Beach Life

We had scheduled 2 weeks in Canggu after our Vipassana at a surf and yoga retreat called "Pelan Pelan". Canggu the town was awesome, but within a day of being at Pelan Pelan, we felt we'd made a big mistake. It turned out to be extortionately expensive for what you got - the surf lessons weren't any better than you could get paying a couple dollars to a local on the beach, the yoga part of the retreat consisted of a total of 3 afternoon yoga sessions per week, the massages included were lazy at best (our masseuses were texting pretty much the whole time), and we couldn't eat any of the food. So we ended up scrapping all the resort activities and building our own "retreat" from the amazing yoga, health food, and surf spots in town. 

I tried surfing the first day, but my knee just felt too unstable, so I ended up yoga-ing at Samadi (which is where we *should* have booked for our yoga retreat). Nick, meanwhile, surfed every day.

Our favorite food haunt was the Shady Shack (awesome vegetarian fare), but Canggu had plenty of incredible vegetarian / gluten-free food options.

We spent a lot of time at Finn's beach club - from the day beds by the beach, I could read and watch Nick surf. Great hangout spot.

We made some new friends (a couple of German guys going to business school, a chick who I had met at Vipassana and who had moved to Canggu to start a business, and a Brit taking a few months off work to travel). 

"Silent Day" (scheduled for March 28 this year) is a part of the Nyepi (Hindu New Year) celebrations, and it's a day on which the entire island goes dark - no electricity, no motor vehicles, all the beaches and stores are closed, and you're basically confined to your hotel. Given Pelan Pelan's bad juju, we opted to head out by fast boat to explore Lombok a week early. On our last night in town, we ate at Deus Ex Machina, where there was fantastic live music.