Winds & Waves

It’s been awhile! 

Lot has happened in life, yet all the main things (like family, friends and job) has stayed steadily. 

Work I was promoted. Twice. I am now a marketing manager in this small furniture manufacturer. It is challenging, yet so rewarding. 

Education I went to school and graduated. I now attend to another school that teaches leadership. I should put more effort to that one. 

Movement I haven’t been doing as much yoga as I should. I have been going to a gym a lot. Last spring I also ran a lot, so much that I registered to go run a marathon. I couldn’t do that because of hurting hip, but I was able to re-schedule that for next year. I have not been running. 

I miss Bali and all our adventures so much. 

I miss the warmth, I miss all the wine, I miss all the yoga, I miss laying around bungalows and huts with my family. I even miss the crazy lizards and frogs and a huge rat that one day visited my lap during its food hunt. 

My husband and daughter took off to Spain couple days ago. While they’re gone I was supposed to do everything “I don’t have time to do”. Go to gym every day, go for run, meet some friends, I even planned a big hike with my friend Jeff. I was supposed to go see some art, visit galleries and have coffee at the market during weekend. Hang out with myself. 

Instead I got sick, and I’ve been at home having high fever and running nose. No way I could even think about going to the gym or movie. First couple days it was hard to admit that all my great plans wasn’t going to happen. Now I’m already taking all good out of being sick. I’ve been doing slow yoga (no downward facing dogs!), laying on our hammock reading books about traveling and spending time with myself while burning thousand incenses. 

It has been quiet here in my blog lately, I know. And I promise to better up. 

My return to Finland and to work life has been quick and pretty tough too. I got a job as an export assistant in a small company in furniture field and there is so much to learn! Like that wouldn’t be enough, because of my natural drawn to technology I found myself being responsible of developing their eCommerce AND writing content to company’s marketing materials about things that I don’t really know too much yet. I tell you, it is super hard! 

We moved back to Finland. 

We arrived two days ago, just in time to enjoy the darkest day of the year (f*ck yeah!). 

Back in Bali we went to visit this gorgeous Buddhist temple structure. To me it looked like a fairytale forest and I was just expecting to see fairies and glitter in the air. 

We visited Balinese coffee plantation yesterday to test out turmeric tea and world famous Luwak Coffee - and let me tell you it was super gooooood! For an animal’s poop this coffee is something I’d love to drink daily. With cinnamon sticks in it I was in heaven. 

We’ve spent past week in Northern Indonesia going around Padang and Bukittinggi. Now we are super nervous if we are able to fly tomorrow towards Bali or will our flights be canceled because of the volcano that’s erupting there. Going to Bali has been a dream to me for so long, I hope everything ends up going smoothly. 

In Padang we’ve been staying in this great homestay pretty close to everything, but outside of the city center. Our homestay host is super sweet local lady who speaks amazing English and tries to help us with absolutely everything.  We always travel with air mattress that our daughter sleeps on (in case we can’t find a place with enough beds for suitable cost) and we were positively surprised when we arrived to this homestay and the owner had made a mattress for our daughter too (in Asia hotel staff doesn’t usually care if there’s enough beds or not). Then for 3 nights we went up to Bukittinggi to couchsurf and then came back to Padang and to the same homestay - and the owner bought a whole new bed for the room we were staying! How nice is that! I can’t even tell how much that meant for us (not to mention all the other nice things she does for us, making breakfast and arranging day trips and figuring out how we can get to airport at 4 am).  If you are coming to Padang and are looking for amazing and affordable place to stay then Musa Enda B&B is for you! 

Our stay at the Bukittinggi was the absolute opposite.  As I mentioned we were supposed to couchsurf up there on the mountains and we thought we found amazing host through couchcurfing.org.  So we took the Uber from Padang to Bukittinggi and met our host in some gas station, and from there he took us to his sister’s restaurant. We were tired and hungry and just hoped to go eat and relax. Now somebody reading this must wonder why we just didn’t eat a the restaurant, right? Oh we wish, but it was one of the filthiest places I’ve seen in my travels. Gross. Mold everywhere, food buffet open without anything to cover them, all the meat and fish dried up in the sunshine, not to talk about the tables and their conditions. And the toilet... Feast everywhere and no water or soap, so everybody just went there and then went to eat with their fingers (no forks, spoons or knifes in Indonesia). Just.. OMG, terrible place. So we didn’t eat. Next thing we know is that our host leaves somewhere to “quickly pick up his son”. Goes one hour, he’s not back. The his sister leaves the restaurant too and we are left there on our own. Three bule’s who doesn’t speak Indonesian (and no one speaks English). Some customers tries to come to eat, waits for a while and leaves. Then after another hour our host comes back with his sister and family and still insists to stay at the restaurant. At this point we are exhausted, hungry and pissed off.  So then after staying at the filthy restaurant for hours our host finally decided to take us to his place and it is CATASTROPHE! I have never in my life seen a place that dirty. Toys everywhere, food everywhere, dust everywhere, flies and cockroaches, no running water, toilet again full of shit... Just terrible. And this guy wants us to sleep on the floor.  I don’t expect much when traveling and I sure don’t need much, but this was just too much. We ended up going to hotel.  We still didn’t want to hurt his feelings and gave him a reason that we have a bad back that we really need a good bed to sleep in.. So we met this guy every day and he took us around - all the time asking money. It was absolutely horrible and awkward. We are there to couchsurf, o make friends and bond and then there’s this guy who speaks super bad English and just wants money. We felt used and somehow like we were the bad guys here when we told him no to money requests (after buying all the foods and drinks and already giving him 300 000 for the gas - which by the way cost him less than 100 000, but he tried to hide it from us).  Absolutely terrible couchsurffing experience that I hope no one else ever has to go through. We got rid off this guy couple of hours ago and we all feel exhausted like after a hard break up or something. 

Been playing in paradise. 

We flew from KL to Padang the other day. 

Though we first got scarcely disappointed with Padang, our minds were turn around with just one visit to amazing islands of Indonesia. I mean wow, it is so gorgeous here up in the Northern Indonesia and absolutely no tourists anywhere! 

We are in Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia. Spent a week down in Malacca, which was absolutely amazing little city. Now we are meeting my parents for five days before flying to Indonesia. 

My body has been craving for home made foods. Eating out in restaurants has been fun and easy, but I miss simple flavors and healthy foods.  Here in Kuala Lumpur we rented a cute little Airbnb place and it has a small kitchen that I’ve been super excited for!

I flew to Finland couple days ago to attend couple of work meetings and to apply to a school. Today I’ll have an entrance exam to one, and tomorrow to another. To be truthful I fear I haven’t worked enough to make my way in and it makes me sad to know that I could’ve done more. 

There is already snow in Finland! After warmth of Malaysia the coldness in Finland feels surreal. I’ve been walking around the streets trying to stay warm and it’s just not happening. Crazy. 

Never go too long without watching sunsets. 

Life at the beach was chill, full of work but relaxing. 

We worked at the island in Cambodia for a month in a resort and LOVED IT. We were in charge of reservation charts and books and I took care of the resort’s website development and social media marketing. Simple but time consuming work. I loved everything about it. 

The owner of the resort took us to see glowing planktons and some boat trips with other customers and we took each ay as a new adventure.