It’s been over a year that I came back from studying abroad. I first studied in Bali for three months and continued to study in Bangkok for three months. A lot of people ask me which I liked better and what the differences are. Well the differences between these two countries during my studying abroad experience are insane, so I figured it would be nice to share my experiences with studying abroad in Bali in Bangkok. This post will be about my study abroad in Bali and the one about Bangkok can be read here!
Home
In Bali we lived in a hotel in Denpasar. Denpasar is not touristic at all, so there wasn’t a lot to do in the surrounding area. We were there with around 100 students from my school in the Netherlands and we took up the entire hotel, which was pretty fun! We had a lovely room, every day our rooms would get cleaned and we could enjoy a breakfast buffet (toast, eggs, pancakes, fresh fruits etc.) every morning.
Downstairs there was a big open area next to the pool and the restaurant where we would hang out a lot of the time working on projects with our groups.
Since it wasn’t a touristic area there weren’t a lot of restaurants in the area, but there was this small yellow warung next to the hotel. It was lovely food and most of the time we would just buy our food there and eat it at the swimming pool area in the hotel. We had scooters to get around so sometimes we would pick up some pizza’s or order food at the hotel (although we seriously had to wait almost 2 hours to get our food haha). Next to the hotel was a McDonalds but we hardly ever came there.
Our pretty room with kingsize bed, and yes that was mine to sleep in hehe!
The downstairs open area looking into the restaurant
Our swimming pool which was very welcome with the high temperatures!
The yellow warung with lovely food
Whoops!
School
Studying abroad obviously involves school haha! When we had school minivans would pick us up and take us to the campus which was about 10 minutes away. The campus was very small, but pretty. On the pictures you can see the outside area which is really nicely decorated with a lot of greens. It happened multiple times that there was a power blackout so we wouldn’t have class, or the classes were moved to the hotel, something that doesn’t often happen at home. There were a few small shops around the campus area and some places to bring your laundry to (most of the time we would hand wash our clothes in the hotel)
We didn’t have classes with national students so the classes weren’t any different from our classes at home (expect for the occasional rat walking around haha ;)). The classrooms were very different though as you can see on the picture.
The outside area at the campus
Waiting for class
One of the classrooms
Life
Our life was so nice in Bali, in the first week we rented scooters for our entire stay on the island. We didn’t had a lot of classes so our scooters were put to good use and we explored the entire island. Every weekend we were out and about and we also had two holiday weeks so we were able to visit Lombok, Gili Trawangan and Java. We had a lot of spare time so we were at the pool a lot, or took our scooters and went to the beach. Most weekends started on friday for us, so most of the thursday evenings were spend in Kuta having drinks and party.
I Loved to study abroad in Bali and being able to explore other islands of Indonesia. The island has so much to offer and since we had a lot of free time we could really do all the stuff we wanted to, if I could go back I’d do it right away :)
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