If your life runs through a backdrop of unrequited ambition, or a pent-up dream which doesn’t seem to want to abandon you, living in Bali can be the perfect way to point your attention toward it.

A tropical vacation is rejuvenating, but stay in a place like Bali long enough and it just might trigger a larger sense of perspective in you. Be warned: reducing the need for income and heavy clothing under which you might have been been straining for a lifetime can have ontological ramifications.

Who are you when the daily grind isn’t present? Who might you be?

Glimpsing a less-constrained you in very different circumstances, even if only for a moment, hints at a larger, fuller life you might otherwise have lived. It suggests a life you might–being still alive–still live.

Living In Bali

1) Getting laundry done by a friendly Balinese family, three minutes’ walk away. They charge 15 or 20 US cents per piece, folded and neatly bundled for next-day pickup.

2) Enjoying the melting pot that is Bali. Not only do people come from all over the world for everything from short visits to moving to Bali outright, people come from every corner of the Indonesian archipelago for the money-making opportunities in Bali, or simply to vacation. It’s hard not to feel stimulated by the sheer variety of people here–everyone seems to show up eventually!–there’s nowhere better to see it than on the beach at sunset time.

3) Bali mornings. What are Bali ‘must-dos’? A few are Besakih Temple, Tanah Lot, and definitely Uluwatu at sunset, but I have one for you that isn’t in any guidebook.

Get up around sunrise. Get to a natural setting, whether it’s to the beach or to a path leading through rice paddies or jungle if you’re inland in a place like Ubud. Before 9 AM or so you’ll be rewarded with cooler temperatures and far less activity on the roads.

You’ll pass people sweeping, the smell of incense wafting from small roadside temples, and hundreds of canang sari–small trays made of palm leaf and filled with offerings–put out by the Balinese as they perform their morning Sembahyang puja, the women wearing their vivid selendang sashes.

On the beach it’s a quiet scene, a few joggers and dog-walkers if you’re in Seminyak or Kuta. So peaceful compared to later in the day.

Treat yourself to a few early mornings, especially if you’re in Bali for a short visit.

4) Balinese umbrellas and flags.

5) At night in the rainy season, sitting at the computer surfing the planet with my cat on my lap, or just sitting in warm humidity on the balcony, listening to the late-night torrents.

6) Having time to read every single book on the “must read” list.

7) Having time for my sunset walk on the beach every day. Funny how I never have to force myself to get a nice hour and a half worth of low-intensity exercise here. I know it’s good for me but I do it because I love it.

8) Having time to reconnect with family and friends. It’s ironic that being so far away from home without a work schedule means you have more time to spend with people than when you are geographically closer to them. And it goes without saying that you have the technology to do this in Bali.

Specifically, you’ll have a home connection, and there’s free Wi-Fi in most of the restaurants. Bring an unlocked phone and you’ll find 4G/LTE service in much of Seminyak and elsewhere in 2016 too, via Telkomsel, XL and other carriers. About 180,000 rupiah gets you all set up with a local SIM card and a 1.5 GB data top-up every month is just 53,000 rupiah. It all means among other things that WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Skype, Facetime, WeChat, etc work as well as they do anywhere else in the world, of course. Why tell friends and family about your tropical breakfast when you can show it to them in real time?

And, when they come to Bali to visit–a surprising amount of friends and family do–we get to spend hours and hours talking as we rarely seemed to back in the realm of the busy. People are more interested and interesting without a schedule and so, most likely, are you.

9) Magnificent luscious fruit. I wouldn’t want the stellar vegetables to feel left out either, and one certainly will find both elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but I’m amazed still at the variety and freshness of mangosteen, papaya, pineapple, honeydew and watermelon, several varieties of bananas and mangoes, rambutan, snake fruit, dragon fruit, durian, etc. I always have fruit at home and indulge in a half-papaya every day.

10)Taking spur-of-the-moment flights to interesting places. I start every day in Bali knowing that if I got the urge I could wake up the following morning in any one of a hundred interesting cities, watching the world come alive in Chiang Mai, Kovalam Beach in Kerala, Ho Chi Minh City, Penang, etc. etc.

