The Great Dopamine Rush of 2025

Today was a good day, we started the day with a nice workout in the room, followed by a lovely 3 course breakfast of fresh pastries, Fruit with yogurt and a Croque Monsieur. This $60 a night resort is pretty friggin awesome.

After breakfast we taxied into town and rented some scooters, Ubud is a crazy part of Bali. Its so busy. When we had our scooters we set off for our chat gpt planned Itinerary of natures walks, wildlife, temples and waterfalls. Brian loves to use AI for planning and it truly was a pretty damn good aid.

First stop was a ridge walk, that was a nice little walk through a beautiful part of Ubud. From there we drove to the Monkey Sanctuary and did the several kilometer loop through the grounds, there is several temples and some amazing sights. Apparently there is close to 10,000 monkeys that call the sanctuary home. It was built many hundreds of years ago. It was a really cool experience.

We then visited a local climbing gym to book a sick volcano climbing tour for tomorrow. By this time the sun had been high in the sky for a few hours and we were feeling it, we chose a random Warung on maps and headed for some food, cold drinks, and some well deserved shade. Now warung Adji, ended up being such an incredible spot. It was a classic SEA shithole, but the food was absolutely positively excellent. Both me and Brian ordered the crispy duck and volcano fried rice. Now we were not expecting to be served half a deep-fried duck each, although both of us ate it all. it was so good. And the Volcano fried rice served in an omelet was equally incredible.

As we left lunch, the skies decided to cry on the island. It pissed rain for a good 20 minutes. We were not phased at all as it cut the temperature and humidity by a fair chunk. We then visited a cave temple called Goa Jojh, where we got yelled at louder than I ever had before by some ladies trying to sell their tourist wares to us. So loud and incessantly I had to yell back at them to stop yelling. It was jarring. The temple was super cool and had this amazing green space behind it with a beautiful little creek running through some ancient ruins. It was breath taking. After another crazy downpour me and Brian walked out of the temple back to our bikes, to find our helmets missing. Now this is probably one of the ballsiest, cleverest tourist traps I’ve ever fallen in. Those yelling ladies, they took our helmets into their shops “to keep them dry”. Now both me and Brian felt obligated to at least have a look in the shops, Those clever clever girls. We ended up spending a couple dollars each, and they sold us hard. you have to respect the hustle, when they do shit like that.

From there we drove 20 to Tegenungan waterfall. What a cool place that was, the whole area was about 5 degrees cooler than the city. And it was just an epic spot for a dip.

From the waterfall we headed back to our bougie couples retreat to lounge in the pool and have some cocktails, well mocktails for me, cocktails for Brian. They were incredibly good. Funny enough, as soon as I placed our drink order and walked to the pool, it started pissing rain again. Now there is something very satisfying about being warm in a rain storm, in a pool sipping a drink. It was wicked.

When we were fully pruned we got back to the room and ordered room service, I had crispy duck again and Brian had beef rendang. Both were delicious. Brian never having had ordered room service before in his life got all kinds of excited and ordered dessert as well, we got Balinese crepes and fried bananas with ice cream.

All in all it was a great day, Its super fun hanging out with a close friend from home. I’m exhausted and writing this quickly so I can get in bed and rest up for climbing tomorrow, so I apologize if my grammar is terrible.

Till tomorrow.