A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! I was hoping to have this out a bit before the new year, but time got the better of me this week. It’s officially 2025 and I’m excited about it. 2024 was a year for the books, and I’m looking forward to what comes next. (More on this in the blog posts section).
Now, on to my time up through Christmas.
Bali week two needed some major adaptations given how much rain I was seeing. The three day trek to Mt Rinjani didn’t feel like the smartest idea, so I landed on heading up to Ubud, near the middle of the island. The plan was to hike Mt Batur, which was doable as a single morning sunrise hike, explore the city, and hope that I could actually have enough breaks in the rain to do so.
After Bali I popped back up to Singapore to spend Christmas with Josh Yap and his family, which was a very sweet time being around a familiar face for the holiday.
LOCATIONS
- Ubud (Bali), Indonesia (Dec 19 – Dec 23)
- Singapore (Dec 23 – Dec 27)
ACTIVITIES
Ubud Exploration
I walked into the room of my Ubud hostel mid conversation between two Canadians, Tea and Evelyn. After a nice get to know each other chat, we started talking through our plans for Ubud. Tea, self-described as “very woo-woo”, was participating in some sessions around energy healing and trauma release. Evelyn and I both thought those type of activities might be a little too out there for us, and we were more keen on getting out of town on scooters and seeing what we could see. We did a bit of a rapid fire day and covered a solid amount of ground, including
- a specialty coffee tasting
- walking around some rice terraces
- exploring a purification temple
- swimming in a waterfall & natural pool
The coffee tasting was my favorite. Bali has loads of luwaks, and luwak coffee is considered a delicacy coffee in many parts of the world. (If you’re unfamiliar with what makes it special, the luwak eats the beans and then they get processed after the come out the other side) I’ve seen it before in Seattle but have never tried it due to the outrageous cost. But being in one of the major locations where luwak coffee is gathered (and the price being the same as a normal cup of coffee in the states), I wanted to give it a shot.
The coffee farm we went to showed us the process they use, hand roasting the beans over a fire and crushing them with a big wooden hand press before passing them through a sieve to ensure evenness of the grounds. They also had two luwaks that we got to see!
I got my cup of luwak coffee, and we also got the largest coffee/tea tasting array I’ve ever seen. There were a total of 8 coffees and 8 teas. Some of the more unique ones were avocado coffee and durian coffee (thumbs up on the first, not so much on the second). The mangosteen tea was the best tea I’ve ever tasted, and the coconut and ginger coffees were also quite nice.
The luwak coffee itself was…underwhelming. Did it taste different than a regular cup of coffee? Yes. Was it a significantly better cup of coffee than the pourovers I make at home? Not really. I think I walked in with an expectation that it would taste vastly better, or at least very unique compared to any coffee I’ve tasted before, and it just tasted sort of like a coffee with a bit more of the bitterness cut. So if you’ve ever thought about trying it, I’d say don’t be in a rush. And definitely don’t pay exorbitant amounts of money for it.
An Attempted Sunrise Hike
I wanted to get up some volcano during my time on Bali, and given the weather for a multi-day Rinjani wasn’t looking promising, Mt Batur was the next best option. It required a lot less time and effort, and the pictures that I’d seen of some of the sunrises there looked pretty sweet with views overlooking most of the island.
My first few days in Ubud the weather was quite good, but given how much rain I’d seen before I got there I still wasn’t sure if weather would hold and it would be worth it to go up. But, this was really my only chance to do it, and I figured I’d rather give it a gamble and potentially be disappointed than to not do it at all.
Let’s just say I’m glad I had low expectations. We woke up at 1:45 am to drive over to the start of the hike. As we got closer to the mountain, dense fog was outside the van, and I wasn’t too optimistic it would clear. It just got worse. We started hiking around 3:30 to get to the top before sunrise, and my headlamp was illuminating fog the entire way up. Two hours later, we got to the top and waited to see what would happen.
At sunrise time, it got light, but there was no rising sun to be found. The daylight revealed a whopping few dozen meters of visibility. Everywhere we looked was just fog, fog, and more fog.
Not quite the hike I was hoping for, but what are you gonna do. Sometimes things just don’t line up. At least I got some exercise in.
Given there’s not much to show from pictures here, you get a bonus shapshot of my favorite monkey photo.
Christmas with the Yaps
This is the first Christmas I haven’t been with my family, and when I started this trip I didn’t even know where I’d be for the holiday.
I’m so thankful to Josh and his family for their generosity in hosting me. As soon as I stepped foot in the door of their house, it really hit me how long it’s been since I’ve been in a proper home. There was a strong sense of comfort even though it was a completely new house to me. For a few days I got to put a pause on travel Trevor and just be homebody Trevor. Even exploring the city felt different doing it alongside my private local tour guide.
