I mentioned this fleetingly in my blog post about what we’ve learned in the last couple of months on the road, but I’d like to elaborate on it a bit… Only because I’ve suddenly had great insight into how much where you are affects how you are, and I want to unpick it a bit.

Let me set the scene:

We’re in Ubud, in central Bali, cultural heart of the island and home to endless rice fields, palm trees, red-roofed traditional houses and stone carvings of weird and wonderful creatures. Also home to a heck of a lot of tourist shops. The main drag is ridiculously touristy – it could be any main street in any country, in fact. But step just a little off this main street and it feels as if you’re in the country: roosters, birds, nature on all sides. The plan was to stay here for 4 days, but we couldn’t decide where to stay, and left it rather late. We eventually decided on Hotel 1, which got great reviews on TripAdvisor, and sounded lovely. Looked lovely, too, when we arrived, set in a tropical orchid garden and with really friendly staff. The problem came when we wanted to go to sleep, around 11pm, and our neighbours, a pair of long-stay women, decided to crank up the cheesy girl tunes (From a Distance and Forever Young, I ask you with tears in my eyes!) and cackle and chatter late into the night… I went out to ask them to keep quiet, but they were actually inside their room. It didn’t sound like it – the walls were made of bamboo, the windows had no glass.

We left early the next morning to find somewhere else to stay.

Hotel 2 seemed far better than Hotel 1. Much bigger room, great little balcony looking out over a rice paddy, free internet. We were really rather happy there till we were woken at 2am by noisy neighbours who had just arrived and wanted to talk (loudly) for an hour or so… I eventually asked them to keep it down, but they were up at 7am again, chattering away. Who was it who said hell is other people?

Again, though, we’d foolishly chosen bamboo walls and no glass in the windows. We wanted to experience ‘authentic’ Balinese life by staying in a home stay, i.e. you essentially stayed in someone’s home. We quickly realised we’re not cut out for communal Balinese life.

So finally, yesterday we found Blessed Hotel 3. Perched in the middle of rice paddies on all sides (take a look at the view from our balcony!) with a huge balcony, massive room and best of all, brick walls! We had the best sleep ever last night, entirely uninterrupted.

What it made me realise, though, is what a profound impact where you are has to how you feel. Yesterday morning I was exhausted, irritable, headachey and fed up. Yes, lack of sleep two nights in a row will do that to you, but so will being somewhere that feels wrong. The manager at Hotel 2 was awful, our shower stopped working (first thing in the morning) and he couldn’t be bothered to apologise for it, he didn’t seem to care that we were checking out 2 days early, we kind of felt like we were in the way. And I’m sure that contributed to how we felt: it was my first real day of travel fatigue.

But today I woke up to a cool breeze blowing through the room, in the middle of gorgeous views on all sides, and walked out to my balcony where the lovely manager brought us a delicious breakfast, with a smile. And I feel happy. Really happy. So pleased to be here, experiencing Bali, so eager to continue exploring and travelling for the next few months. I suppose I never realised how important where you are is to how you feel. Now that I have, I’m going to make sure (as much as I can) that we rest our heads in lovely spots.

PS – It makes me wonder, too, how important a lovely home is to our levels of happiness. Something to think about, hey?