After an early night I woke up obscenely early. Too early to go to the gym. Yes folks, I go the gym & have been dedicated to exercise for over a year. Shocking, isn't it? From couch potato to *cough* athlete. From a size 20-22 down to a 14. I can actually buy clothes off the rack in any store & dress more to my taste than the buyer from My Size or Autograph thinks I should dress. So liberating!
The gym is reasonable for a hotel gym & a big deciding factor when choosing where to stay. Can you believe that? The gym is more important to me than the other amenities! Who is this woman and what have you done with roly-poly-foodie-sloth-loving Bagusbabe? Oh I still love sloth. I adore sloth. Sloth is me & I am sloth. I am still the laziest person I know, aside from work - I work hard. However when I leave work, I am sloth. I have to get up at 5am & go to the gym before my brain wakes up & realises what I'm doing. I can't exercise after work because I'm too tired & overcome with sloth. And I love going to the gym & exercising, lifting weights, etc. so I make the effort in the mornings. On Saturday morning I do Crossfit. Who knew I would love getting thrashed? Shhhh, don't tell my trainer - he's scared of me, so I get away with a bit more than I should! And yes, I have a personal trainer too! A complete 180 of what my life used to be like! So I'm a bit of an oxymoron - a sloth & lazy dedicated exerciser. Mind blowing, isn't it?
So I still like slothing. I still like eating. In fact I Iove eating. I live to eat, not eat to live. Coming to Bali is my time to get my headspace right again. There was a time when I was careful what I ate. Now I am careful about what I confess to have eaten to my PT. So I am not snacking between meals and I'm trying to limit my alcohol intake. That should have read zero alcohol intake but I've failed THAT already, so I have revised that to only one alcoholic drink per day. I haven't done much research about restaurants this trip. I'm not interested in nouveau cuisine from upmarket resaturants that cost a fortune while leaving a gap in your stomach only Maccas can fill. I want good wholesome food, so that is my mission. I want to weigh less than I did before I left. Last trip I gained a sh*tload when I was so out of control. I don't want to do that again.
I have never stayed in Seminyak before. My only yardstick is Geneva Handicrafts & Bintang Supermarket. I'm lost beyond those landmarks. So I'll be out of my comfort zone. The hotel has a shuttle a few times a day, so I plan to jump on board & explore a little.
My morning starts off at the gym of course. My trainer has forgotten to give me the holiday workout I requested so I have to do my own thing. It's quite warm in the gym room despite the aircon & it's not long before I'm sweating. Not long before my top is sticking to me. Lovely. The machines here are different to what I'm used to but I muddle through.
Breakfast is a buffet. Buffet - music to my ears! I open up the closhes (I've watched Masterchef) & there is bacon, sausages, potato, chicken, noodles, waffles, but no eggs. So I'm having an asian breakfast followed by waffles & fruit. All delicious, but damn I was hoping for eggs. Maybe tomorrow?
After my gym workout & my eating workout I'm back in my room having a wee lie down. I nap again like a nanna. In fact I nap alot today. Who cares? I'm on holiday. Its my party & I'll nap if I want to! Around lunchtime I stir again, have a shower & admire what Bali does to my hair. Its longer now - below shoulder level & the humidity is making it curl more, right up to the crown. Its giving me a glam 1940s look. There is a spotlight in the bathroom directly over where I'm standing, so my hair looks super-blonde & shiny. That is until I wear my hat. Then I get hat hair. I hate hat hair. I hate wearing hats. But I hate skin cancer more so I suffer the wearing of the hat, and the hat hair. But I do hate it. My hat is cute though, even though I hate it. Hateful cute hat.
I walk up to main road, looking for somewhere to have lunch. It feels like I've walked for miles its so hot but it's probably only half a km in reality. I find a small Thai restaurant with a waitress with the most enormous, genuine smile. I can't help smiling back at her. I order chicken with cashews in chilli jam. It so so yummy. I could eat 2 portions easy - the portion size wasn't that big. Damn my guilty conscience, I listen to it just the same. And I had my 1st fresh pineapple juice of the trip. Sublime!
