How I Ended Up Living in Bali for 16 Years

Based on a tarot card reading and session with my psychic

Hey guys, I have another special treat this week: Megan is back, this time, sharing her story of how she ended up in Bali. We’ll be hearing from Megan sporadically when she has time to write — I tried to nail her down to once a month but this beautiful bird needs more freedom to spread her wings so we’ll take her prose as and when she chooses to grace us with them.

The last article from Megs was free, so this one will be paid after a free preview. Sign up! Upgrade! You don’t want to miss this story.

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One of the questions people often ask me is: How the heck did you end up in Bali??

The short answer is, we decided to do it.

The long answer involves much more witchcraft.

When our son was born, his father Denton and I had bought an old house in a town outside of Calgary, Canada. There was a building boom taking place, and NOBODY with a toolbelt wanted to help us with the renovation that was needed for the house to even be livable. And the foundation was a disaster. At one point, somebody came to look at it and told us the town would condemn the house if we permitted any work on it.

We’d been living with my lovely in-laws while we tried to find a way forward. Finally, we decided to move into the hopeless house, partially renovated, and hope it didn’t collapse with us in it. We backfilled the dirt basement and said a few prayers. It felt like a dead asset — a money pit that we were buried under — at the tender ages of 26.

That spring, I went on a solo trip to a friend’s wedding in Maui and came back to Canada with a clear sense of the insanity of things I had never really questioned. 

Why the fuck did we live in southern Alberta?

I asked Denton just that. “If we could sell this house, and go and start a new life, somewhere else, would you be up for it?”

My Baby Daddy is great. He said, “Sure. But nobody wants to buy this house.”

Sigh. So we packed up the baby and headed to Home Depot to buy some more plastic to insulate the old windows. And when we returned… I kid you not… There was a business card stuck on our front door.

“I’ve admired your house for years, if there’s any way you’d consider selling it, please call me.”

Woah.

I called.

The woman who answered the phone told me that she’d left several cards on doors that day.  I clarified which house was ours and she was ecstatic. She told me ours was the one they really wanted, but they were willing to settle for anything on our street.

She sounded so nice. Little kids. Dreams of living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in a heritage home. I had to tell her the truth.

She interrupted me as I described the issues with the foundation.

“My husband’s a builder. He can fix anything. How much do you want?”

I named our price, and she agreed.

HOLY SMOKES!

But now we had to come up with a plan. After careful consideration, we came up with the idea of using the money from the house sale to buy a small business somewhere else in the world.

We tried to buy a tiny hotel in Saint Lucia. I have not been to Saint Lucia, so I think it’s very good we didn’t end up there. The seller realised that we were a wee family about to sink all of our money into buying his hotel, and he talked me out of it. Bless him. But we’d already bought tickets, so we headed to the Caribbean to check out Grenada. Grenada was NOT somewhere to move to. Women wore navy blue nylons and paraded to church on Sunday. Strike that one off too. 

Trip to Barbados and Grenada.

Then I found a retail business and a bed and breakfast for sale in Maui, and set off with my mother-in-law and her bestie to do a little recce. The real estate agent in Maui also gave me a reality check, and cautioned me against relying on the public school system in Maui and how hard retail was on the island. The woman who ran the BnB was totally nuts and completely entertaining, and VERY honest about the books. 

I was starting to feel a bit dejected.

I was paddling in the waves, in Maui, listening to my friend explore the metaphor of waiting for the right wave. While we pontificated, we got crushed by a wave.