I was wondering where everyone was going to go for their Holy Week and for some reason, most of my friends whom I polled just said they would stay home. It seems everyone was either trying to enjoy the Holy Week break in the Philippines where all traffic just disappears or everyone was reserving their vacation leaves and/or plans for LaBoracay (the long weekend that sandwiches May 1 every year that serves as an excuse to go to Boracay). I’ve been to Boracay before, during and after Holy Week and essentially – no one is there from Manila before Maundy Thursday, people you hang out with in Manila are there from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday and then the people from the nearby provinces descend upon Boracay starting on the eve of Good Friday. They all miraculously disappear after Easter Sunday. I’m guessing it’s the same experience without of course the Holy Week subtext. So when Diana Vodden and Kamrin Klauschie said there was going to be an AngelHack Ambassador Retreat during Holy Week in Bali, Indonesia – who am I to say no?
I tried to post via the wifi spots in Bali and figured out later it might be easier if I just get a Telkomsel SIMPati card and just use it to post on social media. The downside to deciding late to do this was that I wasn’t able to cross-post a lot of my pictures on Flickr.com and had only two nice photos – one was Sabeen (the CEO of AngelHack) with one of the beach dogs and a nice sunset at Batu Belig Beach from Mozaic.
Beach and Sunset View at Batu Belig from Mozaic
Here’s some photos via Instagram
and just before the Ambassadors were leaving – I bumped into IAM’s May Flores and her friends Priscilla & Dr. Richard –
I initially stayed at Ketut’s Place just at the back of Ubud Palace with Kris Marganti. It was a great place to be introduced to Bali and Ubud – it was a home stay place and our room overlooked a balcony on a ravine with a river at the bottom and the forest just across us. It was non-stop white noise from then on and we were even forced to open the windows and the doors the first day since the aircon was on the funk. It turn out to be a blessing in disguise as the Bali breeze was really perfect. When the Ambassadors arrived we moved to a new hotel called Inata Bisma – new as in it was a new hotel and even the locals didn’t know it was already open. I wanted to extend at Inata but I got an offer to stay at Batu Belig and so decided to do just that.
I’ll update this post later but all in all – Bali is a great place just to take a vacation from the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila. Imagine if the whole Cebu were all Boracay establishments? That would probably be Bali on a very rough scale. Visit it if you can – there’s a direct flight from CebuPac from Manila although for some reason, I went there via Singapore via Singapore airlines which was very tiring but I missed Changi Airport anyway haha.
