Settling down to Bali

So here I am! After 5 months I'm back in Bali again! And I'm loving it!

My first weeks in Bali have been really busy organizing the living situation and the studies in the local university but of course there has been time to have fun too! After spending only 2 nights in a hotel in the beginning of my trip, I already found a place to stay for a longer period. I moved in to a really nice villa to a place called Canggu with 4 Germans and 1 Finnish girl.

In the villa I have my own bungalow with a bathroom, a huge bed and a balcony. I’m sharing a kitchen, a living room and a pool area with the others. The villa is quite big and view from the villa over the rice fields is really beautiful, especially during the sunset. And the rent of the villa is really cheap!

Living in a villa like this is so luxury compared to the life in Finland. We have our own maid, who comes here every day. I get so lazy here because I don’t need to make my own bed, do my dishes or clean my room. Even the laundry is taken by the maid! We also have our own gardener and a security man during the nights. It is important to have the security man here, because the living room area is an open space and there are no walls so anyone could come in from the field side of the villa. However, all the bungalows have their own locks. 

The only down side of this place is that it is quite far away from everything and therefore you have to have a scooter.  Traffic here is terrible and the roads are in a really bad condition. However, driving rules don’t differ much from the rules in Thailand, so I've gotten used to driving here already. The most difficult thing about driving here is that there are no good maps of the roads, not many signs to guide your way or no house or street numbers. So finding a way to a new place is impossible without asking many times from the locals where is that place! Therefore also the taxi drivers never find the way if you don’t know the name of the “banjar”, which is the local community or village where the place is located to.

Luckily Balinese are lovely people and they will happily help you if  you get lost or need some help. Like our teachers in the Uni always say, as long as you are patient and keep smiling, you will be fine in Bali.