After travelling through Indonesia for a while, weary of both body and mind from the incessantly fluctuating highs and lows; watching active volcanoes violently spit great plumes of ash into the air, sweating out joint achingly long bus journeys, diving with sharks, rays and thousands of other multi-coloured, multi-formed ocean inhabitants, sleep deprivation from repeatedly rising to pre-dawn alarm clock screeches, meeting human-eyed orangutans face to face in deep, wild jungle, battling mosquitoes in cheap, dirty, damp-filled hotel rooms, celebrating good times with a table full of Bintangs, a pumping live band and the company of fellow sparkle-eyed backpackers, suffering the next day after a revelry propelled Bintang too many; finding yourself in Ubud is like suddenly stumbling across a country cottage with a crackling log fire, a comfortable couch to sink into, a soft, fresh-scented blanket, a mug of steaming hot tea and plate of cheese and onion toasties (with HP sauce, of course).

In this cultural heart of Bali, with dance displays, Hindu temples, art galleries yoga sessions and cooking classes galore, I’ve felt compelled to sample absolutely none of these things, but to just eat, sleep and lounge around instead. And it’s been blissful! I’ve followed this compulsion with complete conviction and total peace of mind, knowing that none of the above would make me any more content than ordering another coconut, banana, ginger and honey smoothie or watching another episode of Spooks series two on my netbook. I briefly considered hiring a bike this morning, to explore the local countryside, but really I feel more like going for a massage, which will require just a five minute walk up the road. So I’m going to go for a massage! Sod it, I’ve seen rice paddies before, and I know what these ones look like because there are postcards of them outside every shop.

And I’ve treated myself with my bungalow. Guilt free, again. Much needed space of my own after a couple of weeks of sharing smaller, grubbier rooms, or having a room to myself (also small and grubby) but barely spending any time in it. And it’s been worth every penny, with all the little things that budget backpackers consider a pleasant bonus coming together at once: daily room cleaning (I don’t think I’ve ever had that before, actually!), a Western toilet, a hot water shower, a towel provided, mosquito proofed windows, detectable wifi, allowing me to catch up with emails from the comfort of my bed. And speaking of which, a big, sublimely comfortable double bed with fresh, clean sheets (as opposed to no sheets, that is; dirty is, to be fair, a rarity) combines with the perfect night time temperature that Ubud’s slightly elevated position on the Bali hills provides, to allow gloriously sound sleep. My head has honestly hit the pillow with a smile across my face every night that I’ve been here, and I’ve slept like a baby, without exception (although where does that phrase come from? Don’t babies wake you up all night?). Plus, a fantastic breakfast is included in the price, delivered to the little table on my bungalow porch each morning (which, thinking about it, given the wifi as well, means perhaps it isn’t actually that expensive here after all).

The food in Ubud is fantastic. You can pretty much find whatever you want here, in short. For more than the cost of a meal in you average warung, granted, but for a fraction of what you’d have to pay back home. Keith had a generous portion of seared, pan-fried tuna slices, cooked rare, with a mangosteen sauce, creamy mashed potatoes and stir-fried mixed vegetables today. Less than a fiver. There’s a plethora of organic, herbal and exotic ingredients and concoctions for the health conscious body cleansers, and pizzas, curries, steaks and cakes for those who want to binge on the fatty flavours of home. You name it, it’s here.

Did I mention Keith and Julia were here? Well they are. Keith and Julia, from Penang a month or so ago, friends of Rebeccah. And to illustrate the lure of Ubud, they didn’t manage to leave it for three weeks the first time around, and have just returned for a second stint! And I also bumped into six foot eight Brighton Ben from Kuala Lumpur yesterday. It is indeed a perpetually small world.

Tiny sparks fly from the aforementioned log fire, burning the skin for a mere split second, with the now beyond tedious call of “taxi” from every street corner, and the occasional café bill with its twenty percent added tax, but overall this has been a wonderful stop, and I feel well and truly rested and refreshed.

