We plan to do different classes in the morning. I’m heading to Tight Guy yoga class. Sounds about right to me.
Katja start her class at ten, I at ten thirty. Since mine is just an hour long we’ll finish at the same time and go from there.

Tight Guy yoga was exactly that. Yoga for people with tight muscles. There’s not only guys here. Out of about fifteen people there’s four girls. Carlos, who we know from the acro yoga classes, is teaching and he does a good job. If you’re into yoga this class can be compared to Yin style. We stay in poses for quite some time and they’re all for stretching different parts of the body. From the neck down to the thighs. It hurts a lot, but mostly in the good way.

After classes we meet up and walk back to the hotel where we quickly return around and hop on the motorbike. Katja is having lunch with Jenny, one of the other participants on the course that starts next week. It’s a lot of traffic in Ubud. Midday it’s mayhem on the road south of the town. We use ten minutes on just a few hundred meters, and that’s on motorbike. The roads are built for motorbikes. The occasional car was OK, but now that the cars are so many there’s not enough width to have it. Add a bus or three and you get the picture.

We arrive at the lunch place a few minutes late, but nothing to be ashamed of. Katja enjoys a ayurvedic lunch (an Indian healing system) I drive back into the mayhem. After a while I’m passing Mama Mia and cross over, park the bike and order a pizza. Afterwards I recognize that I’ve had my fill of pizza for a few days at least.

I drive back towards Katja and sit on a little warung drinking a freshly pressed fruit juice when she sends a message. We meet up and discuss where to drive to avoid the mayhem. Katja mean to know it’s a small back road going around the monkey forest. One of the entrances is just up the street from where we are so we drive up and take a look. Indeed, there’s a narrow road going around the forest. We’re not alone and it’s a bit wobbly cover on the road so it feels a bit scary at times. Add to it the monkeys running across and along the road to get the full picture.

Juice time

We emerge in one piece and ride Jalan Monkey Forest up to the top of town. Here we buy me a pair of long pants, because it’s cooler here than anticipated. A linen trouser that make my ass look good. I kid you not.

After a coffee at Anomali, which is just down the street, we return to the hotel and make ready for another session of yoga.

We go down to the barn and do Yin yoga. A kind of restorative and stretchy yoga. Few poses in a class but you may hold them for up to five ten minutes each. The teacher is not English speaker and I struggle to understand her. I will not prioritize any classes with her as as teacher going forward. Having the right instructor means everything in everything. Doesn’t matter if it’s martial arts, yoga, at school or as a mentor at work. If the chemistry is not there, it’s not gonna last.

We have taken the bike to the barn and go directly to dinner. Katja has gotten a lot of good tips on restaurants from Jenny whom she met for lunch. Jenny’s lived here for a while and we now have a list of restaurants to try out. The first one was very good and we enjoyed fish for dinner. In the next room there was people tripping (how I saw it) while they were dancing in a trance like state jumping and acting like monkeys. Or the couple who just swayed from side to side. There’s a lot of alternative people here in Ubud. Luckily for them and me we don’t have to mix all that much.

The portions are small on Bali, complained about it when we were here last. Nothing changed in that regard. Fruit in the room is as good remedy for a half empty belly.

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

– Mother Theresa

Author: arnber

Humongen! The big guy! The man, the myth, the legend! And then theres' me. The nice guy in the house. The man without cooking skills, but with five stars on the Playstation. Boss at work, relaxed at home. What you see is what you get. Life is good. I choose it to be.