Happy 2026 from Bali!! We hope that wherever you are and however you spent your evening, whether quietly or partying hard, that you welcomed 2026 with peace, joy, and optimism.

We are happy to say that Rob has mostly moved past his “Bali Belly” and was feeling well enough to do a little bit of walking around, and even eating a bit. We explored our new hotel in Canggu, which is actually just a tiny set of five wooden hut-type buildings centered around a nice pool with lush foliage. We are down the road from a super hippy yoga spa hotel (that I learned has a GREAT vegetarian restaurant), down a narrow dead end road filled with beautiful trees and temple gates, mountains of junk piles, and what might be a scooter repair place??!! We’re not sure, but my city planner man IS sure that there do not appear to be zoning laws here in Bali 😂. We spent most of the afternoon floating around our cute pool.

Beach Life

We also took a few beach walks to the Canggu beach area near us. While it was a definite improvement over the plastic-strewn beach at our old place (you can tell they have done clean ups here) we could still see the debris on this beach as well, and the plastics washing up are a continuous process. There were lots of people on the beach and even a bunch of surfers, so it does not seem to be dissuading anyone, but the smell at the areas where there is river runoff was pretty noxious. We stuck to just walking around instead of swimming in the ocean.

Around Town

As we walked around Canggu, here are some of the neat sights we have seen, including this super cool monitor lizard who was attempting to enter our hotel!

New Years Eve

It was a little dicey trying to decide what to do for NYE while Rob was still somewhat in recovery from his Bali Belly, but in the end he felt well enough to do a dinner out. On the advice of some people we met on our snorkel tour, we went to a steakhouse near us and had a fantastic steak dinner! Rob was able to eat, and we even had a glass of wine, so all is well! After dinner we walked through the INSANE streets of Canggu, which were filled with cars, motor scooters, vendors, and NYE revelers. We walked down to the beach where the two main beach clubs here, Finns and Atlas, were having HUGE NYE parties with DJs, fireworks, etc. Although we did not pay to go in to the clubs, we- along with hundreds of other people- enjoyed the music and fireworks from the beach in front of the club, and we walked back to our hotel from there. It was a great night!

A Beautiful Start to 2026

We spent New Year’s Day in lazy beach mode, which suited both of us just fine. We walked down the beach and headed back to the beach club (Finns) that we passed last night, stopping for a nice swim and beverages, but ending up staying until after sunset because we were having so much fun. It was crowded today, but not as much as last night. They had live singers (singing mostly American music 😂🎉), and at one point for no reason I could discern, some disco ball head guys and some computer head guys came out and danced among the people, and some disco ball rabbit guys played drums. They handed out sparklers for certain songs, and everyone waved them and danced around together. We met nice people from Australia and really enjoyed our afternoon.

Indonesia limited official fireworks displays for New Years; however, the amount of personal fireworks has been insane. From the 30th, 31st, and 1st, fireworks have been near constant background noise at night. Fireworks are technically illegal for personal use, but that is laughable . . . we have been hearing them from dusk to way into the night (and after midnight).

Tomorrow we are off to a tour of Ubud, so time to get some sleep. Thanks for adventuring with us, and happy 2026!! ❤️🎉🍾