The joy of planning

The beach hut on Nusa Lembongan - if it's really like this, I'll be seriously happy :-)

There's little I enjoy more than planning a trip. Ok, maybe with the exception of eating bangers and mash or really good sushi. But honestly, I find the planning is almost as fun as the trip itself, and sometimes more. I don't like to organise particular days down to the T, but I do like a solid overall plan with room for change if things go wrong. I even make geeky clothes lists of what to take and what I need to buy before I go, and what I might want to purchase when I get there. I don't think all this planning comes down to a huge fear of improvisation, I see it more as a sort of stretching out of the holiday - every time I sit myself down and check out a new hotel on Trip Advisor it's like a little bit of me is already there :-) All this boils down to me wanting to say that I've planned the bare bones of my Bali trip in August so I can sit back and relax for a bit now until nearer the time. So, let me indulge. Days one and two are in Seminyak, meant to be the upmarket(?) version of its boozy neighbour Kuta on the south coast. A friend (thank god for international friends) has given me the name of a friend there, so I might hang out with him - it's all posey restaurants, chill out lounges and designer knock-offs I'm told - sounds good to me :-) I'm staying in a family B&B for those first couple of nights, then I've left 2 nights unbooked, so I can decide whether to stay put or move on if need be. Probably the latter, not sure what to do but checking out elephants or riding horses is an option. Before the yoga retreat in Ubud, I'd like to do a sunset climb up Mount Butur and around the lake there, so I've found a guide who can take me. Then it's 6 days of yoga, meditation, massage and peeaaacceee. Following that I've booked a couple of nights in a nice beach hut right on the sand, on the tranquil island of Nusa Lembongan - the diving and snorkelling is meant to be good there, so I plan to try both of them out, but not sure as I don't want to do a Padi course just yet?? And that is it. I'm painfully aware of how quickly 2 weeks will go by, but feel very lucky to be going in any case.