I'm back! *Merry Belated Christmas*

I went on vacation to Bali, Indonesia for 5 days and 4 nights. I came back on Christmas Eve. and worked all Christmas day. I will tell you..I'm so worn out! The trip was really fun and I did a lot of shopping. The two girls I went with like shopping a lot so we went to a lot of shopping areas. I also went on a banana boat and went snorkeling. I'm glad I faced my fears of doing water activities in the ocean. I also had a 2 hour whole body Indonesian style massage which I had to be nude, again I'm trying to face my fears on that too lol Sadly, after my massage, my back was really sore the past couple of days. It hurt while she was massaging my back and my back was so sore that I couldn't even sleep on it or let the water hit my back while I was taking a shower. Above our pictures from the trip. I went with my coworker and her friend. The first picture is at our hotel's swimming pool. There is a place where we can order drinks near the pool. The second picture is us after we got done doing the water activites such as the banana boat and snorkeling. I'm wearing a purple sarong which is really popular there. The last picture is me with my new swimsuit on the last day of the trip. I'm soaking up the sun before heading back to Taiwan :)

Bali's a great place to travel but I will definitely admit, I got very scared and paranoid a couple of times. We hired a driver which wasn't really comforting to me since we met him when he was hassling us to sign up for a water package. He took us to the beachfront to do the water activites and since everything was fine, we hired him the next day to go sightseeing and shopping. I was scared a couple of times since he would drive through a shortcut but we were going on a small dirt road with no buildings or cars. I was really freaked out about that but it was okay at the end. There are many taxi companys in Bali and the person who set up our hotel/flight package in Bali told us to only ride taxis with a blue bird on it. After our dinner, we needed a taxi to go home and we didn't want to ride in this taxi since it didn't have the bird on it. We went inside anyways and my friend asked the taxi driver how far this other city was at. He misunderstood us and asked us where we were from. We told him and he was saying how all the taxis have a base rate and that the blue bird doesn't mean anything. He got super angry and I got scared and then I asked him if he was taking us back to our hotel. He didn't say anything but I saw his face in the rearview mirror and he was angry. When we got to the hotel he didn't shut off the meter and he didn't tell us how much we owed him. I couldn't see my bills when I was paying him since it was dark and the meter kept running. We were all so angry but I gave him the money and left. I checked my wallet when I got home and I gave him the wrong cash. Instead of giving him a $10,000 rubi bill, I gave him $100,000. It really isn't too much since I just gave him an extra $5-10 USD or so but oh well.

There's a lot of tourists that go to Bali so it was funny since they know how to speak many languages. I got mistaken for being Taiwanese or Chinese and since I was with my Taiwanese friends, they kept speaking Chinese to us. One night we were trying to figure out which stand to eat at this night market. Everyone kept yelling at us in Chinese thinking we don't understand English. It was funny but it got really intense when they kept yelling at us and everyone eating kept laughing at us since they knew the workers were being silly. Even the workers themselves were laughing since they knew they were being ridiculous. I wish we had it on video camera but everyone kept shaking their menus and screaming in Chinese for us to eat at their place lol

I got back on Christmas Eve. and later that night my roommates and I exchanged Christmas gifts. The next day, I worked all day on Christmas. It was sort of a bummer since it didn't feel like Christmas although our school was decorated with Christmas decorations and they were playing Christmas music. After work, my coworker had everyone over for a Christmas dinner. We had turducken (turkey, chicken, duck) and I didn't even know I had it. My coworker's friend dished out all the food on the plate and we all had one and I just ate the food, not even realizing that I was eating turducken lol It's because he baked it in a dark sauce but it was really good. Then yesterday I slept all day since I'm still tired from the trip. Drew, our coworker, her roommate, and I had hot pot last night.

Today it was hard for me to wake up and I just taught one class. I was supposed to have my one-on-one tutoring but the student canceled it. I'm okay with it though since I'm really exhausted from the trip. We did a lot of things in 5 days and we did a lot of walking. It was a great vacation but I need a vacation after this vacation lol

-Chihchat