world travelers

After 3.5 years of keeping our feet on American soil, we decided to finally get some use out of Gordy's passport - 10 days in Bali with a day stop-over on each end in Taipei.  We rode (5) subways, (4) airplanes, (4) shuttles, (3) taxis, (2) boats, (2) open back trucks, (2) motorbikes, and (1) high speed train.  Not sure which one was the highlight for Gordy, however, he did fall asleep on each airplane, both boat rides, one motorbike ride and one subway ride.

The trip started off with a 10 hour flight to Taipei where we had a 12 hour layover.  We decided ahead of time that it would be worth while to get a hotel room for our layover and boy were we right!  We had just enough time for us all to ride the subway, catch some zzz's, and then to hit the sauna room in our hotel where we enjoyed a swimsuit-free spa with hot and cold baths.

One more 5 hour flight and an hour taxi ride later and we arrived at our first Bali hotel in Seminyak.  We spent two days there riding around on a scooter checking out our old haunts - our roti canai and tea place (we went there twice), our old Bintang supermarket, our old sprint 8 beach (yes, we did our sprints), our old apartments, etc.

Then, it was time to head off to a new place - Nusa Lembongan.  

All in all Nusa Lembongan was a cool place to visit, but it wasn't our favorite.  Everything was more challenging there and we found ourselves wishing we'd stayed on mainland Bali.  So, we cut our stay on the island short and headed up to Ubud.  Ubud was 3 days of great food, super good massages, and of course, the monkey forest.  Gordy absolutely loved the monkeys!!  We ended up spending almost 2 hours in the forest just walking around searching for the monsters.  And, he couldn't get enough of the Bali coffee or the watermelon!

Before we went home, we decided to spend our last 24 hours in Uluwatu enjoying some 3-4 star surfing.  Sadly, the surf was only a 1-star in Todd's book, but Gogo had a ton of fun swimming and playing at the beach.  And, on our way to the airport, we were able to stop for one last massage and one last roti canai and tea tarek - yay!

Our stopover in Taipei was not too exciting, however, we did make it to the top of the 101, which is the 9th tallest building in the world.

We are calling the trip a success!!