I had booked a tour with Peggy’s friend Made who has his own private driver business.  It was a pretty standard tourist tour with everything that entails these days – lots of tourists fighting for the one Instagram photo that everyone wants!  I would not want to be here in high season.  I do get that to the Balinese this is serious business but I do wonder whether they are “wearing out” what they have.  Maybe the time will come when they will actually have to limit visitors in the same way that other places are talking about – even in Norway which has seemingly limitless space.

I guess I am  very spoilt traveller and the reason I always go somewhere I have friends is that I get to have the local experience rather than the tourist one.  I also realise that it’s much more important to me now to just be here without rushing round to see everything. Made was a lovely guy and I highly recommend him – see his link.  I enjoyed chatting to him about his life here and when he worked on a cruise ship travelling the world.

The best thing about the tour was in fact the most surprising.  I was moved to tears by the purification ritual at Tirta Tempul.  I wished for Julia’s pain to go away and realised how tough the last couple of years have been for both of us.

So following on from the fun and games at the IMF conference I decided to skip out early and decamp to Ubud instead.  It’s low season here so it’s quite hot but the weather has been beautiful so far.  The streets are quite choked up with cars and scooters but when you go into the shops and restaurants it’s actually quite empty.  Apparently people have been scared off by the earthquakes and the tsunami.

The Agung Rai Art Museum was really good – amazing collection of modern Balinese art – an oasis of calm with very few people.  Lunch at the Yogabarn was a strange mixture of vegan and macrobiotic to which you can add chicken???and full of beautiful young people with taut bodies in tight fitting yoga outfits – oh well maybe I’ll take a class later.

Dinner was another strange affair in the local vegetarian warung (with a full meat menu of course).  The food was very good – proper home cooking according to the one other diner there – a Bangladeshi who claimed to have worked for the UN but was now doing very little – I did wonder what he was actually up to.

I can now reveal the real reason for my trip to Bali.  I am attending the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – in other words a date with Christine Lagarde!  It has been very difficult to keep this secret so far but I can finally spill the beans.  Christine and I are going to be comparing our hair colouring regime over an intimate lunch in Denpasar.  I am sooo looking forward to this.  For those of you who know how committed I am to Economics and the forecasting of the state of health of the worlds major players this is a real treat.  Meltdown – what meltdown? Never mind the increased level of my personal mountain of debt – I am too big to fail!

So I’m packing for my next big adventure – that’s the theory anyway.  I love travelling and am always planning at least 2 trips ahead.  This one has been on the cards for a while now and it’s getting really close!  I’m spending 9 days in Bali on my way to meet up with my friend Peggy on the Sunshine Coast in Australia.   I will try to keep you updated along the way.

London->Oslo->Copenhagen->Doha->Bali – and that’s just the flight!  What you do just to travel business on a budget…