For most exchange students coming to Singapore, Bali is usually the second destination for a weekend away after Kuala Lampur. It’s one of Indonesia’s many islands, known for its gorgeous and varied landscapes that include beaches, forested mountains and volcanoes, and rice fields. Home to most of Indonesia’s Hindu population, Bali is also famous for its many temples and places of reflection, and is a popular destination for yoga enthusiasts and meditative retreats.

Enjoying a quick snack!

In truth, it was a bit of a surprise to hear that Bali was such a popular place for exchange students. I took a class back at Richmond centered on Balinese and Javanese music, and our professor, who spent a not-so-insigificant amount of time in those islands, told us that much of the area was calm and traditional. A few older friends of mine spent honeymoons on the islands, too, and told me they thought of Bali as more a romantic place than a tourist-y destination. Nevertheless, I went with an open mind – my flatmates had gone through the effort to organize the trip, from booking a villa for several days, a driver, and our tickets to and fro, and all seemed to be quite excited – if they went through that much effort, it must be worth, it right?

Main building of our villa

I was blown away by the quality of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport. When I think of Indonesia, I think of a country very similar in terms of economic development to the Philippines, and I had grown accustomed to dirty, slow, and disorganized airports. When we landed in Ngurah Rai, however, it felt like I was landing in Shanghai or San Francisco or Dubai. The area was spotlessly clean, with high ceilings and an excess of windows giving the building a sense of grandeur. It was busy, suffocating crowded in the ways that Beijing’s Capital Airport or Manila’s Ninoy Aquino Airport were.

Enjoying a giant coconut

Outside the airport, however, we were faced with the usual tourist conundrums. Our villa was about a forty minutes drive away from the airport given the mid-day traffic, so we wanted to book an uber or grabcab to make sure that we had a driver who knew how to go somewhere fairly far away, and a driver who wouldn’t trick and scam us. We didn’t do our research thoroughly enough, though; in many tourist-y destinations (like an airport) grabcabs and ubers are not allowed to enter to give local taksi drivers an advantage. Instead of a $8-10 uber ride, we ended up paying around $25 because the taksi drivers knew we didn’t really have leverage. It was early in the morning, we were tired and in a new country – they could just ask just about any price to take us to a villa 40 minutes away, and they knew we would pay it.

The pool offered a relaxing end to each day

The villa itself was probably the highlight of our stay in Bali. 8 of us shared the 4 bungalows with king sized beds. There was a sizeable pool in the middle of villa, along with a gorgeous kitchen and patio area where we spent most of our nights relaxing and swapping stories about home. Besides two of my flat mates, the rest of the people I travelled were exchange students at SMU who I knew through friends of friends, so it was interesting to hear about their experiences at university. The gap year in college is much more common than I imagined – some of them spent time in Canada or Central Africa all on their own with no real plan besides “experiencing the world.” To be honest, the idea appeals to the romantic inside of me. A year without any real responsibilities besides just getting to know yourself and another part of the world better? Sign me up. But there’s also the part of me that’s already accustomed to the way life works in the U.S. I wouldn’t be able to totally enjoy the experience because I know I’d be constantly thinking about what comes after.

A view at Kuta Beach

Kuta Beach, which was only a few minutes’ walk from us, was unfortunately quite a disappointment. Although we caught an absolutely gorgeous sunset, the beach was quite dirty, with litter scattered virtually all over the dirt-colored sand. The water was foamy and even at shallow depths, you couldn’t see the sand because of how dirty it was. It was quiet a shame – the waves were large and powerful, and a few free spirits spent all day surfing. It would have been an absolute joy to swim around and play that game where you see how long you can stand upright before getting knocked down by the waves, but I would need to take a day long shower before I could clean the muck off of me if I did that.