Happy New Year

I wish you all a happy new year for this upcoming year!

I hope you will find the courage to get rid off your old stories and habits and just try to do something new, something different, something you are scared off, something you don't like. 
You're life will definitely become more intense and you will probably become a more complete person....

...or is this just my own wish? well I'm gonna try it anyway ;-)


with love,
carry

Pictures: Indonesia

eat...pray...love

I think everyone has it's own some kind of eat, pray and love story, and so have I. Elisabeth Gilbert though has the original one, maybe you've seen the movie with Julia Roberts playing as Elisabeth Gilbert. The love part of the movie takes place on Bali, here in Ubud.

I want to share my kind of eat, pray and love story with you...

Eat:
The eating-thing started in Thailand and continued on Bali. The Indonesian food is just fabulous. For those who know me a bit better...or had already the opportunity to take breakfast with me ;-), they can probably remember how grazy I am about peanutbutter and every made of peanutbutter, like peanutcookies or satay, well...it's all here! Not to forget to mention the lovely cakes they make here. Okay okay I admit my sugar addiction!

Pray:
After leaving Switzerland, I hardly took time for my meditation, but it all came back to me here in Ubud. Maybe not always that much and that long as I wanted to, because of a painful leg of nerving animals that interrupted my calming mind. Nevertheless even these more or less short meditations have given me enough strengh and courage to sign me in for my second Vipassana retreat...this time in Cambodia.

Love:
A dear swiss friend of mine forecasted my future like this; you will meet a handsome hotelowner, or better his son, who will invest in your own yogastudio in Ubud. Ofcourse you will marry him and get lovely kids...
Someone from the Fitnesscentre in Winterthur is probably still hoping that I will find a nice cute balinese man and come back home pregnant. And this week a balinese woman saw my future like this; you will find your man in Cambodia and come back to marry here in Ubud.

Well I can tell you, none of these stories have become realistic yet...but I did fall in love.
I developed my deep, deep love for yoga. Sometimes I just can't help it to smile whole time during the yogaclass, and sometimes tears from blessing and happiness just appear like that.

I developed a deep love for a yogateacher. He is yoga, he is inspirativ, he is full of love. His classes are nothing else than harmony and give me energy. I can just love him for being here at the time I'm here as well.  

Actually I've fallen in love with life again. It's such a blessing being here, doing this, sharing a part of my journey with my sister, having time to think things over, get my thoughts more clear, getting better connected to my feelings and my inner being.

Slowly I'm getting centered more and more...my heart is open...and is wondering what is more to come!

Christmas

Christmas is going to be different for me this year, nothing traditional, just being and enjoying my time with two beloved ones here in Ubud. Nevertheless I do wish you all, a more or less traditional, nice Christmas-time. 

Think about the real meaning of Christmas ... and try to life it.....

love carry

Ubud : Somehow it feels like coming home

Though I had no idea what I could expect from Ubud, this sentence or a part of it was in my mind on the way to Ubud. I could really feel this sentence after my first Yogaclass here in Yogabarn. This was such an inspiration, the centre, the view, the floor, the sound, the smell, the people, it was all there, I was whole there...and I'm still. Every morning I join a class either at 7 am or 8.30 am. But not only the Yoga feels that great, our guesthouse is just a dream! It's a small place with only 3 bungalows and 2 open space houses, situated in a lovely garden, away from the street with nothing else to hear as the sounds of animals and thunder. Yeah thunder, because we've been in quite some thunderstorms already, even one on the rice paddies! That was quite scary....

We have time to total come down and just life in the day, which is my everyday goal again and again.

There are two things I dislike about Ubud:
1 The most disgusting, scary, aggressive, ugly and loudest DOGS I've ever seen is the first one. They are everywhere, even on places where you don't expect and want them to be. A dog came after me in the morning when I was on my way to the Yogaclass, now I only go by bike. Janine and I got almost bitten by 3 watchdogs, when we were on a walk. A dog ran after me when I was on a bike tour. I don't like it to say, but I hate them.
2 Every 10 meters someone asks you if you want a taxi even when you are on a bike or a scooter! Sometimes they are probably so tired of themselves that they can only make the movement of rotating the wheel.

We found, well my sister found a great solution for Jesse. Every morning he goes to an international school here in Ubud. From 9 till noon, he can play here with other children and has full attention of a couple of lovely teachers. All the three of us are happy. Janine and I celebrated our first morning together with a relaxed shopping session on the market and having a nice chat with a lovely cup of coffee and lemon pie. 


I read a lot here, I finished the book Holy Cow, from Sarah McDonald. A very funny story about a woman who checks out the spiritual market of India.

Now I started in the Zahir from Paulo Coelho...again....I already read this book in German. This book I can recommend everyone, even if you don't like the writer. Simultaneously I'm reading about Integral Psychology, from Sri Aurobindo. I need some food for my brains :-)


So more things we hope to do here are: going to one of the vulcanos, do some swimming, make some walks, join more jungle-, hatha-,vinyasa-yoga classes. Keep on living the day, because that's what my heart tells me to do at the moment. And last but not least....keep on enjoying the balinese food. I'm still gaining weight ;-)

Then I could tell you a whole story about the Host, male of course, of the guesthouse...but I just leave it this way :-) maybe this already says enough.