I woke up Christmas morning to an 80-degree day, and it made it hard to believe that it really was Christmas. We attended a Christmas morning service at their church, Josh and I grabbed a 10/10 coffee and then went back home and relaxed for the afternoon until dinner prep started.
Josh’s brother’s girlfriend and her parents joined for dinner which made it a full table. Christmas dinner was only the second home cooked meal I’ve had since I left Seattle (the first being fish head curry the night prior), and boy do I miss home cooked food and sitting around a dinner table alongside good company.
Even though Christmas looked very different this year, it was as good as any I could have asked for and it’s one I’ll definitely remember.
REFLECTIONS
New Years Reflections
If you didn’t already know, I love reflecting (I know, shocking). I believe there’s deep value we can gain from some intentional time by ourselves. Tis the season for many to reflect, and I would encourage you to do the same whether it’s something you regularly take time for or not. The good news is, nobody is checking whether you turned in your assignment by January first, so it’s not too late if you haven’t taken any time for it yet.
Over the past week I’ve spent some time looking back over the past year and towards the year to come and it’s been fruitful.
The far oversimplified version – this year was not at all the year I expected it to be. It was a year of some of the biggest changes of my life and I see it as a foundational year that’s going to have significant rippling effects far down the road. I’m looking towards 2025 with open hands. I have no idea what it’s going to hold (well, beyond more travel), but I have confidence that it’s going to be a lot of building on 2024. I’m excited to see what happens and to be able to share that with you.
If you want the non-oversimplified version of that – I’ve got it linked in the blog posts sections or you can go directly here.
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To continue here, I want to provide a framework of questions to use in case you’d like to use any for yourself.
I don’t think these are the “right” questions. In fact, I don’t think a “correct” set of questions even exist. If you already have your own structure for end of year reflection, great, use it. If you want to pick and choose from my questions, great. Use one of them, use all of them, I don’t care. The questions are simply entry points to get to the good stuff. If you find yourself in a completely different place than the question you started from, all the better. A few other notes –
- I find that referencing a calendar and photos are also helpful in jogging my memory of the past year.
- The new year is as arbitrary of a time to reflect as any other. You don’t have to finish reflecting before the new year, nor do you have to wait till next December to reflect again. In fact, please don’t do that. If you haven’t done any reflection yet, not to worry. Set aside some intentional time this week to do so.
Here are some of the questions I spent time with this week. Multiple questions on the same line are more or less different ways of framing the same idea. I find that questions around identity and personal growth are more potent than ones around goals or accomplishments (though there is nothing wrong with either of those), so these questions are centered more around that.
Looking Back
- What stands out from this year? Highlights? Low points?
- What were my priorities this year? How was my time spent? (This can be broken into “seasons” if that’s helpful)
- In what ways did I grow? How am I different than I was a year ago?
Looking Forward
- What am I looking forward to for next year?
- Who do I want to be this year? How does that influence what my priorities should be?
- What opportunities for growth do I want to focus on?
It’s important to recognize that it’s much more effective to have fast feedback loops when it comes to anything that you want to prioritize for next year. This year end reflection should be paired with much more frequent, smaller check in points to give yourself a better chance of making adjustments as needed (more on this to come later).
If you’ve got other questions that you find particularly useful or effective, please send them to me! I would love to have them. If there’s anything notable about 2024 or looking towards 2025 that comes up in your reflection time, I’d love to hear what those are for you as well. Happy reflecting.
BLOG POSTS
- My 2024 Wrapped – Here’s a bit about what I’m taking away from 2024 and stepping into 2025 with. Hope you enjoy.
NEXT UP
Somehow I’m in Australia now, which put me in three different countries over the course of a seven-day stretch. Crazy.
I started with a quick stop in Melbourne (I had high expectations, and they were met), and I just spent NYE in Sydney back with Becca and Amy again. More on those next time. Starting on the 3rd, my Aussie friend Fin is taking me down to hike the tallest mountain in Australia – Mt Kosziousco. Following that we’ll do a 2-3 day trip on the Jagungal Circuit with a few of his other mates. Fingers crossed we’ll even get a bike ride or two in back in Sydney after the backpacking as well.
Given the backpacking trip, I’ll be away from my laptop for a good chunk of the week so my next newsletter will also probably come a bit later than usual.
As always, if you know anyone that you think would be interested in anything I’m writing about, I’d ask that you consider sharing this with them.
Thanks for being here, and Happy New Year! Talk to you next week.
– Trevor