Motoring

This morning was my last yoga class before leaving Ubud tomorrow. I took a Hatha yoga class from a tiny Indian fireball of a woman. Wow! I know I am going to feel that one tomorrow.

On Sunday, I leave Indonesia to head to Fiji (by way of Singapore and Auckland, NZ thanks to my round the world ticket with Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand). I will have been here just under two months. As I was preparing my Lonely Planet Indonesia guide, I actually had pangs of sadness about getting rid of it. I bought the book in Thailand in March and it has been with me ever since. But I did sell it. The thing weighs about two pounds! I need to lighten my luggage all I can.

Have you seen the trailer for the "Eat, Pray, Love" movie coming out in theaters soon? I saw it a few days ago and there is a scene of Julia/Elizabeth riding her bicycle across a Ubud countryside of rice fields. I decided to go in search of my own rice field experience. I didn't get very far. Yesterday, I looked into renting a mountain bike. Renting a bike would be about $2.50 for a day. I nearly rented one, but talked myself out of it when I did a mental inventory of all of the hilly streets I had climbed here in Ubud in the past weeks.

At the end of my yoga class this morning, the sky opened up and it started pouring. When I realized how relieved I actually was to postpone my bike ride across the countryside, that solved it. No bicycling. I spent the late morning walking the now familiar streets of Ubud weaving my way around and through the tourist packed sidewalks. A pack of Aussies zoomed past me on motor scooters and I thought, "That looks like fun."

I had had the same thoughts in Thailand and rented my first motor scooter on the island of Koh Yao Noi. It was a great way to see the island at my own pace, but I wouldn't recommend a partially paved road to anyone as their first scooter experience. The roads here in Ubud are all paved...well, the roads I would be taking are all paved. The thought flashed through my mind that this would probably be my last chance to rent a scooter on my trip and, before I really knew what was happening, I was hoping on a motor scooter as the owner's wife told me repeatedly, "You drive VERY carefully."

My husband and I were going to rent a motor scooter for one day in Bali, but one look at the unending traffic on the one lane roads and my husband changed his mind. I really don't know what possessed me. Well, that isn't true. It was only $4 to rent the scooter for 24 hours. What a bargain!

And then the sky opened up again. Thirty minutes into my ride and several miles away from my hotel the rain started pouring down in sheets. Thank goodness the rental included a rain poncho. I stopped on the side of the road and waited out the heavier rain under the over hanging roof of an 'art gallery'. I put it is quotes because art galleries here look like someone crammed as many painted canvases as possible into mini mart the size of a one car garage and left them for years. I didn't feel so stupid stopped on the side of the road when a Balinese teenager on a scooter joined me. Just as it crossed my mind to leave the scooter and come back for it tomorrow, the rain subsided.

I made it slowly and safely back to the hotel and the scooter has been sitting out front ever since. My plan is to go out for an early ride tomorrow morning in place of my normal yoga class. Then it is off to Legian, another area of Kuta, Bali for one night before I fly out on Sunday.