Day 12 of the #200wad challenge.

I’m here now in Ubud, Bali on a solo personal retreat for some year-end reflection and rejuvenation. Every evening for the past weeks, I’d been taking walks, something I never had time or interest to do. It’s a beautiful way to end the day - a “perfect evening” if you may. I took some photos here.

Right now, it’s harvest time in Ubud, and a beautiful time to stroll among golden fields of fluffy, ripe rice. I walk past intriguing traditional Balinese homes floating in moats of that golden fluffiness. A mother holds her child as they head home, just as ducks herd themselves back to their pen at sunset. I hear the farmers joking and teasing each other as they work. I don’t understand a word but you can feel the unimpeded joy, the relaxed freeness in their words. The harvest is plentiful, and the labourers are many.

On a whim, I too felt like joining them. With abandon, tossing away my flipflops as they did, barefoot on Mother Earth, toiling, sweating, but free. It couldn’t be more different from my air-conditioned, urbanized existence back in Singapore, but for that brief moment, it felt like home.???

A brief, fleeting moment of encountering beauty. Almost cliché. Definitely indulgent. But lovely, nonetheless.