The Staycation: Seminyak

Posted byYarbroPosted inBaliTags:, , , , ,

We are on our first staycation:

stay·ca·tion
stāˈkāSHn/ noun

informal

: a vacation spent in one’s home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions.

We make home where ever we go. Local groceries, making no scheduled commitments, researching and adapting local street smarts, and avoiding tourists traps as much as possible. Similarly, we are advocates of slow travel; slowing down the pace of our vacation and taking time to experience the place that we are in. There are a few things we do to reach this reality:
  1. Learn how to say “hello, good bye, please, thank you, I don’t speak ______” in the native tongue.
  2. Find a safe clean place to stay in a residential neighborhood.
  3. Research and download the applications that “the people” are using (google it).
  4. Grab some groceries.
  5. Smile, be approachable, and engage with people and make some connections.
  6. Talk to the host if using a homestay and talk to taxi drivers – they usually have the best info.

This trip we are traveling through Thailand and the island of Bali in Indonesia. We used to try to see a lot of towns in 3 day stints but we could never really get a handle of the culture or an understanding of the people. Now we try to stay in a single place for at least 2 weeks….if we can. Ideally, we will find a base and stay there for a couple of months and do some archaeological type of digging into the culture.

Getting Around

We are in Bali for a few weeks. After googling which apps to download we found that the locals use an app called Grab (and Uber) to get reasonable taksi (taxi) rides. We caught a grab to Mal Bali Galeria and it cost us 22K ($1.75 USD) from our residence. When we were ready to come home we wanted to see how much it would cost if we didn’t use the app.

We asked how much a cab would cost and the mall concierge quoted us 250K IDR ($20 USD). An average tourist would think that was okay but your American dollar should do a lot more for you. Needless to say, we used our Grab app and paid the 22K to get home.

Dirty Laundry

We have been on the road for almost 3 weeks. None of the places we have stayed had a washing machine so we washed our clothes by hand until we could locate a laundry mat. There are no traces of them on the main strips or by the malls or by popular restaurants; though, we saw plenty in residential neighborhoods.  To compare, we inquired about the laundry service at a nearby hotel – their price list was a freaking joke. One laundered sweater = $10k, while the neighborhood laundry mat charged the same amount per kilogram of clothes which is very reasonable. AND they came pressed and folded, see image 🙂

We’re just trying to stretch our dollar, and live smarter everyday.

Published by Yarbro

World wide lover of who and what and where, however we can.

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