Name of the Guesthouse: Guci Guesthouse in Pengosekan, it's worth checking their website before you go to Ubud.

have you in my heart....

carry

Pictures: Yoga pure...

what happened during all the travelling...

What we did was.... we first went from Pai to Thaton, which I loved because it's such a small place with hardly tourists and from there on we went by boat to Chiang Rai. Make that boattrip as well if you come here, it's beautiful and so relaxing.

From Chiang Rai, Janine and I expected more than Chiang Mai. But it was completely different and not that nice and cute as we thought....always those expectations!

In Chiang Rai where we stayed a couple of days, I rented a bike again and did some sightseeing. There is a complete white temple close to Chiang Rai which is quite special. Nature is here, like everywhere in northern Thailand wonderful! Another day we rented a scooter and made a real offroad trip to a waterfall, unfortunately we never reached to the waterfall due to time. But it was nice anyway! Janine and I got ill in Chiang Rai...Janine more than I.

The bustrip from Chiang Rai to Bangkok, was awful though it supposed to be quite easy and relaxed, because there where hardly people in the bus and I had two seats for myself. A movie was running, the sound was extremely loud. When the movie was done the dvd kept on running for at least 1 hour but only on the menu screen....finally I asked the driver to turn off the dvd...I had already turned the TV off myself...and so he did. I should have asked him earlier ahhrrrggg...

Then there was a guy with unbelievable awful smelling feet! The whole bus was infected by this smell....and of course this guy started snorring....so now sleep for me this night.

Bangkok....Hotel Royal Inn or for the Thai ONLY known as "Latata Kosin" or something like that so you can understand that it was hard to find this place in such a huge city hahaha...

There was a blue sky and it was hot! The first morning I stayed in bed and my sister could do here shop till you drop on Siam square :-) She loved it! We were close to Khaosan Road THE Backpackers street of Bangkok...and though I feel more comfortable in little towns...this part belongs to traveling as well and I enjoyed it. We were longing after a good night of sleep...but unfortunately for us...this time Jesse got sick. Thank God it was only for one evening...but what an evening it was! In Bangkok we decided to do our laundry in the hotel....when the receipt came we were in shock...we had to pay about 25 euro....which is extremely much in a country like this and normally we had to pay about 3 euro....So we learned something more...again...

The trip from Bamgkok city to the airport was disgusting as well. Pick up time 5.15pm instead of 5pm, stress started...after a 3 minute-drive 15 minutes waiting for someone who was on the wrong place...more stress. The traffic was totally standing it took about 45 Minutes to get out of the city....I already saw us spending the night on the airport....6.38pm airport....it took us ages to get trough...pass control even worse....running and running...but 8 pm in the plane...we made it!  

Surabaya...it's hot and humid! The hotel, Sparkling Backpackers Hotel, is not sparkling at all but stinky with no windows...time to move on as fast as possible. In the train to Kalibaru we were sitting next to a Indonesian family. The man of the family fell in love with me from the moment he saw me ;-) he spent at least 80% from the time with starring at me AND HIS WIFE WAS SITTING NEXT TO HIM!  After we had to ran away from aggressive taxi and scooter drivers on Kalibaru trainstation we found a lovely bungalow which was way above our budget but a dream! 

Next day moving on to Denpasar....running again to not miss the bus...bought some Kretek- cigarettes (special Indonesian cigarettes) for the bus-musicians and for me to try ;-)
This trip was almost to much after those days of being on the road....it was long...to hot....to much waiting....to much guys...with kiss me kiss me whispering in your ears...we were just not able to move on to Kuta directly after we arrived in Denpasar, so stayed here overnight. And now here we are...Kuta beach.

These days someone told me...I hate Kuta beach...I hate those people that walk trough the main street to the beach...and for me...hey this is Kuta, you know that when you come here...so shut up...open your eyes...and watch! It's great to see handsome guys walking half naked trough the streets....it's a long time ago I've seen so many great bodies at one time.... We gonna stay here till Monday and then move on to Ubud...and I will enjoy the sun, the beach and...the people, even if they are a little bit young ;-) 

smile....carry

Travelling....travelling....travelling

How to travel from Chiang Rai (Thailand) to Kuta Bali in 3 days :-)

First of all I'm total relaxed now but the last couple of days were exhausting! To give you just a quick idea of what we did....yes I know poor little Jesse:

- 27.11 at 7pm nightbus to Bangkok, arrival 28.11 at 5.30am. I didn't get some sleep in the bus so I decided to stay the first morning in Bangkok in bed. 

- 29.11 at 20pm flight to Surabaya (Java), arrival 30.11 at 0.15am. Went to bed around 

3 o' clock in the morning.

- 30.11 at 2pm train to Kalibaru (Java), arrival 9pm.

- 1.12 at 10.30am bus to Denpasar (Bali), arrival 7pm, we decided to spend the night here instead of travelling on

- 2.12 at 9.30am bus to Kuta| (Bali), arrival around noon!

The last normal meal we got was on the 28th of November in Bangkok, which was the only place where we spent more than one full day.

If someone would have given me this schedule before to travel I would have asked him if he's nuts....