Bali is the morning of the world
-Jawaharial Nehru
Hello everyone! I’m so glad you’re here.
Hi! I’m writing this sweaty and covered in rain. It’s the end of week two and I can’t believe how fast time is going. How are you?
I spent the afternoon moving into my second airbnb, a little treehouse tucked away beneath a main road about ten minutes from where I was previously staying. I had mixed feelings about relocating; I’ve gotten very comfortable at my guest house and finally wasn’t using my phone to navigate every step. But. Change is good! New energy! Floor to ceiling windows surrounded by lush wildlife and a small pool just for me! I’m excited to fall asleep tonight to the sounds of crickets and birds. Google reviews be damned, I can handle a bug or two.
I snapped this photo from the porch this morning as I ate my last breakfast there. When I stepped outside, my hosts had surprised me with a fresh coconut, a plate of dragonfruit and flowers, and a sweet little painting of a figurine doing yoga wishing me good luck. I knew I wanted to stay near a local family for my first leg of the trip and I’m so glad I did. I’ll miss their three kids playing in the garden, all the cats and dogs roaming around, my high-powered ceiling fan.
The flower tucked in my ear is called frangipani. They’re everywhere here, along with marigolds. The whole island, a sea of yellow, orange, and pink. My friend Katie told me about frangipani before I came here. Just pick one up and take a big sniff. They’re divine.
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Last week while at a beautiful café doing my usual lineup of journaling and ordering five menu items, I began chatting with the woman sitting next to me. Or actually, we started talking when her smoothie bowl arrived and we both gasped because it looked like a piece of art. Four hours later her friend had joined and the three of us sat around the table sipping our beverages and unpacking our time in Bali so far. They’re both yoga teachers; one is in her fifties and currently lives in Berlin, the other is my age, from the UK, and just moved out of Tanzania where she had her own yoga studio. I joked that everyone is a yoga teacher here. They invited me to an open mic night at a different café the next evening and we’ve been hanging ever since.
My first week here was very solo. I was acclimating to the people, energy, humidity. I mostly kept a low profile and went to bed early, rotating between daily yoga classes, massages, and exploring each side street filled with row after row of sarongs and woven purses. It’s been really nice having a little community formed with these women and some others I’ve met, commiserating over which teachers we like, something weird we witnessed someone do, how remarkable all the food is.
Everyone at home is telling me to enjoy my remaining time left. New York feels bleak, freezing. Friends send me screenshots of themselves on the subway wrapped in thick scarves. My instagram feed is filled with memes about surviving winter. My colleague who spent 5 weeks in Bali the month before me told me she bought two humidifiers on her return to the city because she hadn’t realized how dry it was making her skin.
Each morning here, I splash my face with cold water to wipe away the dew that formed overnight. My skin is supple, soft, a little sunburned. On Saturday morning, my host drove me to a secret beach about an hour outside of Ubud. I watched our surroundings change as we rode further away from the city center. Tourists were replaced with locals carrying groceries on the backs of their scooters, the air laden with smoke and sewage. I could barely look when we pulled up to a stoplight behind a truck full of chickens on their way to become food. They were crammed into the wire netting like sardines, no life behind the eyes. They looked sick, malnourished, their bodies dotted in sores. I made myself look at them because though sparingly, I eat meat. It’s one of my greatest contradictions as a lifelong animal lover.
It’s not as though a truck full of chickens doesn’t exist in the states, it’s just not as in your face, especially in a metropolitan city. Bali is not somewhere you can go without seeing every granular detail of its ecosystem. For every pleasant waft of incense and fragrant flower and I can’t believe how beautiful it is here, I am simultaneously jarred by the matted stray dog looking for food, the small shacks the size of bathrooms that some people call home.
The beach was exactly what I had hoped: white sand, crystal clear water, not too busy. On arriving I wondered why I hadn’t chosen to stay closer to one during my time here, but the change of scenery did the trick. I lay on my lounger sipping a coconut and fresh juice, later, rice and grilled prawns directly from the sea. The water was as warm as a cool bath, the ocean floor smooth but for mounds of eroded coral. I watched beachgoers snorkel, makeout, a girl instruct her boyfriend to take photos of her while she straddled the sand. For awhile I swam under water picking up and putting back rocks the way I used to as a kid, at one point surfacing with a tiny treasure I’ll take home with me.
Everything is beautiful and I am so happy, I kept thinking, slowly aware of my skin reddening under my bathing suit. Though I copiously reapplied sunscreen, my east coast body had no hope; the ride home was rough. I felt like an overbaked potato, skin as taut as sandpaper. It reminded me of when I studied abroad in London in college and my bestie Becca and I went to Barcelona for a few days. Like a young idiot, I didn’t wear sunblock. At the airport on the way home, I avoided eye contact with everyone around me, embarrassed by my cherry tomato mishap. My friends and I cackle about it now but it was absolute purgatory in the moment.
Some other highlights: a four-handed massage at a local spa that felt almost like a duet with my body as the instrument. All of the spas here give you a hot towel and cold water at the beginning, and ginger tea and a cookie or fruit at the end. How nice is that?
A session with a local Balinese healer who had lots of positive things to say about my 2025 and reminded me that the work of tending to one’s heart is the most important work of all.
Climbing Mount Batur with a group of three other travelers in pitch black at 3am. The best part of the hike is the sunrise at the top, which we didn’t really get because it rained the whole time, but it was still majestic and adrenalizing.
An open mic event that included an eastern European woman rapping Uptown Funk, an Australian woman tapping on her drum while leading a call and response chant to the audience and everyone actually responding, and a man with the most buttery soaring voice singing about love while dressed in linen.
Mostly, I’m steeping. In my senses, on my yoga mat, in every shrill of birdsong and droplet of sweat. I am completely aware of how fleeting my time here is, which makes all of it feel like a gift. I know how easily New York will pull me back in with its freneticism and contrived urgency, though I also know that part of what makes this experience so enjoyable is the awareness of this return. I love my beloved city the way one knows spending time apart with their lover is essential for the longevity of the relationship.
It stopped raining here. The air is clear and scented, cleansed of its morning activity. I’m debating what to do tonight: another café? A sound bowl event? Lay on my bed and watch the world? Can you believe my reality right now? I can’t.
I think I’ll walk and see where the wind takes me. On Thursday I am getting a ninety- minute massage with a recommended therapist. The massage is $18. How am I going to return to New York prices? I write my friends. Fuck. On Friday I’m visiting a day spa with outdoor thermal pools and an incredible sunset view. I have no remaining agenda except to soak in all the richness and refuge of this fertile land.
In class the other day the teacher said I’ve never met anyone who comes to Bali to go faster.
That’s the main work, I think. To slow it all down. Hold a magnifying glass up to what is beautiful and true. Sit with it. Observe. Listen. As Mary says- this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, a silence in which another voice may speak.
Have a beautiful week, everyone. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you all.
Emma
ps- I’m flying home next Tuesday (!) so no newsletter, but I’ll see you in class later that week. xxoo
hike hair!
made a friend
Post 30-minute $5 foot rub
friends!
sayonara for now <3
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“I’ve never met anyone who comes to Bali to go faster.” PERFECT
So good right? Thanks for reading MAMI