well, feeling as though she was a friend I was traveling with, yet never tethered to her to feel as though I had to do the same thing as her. We chatted for a good amount of time until I knew I needed to get more food as the late lunch still left me feeling hungry. I went to the cafe next door with the beautiful smoothie bowls and ordered one up along with some bao buns to make it my dinner as well because by this time it was past 6pm. I called my mom while there and then on my walk home I stumbled on a spa that I stopped in and got a pedicure at. I was hoping to match the pink on my fingers but they didn’t have a similar color so I went in a completely different direction and got a bright teal blue, knowing I would love the vibrant color while on vaca time. 

That was such a restful thing to do after the day trip and brought me and my mood back to a steady state. I knew though I would need a chill day tomorrow in Ubud and finish up doing everything I wanted to while in this city.