End of grocery updates + Bali Trip

Our grocery updates have come to an end because we have completed our challenge! I am so happy to announce that our challenge is done. We managed to save quite a bit of money and we applied that to our mortgage and shaved off over 4 years of our 30 year home loan! Which means we have less than 26 years to pay it off in full, though we will always be paying more to cut that down further and who knows, maybe there will be another grocery challenge and saving challenge in the future. But right now, I am just happy to say it’s done because although it seemed pretty straight forward, there were many days that were stressful because I couldn’t buy the thing or go out to eat with the friends etc. It was not as easy as we thought it would be. One of the hardest parts was the grocery list, we bought pretty much the same things over and over again and not by choice in this case, which also got to us. And now that we’re done, we’re taking a month off from the immense savings and we are going to re-calculate what we need to do to get to the next savings goal. Whatever that may be. Right now we’re in the dreaming phase, we need to dream up the goal first ;)

But I’d like to end our grocery updates with an update on our trip to Bali and what we did. We did so much while we were there and it all started with the first two days of odd experiences. We rented an Airbnb for two weeks in Seminyak, Bali. Right by the water. And we got to our Airbnb, initially it was a great place to stay we had space and the place looked like all the pictures. We had some issues with the quality of the place, as we had reserved an Airbnb Plus stay, which are held to a higher standard. It just was not up to par, and we left two days afterwards. We ended up staying the rest of the time at the Grand Hyatt in Nusa Dua, and it honestly made the trip 10 times better than we had expected.

Gates of Heaven

We took two tours during our stay and the first one was called the “instagram” tour, were all the stops in the tour were highly instagram worthy. The tour name was very accurate, we saw the Gates of Heaven - pictured above. This is a Hindu temple that stands at the top of a very tall hill and looks out to a volcano. I feel like a few of the temples face the volcano because this definitely was not the only one with a beautiful view. On the way up we drove up a very steep and winding hill to get to a gate where our driver let us out. We put sarongs around our waist and I put on a scarf to cover my shoulders and we were free to enter the temple. To get there we had to walk up more stairs and a hill but it was worth the walk. When you get up here, you see this beautiful gate and three rows of stairs that are ceremonial staircases. There are also a lot of people taking photos here, so many that if you want to take a picture you need to grab a number. Our number was #315 - they called “#246!”. To which I did not want to take a number any more and I got the shot up above (without me in it) because it looks beautiful as is. I don’t need a photo with it. We were also standing in over 90 degree (30 degrees celsius) weather with double layers on (the sarongs) and didn’t want to sit around to wait that long. We got our photo and left the temple and headed to the next stop.

Rice fields

I have seen so many photos of Bali and one of the most popular sceneries are the rice fields because they are just so perfect. We had the change to walk through an entire village dedicated to these fields and oh my goodness it was so picturesque and perfect. We walked past so many of the fields and they all looked this pristine. They are also so quiet and because they are all placed on hills you can look out from the top and see ongoing fields that reach the ocean. We stopped here and had lunch with a beautiful view and took an afternoon walk through the fields. It was so quiet, the sun was warm, and there was a small breeze. It was a beautiful place and if I could I’d live right there in the fields.

Hindu Temple

Hindu temples are everywhere in Bali. In fact the two most popular religions in Indonesia are Hinduism and Islam. The Hindu temples are pretty easy to spot, you’ll see these pagodas towering whenever you’re close to one. What’s unfortunate is we went to all these temples and yet didn’t ever hear about the history or the really much about them at all. I don’t even know the name of this one. I just know its sitting on a lake at the top of a hill and it’s surrounded by mountains. Oddly enough the lake reminded me of Scotland and seeing Loch Ness, you’re so elevated it feels like you’re closer to the sky and you can just smell the difference in the air. The water is choppy and icy blue, the sky and surroundings are shades of grey. It reminded me of Scotland so much, it felt a little more like home than the other temples did.

Gelato Secrets Ubud, Indonesia

How could I not end off this blog post with some ice cream? I always try ice cream when we travel, it’s one of my favourite things to do because I love tasting the differences and as I call it, I love doing ‘field research’. We have to test out what other ice cream stores are offering! Here is passion fruit/banana and chia seed (I think it was vanilla?) flavour. The color is what caught my eye and I had to try some. But I also have been meaning to make a passion fruit ice cream, it’s just hard to make given that it’s a fruit and I don’t really enjoy making sorbets. (I resort to making a sorbet when the fruit is very watery) This recipe was a great idea to combine banana because banana adds so much more texture and thickens up the ice cream base. I will be using this the next time passion fruits are available at the store!

Nusa Dua, Bali

And to end this post I will say if you ever get a chance to visit Bali you should take that chance and see if you like it. It’s a beautiful place, filled with great people, lots of culture and honestly some really good food. I will be back with a new post soon, probably not a grocery update but an update in some sorts!