If you’re coming to Asia from Europe or the United States it would be difficult to see too many of the places you’ve “always wanted to visit” without taking a six-month sabbatical and aggressively connecting all the dots. Lots of people buy a backpack and do this at some point, but moving to Bali (or having a base anywhere in this region really) means spontaneous explorations won’t break the bank, nor even require much planning. Led by Air Asia, the availability of cheap flights has increased dramatically over the past 10 years; more competition has meant you’re no more than US $100 or $200 from destinations worthy of checking out. Most days, I do not jump on that airplane. But I can, and that has made all the difference.

11) “Mau ke mana?” In the tourist areas you’ll get the English version: “Where are you going? It’s the common greeting between Indonesians so naturally they’ll ask you too, as you walk by.

With a little shame now, I remember feeling the question to be a minor intrusion when I first came to Indonesia. Maybe it was a typical reaction for a westerner being asked their intentions by a stranger. I soon relaxed.

I think the greeting reflects a culture with a refreshing (to me) lack of concern over maintaining the anonymity and privacy on which we often fixate in the West. I like it because it underscores a mutual familiarity with my neighbors. I ask them myself now.

12) One-hour massages priced from US$5.

13) Seeing at every turn the amazing, usually functioning blend of Balinese tradition combined with all the modern world has to offer.

14) Good quality DVDs and CDs of recent film/music releases on every corner for US$1. I know that no one is getting paid but the people from whom I buy them, most of whom make less in a month than Johnny Depp slips the valet.

15) Having time for leisurely two- or three-hour meals in restaurants, depending on the conversation and who might show up. Never will there be an insinuation that you should order more or perhaps free up the table. This is not unique to Bali of course; budget travelers in the region know the Asian informality which blurs the line between eating and socializing. I’ll admit I’ve sat for so long after a meal that I get hungry again and order another meal.

Well, I’m not the only one.

Since Internet access is a given at Bali restaurants, it’s easy to combine the additional dimension of working, alone or together with friends on the Project. Or not.

16) Not spending time trying to convince myself that to defer life is to live.

Get ready, here’s a heavy idea I didn’t invent: in dreams begin responsibilities.

Execute and come to a place where you are (finally) without reasons why you can’t act, today, and you will find if you are worthy of this dream of yours, and all the effort it took to get you here in the first place.

You can fall into a deserved retirement when some arbitrary timetable finally says it’s OK, invented by people who never considered any other way.

But there are other ways.

And if you’re brave enough to decide not to defer living but to live sooner, to live today, you make an (equally) arbitrary decision which is fundamentally different because it is of you.

And if you’re brave enough to decide you deserve to pursue living as you define it, the onus will be on you to act.

17) Losing weight with no effort. Yep, you read that right. Don’t call me if it doesn’t work for you, but the warm climate in Bali makes me less focused on food. Portion sizes at restaurants reflect a culture not obliged or intending to feed the insatiable. I also have more interesting activities on which to focus. I tend to eat to live in Bali rather than the other way around. It sounds pretentious so let me elaborate: I have no fixed schedule in Bali, so I’m without the scheduled mealtimes on which I fixated back in the salt mines, for lack of other immediate satisfactions. Engagement in activities which interest me has added up to shedding at least 50 lbs. I’m sure the walking doesn’t hurt either; out of 24 hours in the day it’s easy to make time for it.

18) Bluebird brand taxis cost no more than $1-$2 for just about everywhere I want to go. Air-conditioned, pleasant drivers who turn the meter on every single time without having to be asked.

19) No problem getting around with English, though if you’re a Bali expat you’ll pick up at least basic Bahasa Indonesia, as it’s one of the easiest languages to learn: no verb tenses, a Roman alphabet with no difficult pronunciations, etc.

20) Arriving back at my condo in the afternoon hours on a steaming hot sunny day to the pleasure of the cool air in our little place. Add the right beverage and you can go from wilted to refreshed in about 10 seconds. If I feel like getting especially decadent I can pop a DVD in and watch it during the midday heat, until 5 PM or so when it becomes much cooler and time to hit the beach for sunset.

21) Meeting interesting long-term expats, most of whom seem to have biographies worthy of a movie.

Source: http://wagefreedom.com

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