Welcome back to another week in Asia! I’d appreciate it if everyone could have a moment of silence for my sleep runway. I’ve found myself awake at 5:52am during each of the last four days - three times for early wakeups, and once because I was out that late.

It’s safe to say my sleep schedule is shattered.

This was otherwise a fantastic week. There were no classes as we were in recess—the period of time where every Singaporean spends 7 days getting caught up on all their work, while every exchange student goes to Bali.

Give me some credit—I did stay in Singapore for an extra 2 days, during which I knocked out a good amount of work. I really only did it because our basketball team had a game on Monday, which I delayed my flight for.

In some ways, stepping on the court to play college basketball was a dream that I’d had since 7th grade, and finally realized in Singapore.

Realistically though, this is not the college basketball that I thought I’d be playing all those years ago. I don’t live and breathe it like I used to, and the feeling of achievement was diminished to mirror that sentiment.

Regardless, I was out there to have a good time and it showed. For all the chatter about my commitment level and whatnot, it didn’t matter come tip-off. I got the starting nod, and our team got rolling right away.

We ended up winning 79-30 against another Singaporean university. I scored 33 points, which is 8 more than my high school career high, and 4 more than the most I’ve scored on Georgia Tech’s Club Basketball team.

So yeah…it felt pretty good out there.

We’ve got some tougher games coming up next week, and I’m not sure if I’ll drop 33 again, considering the rest of the week I went to Bali and didn’t play basketball, but hopefully we can get the win anyway and bring home the championship in a few weeks.

On Wednesday, I traveled to Bali, where my friends had already been for a few days. We had an AirBnb rented out for the week that was a short drive from the beach, and complete with our own pool.

Bali is known to be digital nomad paradise, and I can see why. Not only are prices incredibly cheap, but the island also has literally everything you’d want on it: beaches, mountains, jungle, surfing, hikes, scuba diving, and more. The have neighborhoods that are family friendly, and others that are more geared towards the young and single gang.

The only thing lacking is solid road and transportation infrastructure—roads are so narrow that two cars going opposite directions often can’t fit at the same time. Most people ride motorbikes around however, and our group indeed rented bikes to get around the island for the week.

Also worth noting that it felt like every local on the island worked in some capacity for the tourism industry. I have no idea how they survived the last two years because Indonesia was completely shut down with no tourists allowed in.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from the 5 days I spent in Bali.

My first full day in Bali was about as full as you could get. We woke up at 1:40am for a famous sunrise hike on the island that takes us to its second tallest peak, Mount Batur, which also happens to be a volcano. We paid a company around $50 US each for them to pick us up, drive us two hours to the base of the hike, be our guides up the mountain, make us hardboiled eggs and tea at the top, take us back down, drive us to complimentary breakfast, and then be our chauffeur for the rest of the day as we went to Ubud, another region on the island.

The view at the top only cleared up for a few seconds to reveal stunning views like the one above, but it was still worth it. I love sunrise hikes, even if it meant waking up at 1:40am, which was particularly rough.

Day 2 in Bali, I went scuba diving at an island off its coast called Nusa Penida. It was another early wakeup, but we got 3 dives in and saw some pretty sick turtles, coral, and manta rays. The manta rays were by far the coolest: they’re bigger than humans, but otherwise look like stingrays. I didn’t have a dive camera, but here’s a photo I found on Google:

The highlight on day 3 was definitely going surfing for the first time. You could rent a board for 2 hours for about $3 USD, and Bali has so many beaches for varying levels of surfing, including beginners. By the end of the two hours, I caught two waves and it was honestly a great feeling.

Of course the next day my ribs felt like they’d been punched by Floyd Mayweather and I had cuts on my hands and feet from the rocky shore, but hey, I’d definitely do it again.

Every day was pretty action-packed and I could’ve written a post twice as long and still not covered everything, but that was the general jist of our time in Bali. If you’re ever considering working remote and not caring about your job while getting paid a US salary, you might as well go to Bali for at least a month or two.

My weekly life lessons have been pretty applicable to everyone, but this week it’s more specific to myself.

If there’s one thing I learned this week, it’s that I really can’t do calm, relaxing environments. That’s what Bali is meant to be, but at this point in my life, I can hardly ever bring myself to sit and relax.

That’s not necessarily a good thing as downtime is important. I’ve been trying to slow things down mentally as this semester is flying by too fast for me, but any time I try, my mind starts racing and I feel a sense of urgency to do something exciting.

Maybe that’s good when time is limited? Or maybe it’s bad because I don’t stop to really enjoy everything the way I should.

If anyone has any ideas on how to help with this, message me or comment them below.

Answers I’ve received to my question: “If you have one piece of advice to share with the world, what would it be?”

Don’t let money or fame change who you are - Ian from Singapore (he works in wealth management with uber-rich clients, so I took this one particularly to heart)