Back in Bali and it Feels So Good
After a year and a half away from our island ‘home’ away from home, Bali, Kenny and I are back and feeling better than ever. This trip, we brought along our beautiful baby boy, Harrison, and he’s absolutely loving it. The warm weather, the new experiences, the zen Bali energy, he’s in heaven. I have been getting a ton of questions about our trip, how we prepared to bring a baby half-way across the world, how we managed the jet lag, what we’re doing here, etc., so I figured I’d write this post all about our trip so far!
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WHY WE’RE IN BALI
A little work, a little vacation, and because Bali is our home away from home! My husband Kenny founded Kenny Flowers in 2015 and we manufacture all of our resort wear here on the island, each dress, shirt and cover up is hand-cut and made in a dreamy boutique factory surrounded by rice fields, before it gets sent to the US, where everything is shipped to our customers around the world! While we have an on-the-ground team who looks over things while we’re back in the states, it’s always important that we get back on the island to make progress on future collections and designs and check in on everything! This trip, I’m working on next year’s women’s resort wear designs, as well as more kids styles for Kiddy Flowers, and I’m so excited for all of it. We are also involved with a school here in Bali called Campuhan College, which Kenny helped to start 16 years ago, and we continue to support every year.
And, while we are definitely busy-busy-busy here in Bali, don’t worry, it’s not all work! We are also here to enjoy Bali and everything it has to offer, and are checking out all of our favorite spots as well as a couple new luxury resorts in Bali that I’ve had on my list to review for you guys.
We’re also here to re-center ourselves! While the past year has been one of the best of our lives, with the birth of our baby boy, it has also been an incredibly stressful year for our family. Two things can be true at once, right? As small business owners managing the stress of being new parents, running our business, and trying to find some balance in it all, this past year has been anything but easy. And Bali is already proving to be just what the doctor ordered. Any time we’ve been away from this magical island too long, it’s like she starts calling us home.
Anyone who has been to Bali will tell you there’s a *magic* quality to the island. They call Bali “the Island of the Gods”, and it is an incredibly spiritual place. It’s where people go to find enlightenment, it’s where many find healing, and it’s where life paths can completely change, silently guiding you towards your best self (it did for me when I came and visited in 2016 and decided to quit my corporate job to do Jetset Christina full time!). They say the reason for this is that the Island of Bali is an energy vortex that is also the location of the Earth’s “Kundalini energy”, formed by its two large lines of the earth which intersect with incredible power. The thought here in Bali is that this center is thought to purify the core of the Earth, and therefore helps in the cleansing and rejuvenation of our own souls and bodies when we’re here as well. I already feel it only having been here a week. Kenny and I both feel like we’re back to our SELVES again… completely rejuvenated, with so much more clarity and readiness to tackle everything we are trying to accomplish this year. Not only that, I can tell Harrison is, too!! He loves it here, and that just makes us so, so happy.
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THE FLIGHT TO BALI…. with a baby!
The flight over was definitely a big hurdle to get over – preparing for a 22+ hour travel day with an 8-month-old was no easy feat! But, we did it! And I’m happy to say it wasn’t bad at all. We flew from SFO – Hong Kong – Bali, the SFO to HK leg is a 14.5 hour flight, and then we had a layover in Hong Kong, followed by a 4.5 hour flight to Bali. We were all able to get some sleep, and Harrison slept on me for most of the long flight. When he wasn’t sleeping, we played with his toys (I packed many!!) and it went great. We chose to fly business class with him as a lap child using credit card points, which helped a lot, I’m not going to lie. It was a tough decision deciding if we should book him on a separate ticket, and all fly in one row in economy, or if we should fly with 2 seats and him as a lap infant in business class, but my thought process was that he would be sleeping on me a lot anyway (which he did), so we went with the business class for more comfort / space / lay flat seats and I’m so glad we did!
By the time we arrived in Bali, we were tired, of course, but so happy, and I think Harrison fed off of that energy! We all slept well that first night, and honestly Harrison has been sleeping better than he does at home! We brought our pack n’ play for him to sleep in while we’re here, but, since we are here for a month, we bought an actual mattress for the pack n’ play so that it’s a little more substantial than the usual pack n’ play mattress. When we go to hotels in Bali, he sleeps in a crib there, but at our villa that we base out of, he’s in the pack n’ play with his mattress.
THE JET LAG ONCE WE GOT HERE
Yes, babies get jet-lagged. I find that usually, a baby is feeling everything you’re feeling but they just don’t know how to express it as well. So if we’re exhausted, he is definitely too, and he’ll show it with fussiness or general discomfort, whereas as adults we’ll be better at hiding our headaches, jet lag, and exhaustion. When we fly to Bali it usually takes about three days to feel ‘normal’ and this trip was no different. We definitely had a first few nights of rougher sleep but nothing out of the ordinary to what we go through at home sometimes with the baby! And by night 3, we all felt great, and were sleeping well. We’ve gotten ourselves into a routine here of early bedtimes and early wake times, and it’s working well for us! I tried to drink a ton of water, and feed Harrison extra while we were fighting jet lag as well. And fresh juices and coffee from my favorite Bali cafe Alchemy came in the clutch, too.
WHAT OUR DAYS ARE LIKE HERE IN BALI
We slip right back into our little routine when we’re here in Bali. Did you know Kenny and I lived here (off and on, as our base when we weren’t traveling) for three years from 2017-2020? We feel so at home here, and it’s amazing how the island always feels the same no matter how long you’ve been gone. The energy here is so creative, and we are always at our most productive here work-wise. It’s amazing.
We usually stay at Kenny’s nana’s villa in Ubud (she has been living in Bali for over 20 years!), and we’ll wake up, have some play time with the baby, go to our neighborhood organic cafe Alchemy for juices and coffee with the baby, come back to the villa, a nanny will come to help with Harrison so that we’re able to get some work done (a nanny for a whole day costs all of $15 here! and the Balinese are so amazing with kids!), and we’ll work at the breakfast table, eat our favorite egg-and-banana pancakes with coconut flakes, and get a lot done in the morning before doing things like checking on the Kenny Flowers factory, shopping for new fabrics for future collections, etc. in the afternoon. At night, we’ll either make dinner at the villa, go out to dinner, or order in on Go-Jek (Bali’s version of UberEats). I’m not quite ready to be away from Harrison (especially in a foreign country!) so he comes with us absolutely everywhere, and is such a trooper on all our work errands. We travel with this collapsible travel stroller and his MESA car seat, so he’s always safe and comfortable. He’s also great at napping on-the-go in the car seat or stroller so we’re trying to keep that going (it makes traveling with him a lot easier!!). He likes the new places and meeting everyone! Since we’ve been running Kenny Flowers for 8 years now, all of our employees and vendors here in Bali have really become like family, and it’s been so special introducing them to Harrison.
HOW WE PACKED ALL OF BABY’S THINGS… AND OUR OWN!
The answer is… a lot of bags!!!!! We packed so many bags, y’all. I’d love to tell you I have some secret for packing light with a baby but we are gone for a month!!! I wanted to be sure he had everything he needed. I list out exactly what we brought in this post here. And, yes, we travel with his diapers!! They’re just so much better than what we can find here. There are some things we’re able to get here – from a baby equipment rental company called Bali Baby Hire, like a high chair, a play center, a baby bathtub, etc!
