Mostly I travel, but sometimes I will go on a good old holiday.
When I left Darwin, I left two of my favourite people – Laura and Chelsea – both of whom I have travelled with in the past. Laura has since moved to Perth and Chelsea is still based in Darwin so as we are spread out across Australia, it just made sense for us to catch up in Bali.
Normally when I go to Bali I stay in Seminyak or Canggu or even Ubud and sometimes it’s nice to mix things up a bit. Chelsea and I were to meet up first (Laura couldn’t swing quite as many days off work) and if you’ve read any of my previous blogs regarding travels with Chels, you’ll probably have worked out that she’s not the kinda person to sit around and do nothing for extended periods of time. So, after some discussion about what we should do, we opted to undertake a freediving course in the Amed area.
If you’ve never heard of Amed, it is located almost on the easternmost point of Bali. It is much less built up than other areas of the island and a pretty lovely place to stay. Even if you don’t scuba dive or freedive, Amed is a quiet little paradise – a rarity in Bali.
Chels had booked us to stay at Sama Sama which was exceedingly lovely, especially considering how affordable it was. As an added bonus, our freediving school was literally across the road from it.
We spent our first day just chilling and catching up as it had been quite a while since we had seen each other. We got some cheap but great foot reflexology massages and watched the sunset from the Sama Sama restaurant.
The next day we began our freediving course.
Now, I am gonna preface this by saying that as it turns out, I am an appallingly bad freediver, but regardless, the course was fun, engaging and definitely helped my breath work.
My first try at a static breath hold was well under a minute and by the end of the course I could do a two minute static breath hold! One of my dives (active breath hold) even clocked in at almost 80 seconds – that I was pretty happy with.
What I absolutely sucked at was equalising. Now, when I scuba dive, I never have any problems with equalising, but I usually descend either feet first or in an upright horizontal tilt. In freediving, the goal is to descend head first and let me tell you, my ears were like ‘nope, shan’t be doing this’.
I tried so many different techniques, but I really just couldn’t get my ears to play the game – the only way I was able to successfully descend was feet first. My instructor was really lovely but I didn’t get a lot of tips on how to overcome this, it was kind of explained to me as ‘something very hard to teach’… I was like, yep, but you’re the teacher – lel.
Despite not being 100% happy with the lack of help in that regard, I otherwise enjoyed the course, especially because now I know – I love scuba diving, but freediving just ain’t me – but hey, I tried, and my breath work has definitely improved as a result.
After our two days of diving it was time for us to head to Ubud to meet up with lovely Laura, but not before getting one last seaside mee goreng.
The drive to Ubud was around two hours but it went by quickly as Chels and I pretty much just gabbed the entire time. We had booked a two bedroom villa with a pool that was pretty cheap by Ubud standards and wasted no time in settling in and meeting our primate neighbours.
The days that followed were filled with spa treatments, delicious meals, cocktails, bintang radlers (iykyk) and some intermittent woowoo business.
If you’ve never heard the term ‘woowoo’, it’s used in Australia to describe what is essentially ‘hippie shit’ for lack of a better term. We did a reiki healing and a sound healing as well as the odd yoga session. Can defs recommend yin yoga and the sound healing was fun, you can probs skip the reiki though.
I even found the time to get a ‘lil tattoo. You may recall that I had a deathly hallows symbol inked in this spot, but ever since JK Rowling has come out as a big ole’ TERF, I’ve very much resented having one of the symbols she created on my body.
To effectively cover an old tattoo, the new one will need to be bigger and darker. After a few hours spent brainstorming I settled on what I have dubbed ‘space whale’ and I must say, I am pretty bloody pleased with it.
Side note, how funny is this picture of Chelsea washing my hair in the bathtub – I wasn’t meant to get my tattoo wet for a while but I didn’t want to get on the plane with dirty hair… this is what true friendship looks like.
Our week in Bali had been a lovely little holiday that was less about what we did and more about the company. It was lovely to be reunited with two of my favourite gal pals and I can’t wait until we have another adventure together one day soon.
When this goes live I will be in MADAGASCAR and likely a very busy (and sunburnt) lady.
I am going to take 1-2 weeks off from posting but will have new posts going live again by mid november at the latest. Make sure to follow me on insta (@adventurouselle) and Tiktok (@adventurous_elle) for real time updates of my adventures in Madagascar, Tunisia and Norway!
Sama Sama Amed: This cute little hotel is located right on the water and super affordable, click here to learn more
Apneista Freediving School: To do a ‘level one’ freediving course you’ll need to dedicate two days. As much as would have preferred a little more guidance overall, I still enjoyed my course and for that reason I am still gonna go ahead and recommend Apneista, click here to learn more
Remember: Sometimes it’s perfectly wonderful to stop travelling and start holidaying (or vacationing for my American readers)
