Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

We made it into Bali from Singapore, passing all the complex and detailed requirements, the long immigration line, and the somehow-even-longer visa on arrival payment line. Three hours after landing, we made it into a taxi to make our way to our villa in the middle of the night. (It always feels a bit odd landing in a new destination in the middle of the night, doesn’t it?)

But, we made it and it was all totally worth it.

It went from this (above), to this (below.)

Yeah, we’re doing the villa in Bali thing. It’s really amazing just how much house, and space, you get for $50 per night here.

The villa experience is about as Bali touristy as it gets - you go onto Airbnb, find a huge villa 3 blocks from the beach, invariably owned by someone who isn’t Balinese, and proceed to lay back in the rented paradise and order food via the Grab / Gojek app to your doorstep or visit any number of the restaurants selling acai bowls and avocado toast next door. The restaurant staff ask you “Which villa are you staying at?,” because they know all of them by heart now. It’s one of the few times on our trip that has felt like the word “luxury” is attached to it all. (Even though, let’s be honest, our whole RTW trip is in itself is quite luxurious.) It’s honestly a bit uncomfortable for us - with us being so thrifty and DIYers most of the time - and for my parents, who are very go-go-go type travelers. We made it about 24 hours in the villa before we got itchy feet and had to go do something, anything. Relaxing is for other people.

To attempt to counteract some of this feeling - yesterday, we went to the we-definitely-are-mispronuouncing-this Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park, or GWK for short. I wonder why they decided it needed a shortened name?

It was such an amazing experience from start to finish - first of all, it is home to the largest statue in Indonesia, which might not wow you that much, but it’s 25% taller than the frickin’ Statue of Liberty. You can see it all the way from Canggu, over 16 miles away. It’s that big. True story: we were sitting at dinner in Seminyak, saw this massive structure in what appeared to be the middle of no where, tried to guess what it was—a large tree? But there’s nothing else around it. An airport tower? But there are no planes coming in and out. Our kind waiter was the one who told us about GWK. We knew we had to go.

You’ll probably see this photo again in an upcoming YouTube thumbnail. :)

The cultural park is incredible, and quite expansive and very affordable at $6/person. You can spend hours there and it is absolutely worth it. Wandering around seeing the statues, vistas, restaurants, and the amazing carved-into-rock pathways might not be worth the price of admission alone.

Where GWK really shines is with the live cultural dances that go on throughout the day, basically all day. This weekend was the first weekend the dances all came back to life. (Lisa even got to be a part of one of them!)

Every hour some sort of incredible cultural live performance happens throughout the park. It could be a parade with a 40 foot tall statue of Wisnu, or a big group of dancers chanting “Keh-Chak” during the Kecak Dance. Dance dance dance. I’m not sure how else you can write that sentence, but that can’t be right. Oh well, it’s staying anyway.

We then finished up our night at the Love Bar on Seminyak Beach - having super deal $2 cocktails and beers with our feet in the sand while listening to live music. What a perfect day.

Bali is open again, and that’s a miracle. There are so many ways to enjoy this beautiful island, support the wonderful people who work in tourism here, have a relaxing vacation, dive deep into the local culture, enjoy the amazing and affordable food, lay on the beach, learn how to do yoga, get in shape, sweat profusely all the time - the possibilities are limitless. It really is a one-stop shop for anyone looking to go on vacation.

Videos This Week

We’d been meaning to make this video for a while now and after our airport baggage snafu, we knew it was time. This is our around the world packing list, packaged in a hopefully entertaining context :)

Comparison is the thief of joy. We’ve learned this time and time again on our travels and definitely while making our YouTube videos!! So in this one, we try to stop this whole Melbourne vs Sydney comparison. Based on viewers’ comments, I don’t think it worked. :)

Lastly, some of you may have noticed that we’ve been kinda doing things differently on our YouTube channel lately—away from our usual 3-4 mini movies per week schedule (which we’ve been doing now for 2 years…woah.) We have..well…been kinda not on a consistent schedule (yet!) First—apologies for the changes and inconsistency. We are slowly regrouping and figuring out how to really show up and give our best to all of you and what films we make.

Second—thank you for sticking with us. In two years, we are so happy and in disbelief that there are now 10,000+ of us all doing this traveling the world thing and helping each other do it all together.

In the coming weeks, you will continue to see more of our mini movies once-twice a week and Shorts, which we have really enjoyed filming. If you haven’t explored our Shorts yet, we encourage you to check out them out! (In this one, we discover some hidden gems of Singapore’s Changi Airport, which is no doubt the best airport in the world.)

And as always, if you have any suggestions or feedback, we always welcome them.

Thank you for following along our ever-evolving journey! More videos coming soon!

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

P.S. - We gave our website quite a facelift, and added some new, very interesting stuff. If you made it this far into the email, you’re the first to know about it :)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/lisaandjosh02221

Unsubscribe