It’s no typical backpacker haunt, though, I feel I should add. Hence the fact it often isn’t cheap. Families, couples and professional thirty and forty-somethings amble around town, with wardrobes clearly taken from well composed, neatly folded stacks of clothes from two week suitcases, not a plastic bag of faded T-shirts, hauled out of a space half the size of it at the bottom of a rucksack. And lots of attractive looking couples, I’ve noticed, but in that contradictory, heavily invested in, Bohemian wannabe fashion. And Ubud absolutely oozes EatPrayLove-ites! It’s just a shame for all the Julia Roberts’ that there would appear to be ten of them for every Javier Bardem. There’s bound to be a full on cat fight over a man at some point, in an organic juice bar or wood carving class. And it was a shame for me too, when I needed to exchange a book the other day. My god, never before have I seen such an appalling selection of fiction, so heavily weighted towards trashy rom-com and female self discovery, all with glittering reviews by Heat and Cosmopolitan plastered over the back cover! Fortunately, however, and with brilliant timing, I’ve been handed a book by Julia (wife of Keith, not Roberts), entitled “Drink, Play, F**k”, so I can wait for a more normal, balanced book shop further down the line.

Right, I’m off for that massage. Yet again, I’ve fallen further behind in my quest to keep an up to date blog, and I’m now beginning to envision having to finish it off from notes in a living room in Manchester in a few months. I could clearly never be a professional writer, with my production rate of about a page a day! But never mind, it’s all in here (tapping head), and, as indicated, and probably more importantly, in my notebook, so it’ll all come together eventually! Better late than never, as they say, and as I seem to say all too frequently.

A quick addition to the notes above, as despite my best intentions to continue to be totally unproductive in Ubud, I inadvertently signed up for a writing class. On a whim, HannahMariya suggested it (snorkelling buddy of Paula on Tioman Island, Malaysia, resident of Ubud, and prospective dive buddy of Keith and I in a couple of days), and my mouth reacted before my brain, despite the fact I knew nothing whatsoever about it.

It was, however, a fine decision! The class was brilliant, not in the way it was intended to be, but in that it epitomised my earlier observations so perfectly. And thankfully it didn’t turn out to be a poetry class, a thought which briefly shuddered through my mind and got me hot under the collar as we were waiting for class leader Bob to begin things (if it was poetry, I’d have had to walk, simple as that). No, it was officially a class in undefined, impulsive, creative writing, and in reality a class in EatPrayLove-ism with a group of EatPrayLove-ites! With the addition of me, HannahMariyah, Bob and Chaz, whose genuinely inventive and humerous literary creations were actually very entertaining. Honestly, it was like a satirical comedy sketch, in which they should each have said “hi, I’m Julia”, when initial introductions went around the table. They were mostly Americans, of course; naturally extroverted, from the land of melodrama and cliché, so very much at home in this environment. Average age about forty, and I’d bet big money they were all single. The format of the session was for us each to put a random word or small sentence on a piece of paper, fold it up, and put it in the bowl in the middle. Someone would then pick one, and then the clock would start. And from the prompt, we’d just write for ten minutes, streams of consciousness, whatever came into our heads, with no requirement to even maintain a consistent thread. And afterwards we’d go around the circle reading our pieces aloud.

The first one came out of the hat: “he was sitting at my table”. Talk about the proverbial pigs in s***! It could theoretically have been absolutely anything; “the Bellagio, Las Vegas”, “wombats and walruses”, “aliens hide in Antarctica”; but no, it was a prompt straight out of “Eat, Pray, Love”, and the inevitable drivel about chiselled jaws, wistful blue-grey eyes with flecks of green, has he / hasn’t he noticed me, do I even want a relationship right now, etc, poured forth. The class was a much a self-help discussion group as a writing class, with frequent nods of empathy and encouragement when phrases like “is home a place or a feeling?” or “maybe drive and ambition move aside for growth and balance” cropped up. And if I ever write anything like “I didn’t find love in my life, I found life in love”, punch me. Seriously, get a flight out to Asia, and punch me. Hard.

They were nice, friendly people, I should add, and I’m glad I went for the almost surreal entertainment value, but I don’t think I’ll be going again. My short musings on A level art classes and the psychology of rucksack packing seemed a little out of place, and I’m neither single nor seeking to discover myself, so I suspect it was never a class designed with the likes of me in mind.

But I’m off to Nusa Lembongan anyway. Keith has discovered it’s the season for the legendary three metre wide Mola Mola fish, and that Lembongan’s the best place to track them down. So I’m off to do some diving, and to read “Drink, Play, F**k”.