I go into a nearby Circle K (Bali 7 eleven) & ask where I can top up the sim card I bought at Melb airport. "I can do it" says a customer "my shop is across the road". How fortuitous. At the road edge she takes my hand as if I'm wont to step out in front of a car & waits for a gap before ushering me across. She's very helpful & fixes me up quickly & painlessly. Telstra could learn a thing or two from the ease & inexpense of Indonesian Telcos. I cross the road again, quite safely on my very own, just like a grown-up & buy a couple of drinks from the Circle K. One of my drinks is a strawberry vitamin water. OMG it was putrid & it was all I could do not to spit it out into the street as I was walking back to the hotel. The only relationship it had to strawberry was the name strawberry on the label. God awful fake taste, like skittles. Ew. Live & learn. Most things that are 'good for us' taste disgusting - broad beans, asparagus, sweet potato....I rest my case!
Back at the hotel, of course I have to lie down again after all that walking in heat that would fry you if you stood still for a few minutes. I have sloth & laziness down to an art form. I sink into my divinely decadent pillows, sweat and all, with a deep sigh of wicked pleasure - you know the one, & drift off momentarily into a daydream where Colin Firth (as Mr Darcy) throws me over his shoulder and....oops, let's just leave it there, shall we?
So I'm all hot & bothered so decide on a swim. I don my gorgeous but outrageously expensive bathers, cover up with a sheer sarong & wander down to the pool. The pool boy is stationed at the end of the outdoor bar & asks for my pool towel card. I don't have one. I can't give you a towel without one. Ok, I'll have go all the way back to my room & see if I've got one. Pouting, fluttering eye-lashes & boom! Ok, I'll give you a towel, but make sure you bring it back. I promise not to steal it, smiling as I wander off with my prize. The only free lounge is one that is literally in the shallows of the pool. I strip off my sarong & dive in. No I don't. I washed my hair this morning, I don't want to get it wet, so its up out of harm's way with a clip. In the past, I wore dress bathers which covered the tops of my thighs, my bum & stomach overhang. I would swim when no one is around. So this is a first for me in a long, long time & I feel somewhat exposed. There are people on loungers & in the pool. People with eyes. They might see me! I'm still that really fat chick in my head & hate how my thighs wobble unrestrained as I walk to the ledge & lower myself in. I pretend I'm alone. There's an old codger asleep on a lounger outside his poolside room. Skin cancer waiting to happen. I swim leisurely with head above water. The water isn't deep. My bathers stay put instead of floating on the surface. I like them. I do some water aerobic exercises, assuming they are as I've never been to a class in my life. My knees hurt, even in water. That's just not right. The sun is starting its descent, so I'm out & dried off. I don't feel like lying on a lounger to see my thighs spread, so I obediently return my wet towel to the pool boy with thanks & go back to my room.
Again too tired to do much of anything, I start blogging & my afternoon disappears in seconds. I'm in a fast forward time warp, which always happens to me when I'm on my computer, or in this instance, my iPad. I lose time. Its dinner time & I'm hungry again. I decide to eat at the hotel restaurant again & I'm given a table next to the glass half-wall overlooking the pool. A few scragglers are getting their money's worth at the bar for the last few minutes of happy hour. Happy hour made me unhappy. You don't get a 1/2 price drink, you have to buy 2 for the price of one. That rules me out, because I'm restricting myself to one alcoholic drink a day, so happy hour is no use to me. You can't see my pout, but I am pouting at the injustice of it all! For dinner I chose their cocktail of the month - AC/DC, which did not light me up, chicken spring rolls which were nice & mie goreng with chicken & prawn. I should have read the menu more closely & noticed there was no 's' on the end of prawn. Sure enough - there was one small lone tempura'd prawn, a fried chicken drumstick & a plate of vegetable noodles. Trés disappointing, not even close to what I'd envisioned. I stop by reception to get a pool card for next time on my way back to the room. Too easy.
Back in my room I turn on the TV - it's like Foxtel but with half the channels in Asian. I find a movie which is like an appalling British version of The Walking Dead. You know when you watch something out of fascination that it can't really be that bad, surely it will get better rather than worse & before you know it you've wasted an hour and a half of your life that you'll never get back? Well that just happened. It didn't help that the volume was uneven either. Maybe they were playing a bootleg DVD? Time to snuggle. I set my alarm to get up early for the gym - shut up, I know, I know already!