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Where Are They Now, Alumni story
She Came to Bali for an Internship in 2013. Thirteen Years Later, Her Life Still Follows That Decision
Clara was 20 years old, living in Barcelona, and standing in that uncertain space between education and adulthood where no one truly knows what comes next, although everyone around them seems to expect an answer. She had already completed her bachelor’s degree in Translation and Interpreting. She knew she was interested in language, communication, writing, perhaps journalism. She did not know yet what shape that interest would take.
What she did know was Bali.
A year earlier, in 2012, she had travelled through Indonesia with friends, moving from Java to Bali, Lombok, and Flores. It was a broad first encounter with the country, but one place stayed with her differently. Ubud did not feel like somewhere she had simply visited. It felt like somewhere she was meant to return to.
So, back in Spain, she did what a young person did before Instagram became a search engine and before TikTok became a travel advisor. She opened Google and typed: internships in Bali.
One of the websites that appeared was Bali Internships.
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Clara during her internship in Ubud, 2013
“I told my parents they needed to support me to find a way to come back to Bali for longer,” Clara remembers. “Not as a visitor, not as a traveller, but in a way that would allow me to learn something.”
The internship she found was in wellness journalism, based in Ubud. It matched the only certainty she had at that time, that her future would somehow involve language, communication, writing, and people. Looking back now, Clara describes the decision with the clarity of someone who has had enough life behind her to understand what her younger self could only sense. At 20, she did not know exactly what she would become. She only knew that this experience would matter.
And it did.
When Clara arrived in Bali for her internship, her family came with her to help her settle in. For them, the decision carried both excitement and concern. Their daughter was young, far from home, and preparing to stay in Indonesia for several months with an organization they had only known through emails.
That first welcome mattered. Clara still remembers being introduced to the office, the team, and the people who would become part of her daily life. The reassurance was practical, but also emotional. Her family could leave knowing she had a point of reference. This is often the invisible architecture of a meaningful international experience. The internship itself is one part of the story, but the first layer of trust is what allows everything else to unfold.
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Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia
Her placement was in the centre of Ubud, close enough for her to walk each morning. She did not drive a motorbike, so her routine became simple and physical. She walked through Ubud to the office, worked with her colleagues, went for lunch, returned in the afternoon, and slowly began to understand a different rhythm of life.
Her manager was a woman from Singapore, an English speaker and experienced writer who helped Clara sharpen her journalistic voice. She corrected her work, guided her writing, and helped her understand how to move from general expression into more structured journalism. For Clara, whose academic background was rooted in translation and interpretation, the internship became a bridge into another form of communication.
She wrote about wellness, attended events, she had the chance to join the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and the Ubud Jazz Festival with media access, then return to write about those experiences for the online magazine she was working with. These were not abstract assignments, they lived encounters with culture, language, performance, and place. Yet when Clara speaks about the internship years later, the professional part is only one layer. The memories that still carry the strongest emotional charge are often smaller, more human, and impossible to manufacture.
A colleague named Tami used to braid her curly hair in the office because she was fascinated by it. Another colleague, Okta, introduced her to local warungs and Indonesian food she would never have discovered with only international friends. There were lunches with the team, slow afternoons, conversations, small invitations into everyday life. These details might seem minor from the outside, but they are often the details that stay. They are the difference between visiting a country and being gently absorbed into a part of it.
Clara also made friendships outside the office in the unpredictable way Bali often makes possible. On her first weekend, she met a young Dutch girl on a bus to Sanur. They were both in Bali for the same period, both navigating their own experience, both open to the world in that particular way people are when they travel alone.
They became best friends. They became neighbours. They left Bali in the same week, four months later. More than a decade has passed, and they are still in each other’s lives. Clara is now a mother, her friend is also a mother. They have met again in Amsterdam and elsewhere in Europe, carrying a friendship that began almost casually on a bus in Bali and somehow survived the years.
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With Bali Internships' team during the reunion and interview 2026
This is one of the most striking parts of Clara’s story. The internship did not only give her work experience. It placed her inside a web of relationships. Some were professional. Some were cultural. Some were accidental. All of them became part of the life she built afterward.
She also remembers the freedom.
Before Bali, Clara had usually travelled with friends or family. In Ubud, she learned what it meant to move through the world alone. She learned that being alone did not mean being isolated. In fact, it often made connections easier. People approached her. Conversations started. Plans formed. Doors opened.
She went to yoga classes before yoga had become widely familiar in parts of Europe. She travelled to Kuta, Uluwatu, Gili, and Lombok. She witnessed a royal cremation ceremony in Ubud. She explored with friends on scooters. She learned how to be responsible for her internship while still making space for the wider experience of Bali.
That balance mattered, she was not in Bali only to work, and she was not there only to travel. The meaning came from the combination. Discipline and discovery, routine and surprise, writing assignments and weekend journeys. Office life and cultural immersion, the structure gave her a base, the island gave her movement.
By the time her internship ended in November 2013, Clara returned to Spain with more than a completed placement. The experience had confirmed that communication and journalism were fields she wanted to explore further, so she enrolled in a master’s degree in Travel Journalism in Barcelona. At that point, the line between the internship and her future seemed straightforward, Bali had inspired journalism, journalism would become the path.
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Clara during her trip visiting Java
Yet, as Clara reflects today, the significance of her internship was not immediately obvious when she left Bali in late 2013.
Like many graduates entering adulthood, she returned home carrying new experiences, new friendships, and a clearer sense of what interested her, but not necessarily a complete roadmap for the future. Inspired by her time in Ubud and the work she had undertaken as a wellness journalism intern, she went on to pursue a Master’s degree in Travel Journalism in Barcelona, convinced that communication and storytelling would remain part of her professional journey.
What followed, however, was less linear than she might have imagined.
Over the next decade, Clara worked across a variety of industries and organisations, gaining experience in fields ranging from education to international business. Looking back, she is the first to admit that the connection between those roles and the journalism internship she completed in Bali was not always immediately apparent. Life rarely unfolds in a straight line, and careers are often shaped as much by unexpected opportunities as they are by carefully constructed plans.
What remained remarkably consistent throughout those years, however, was Indonesia.
Since first visiting the country in 2012, Clara has returned regularly, developing a relationship with Indonesia that gradually extended far beyond tourism. The country remained a point of reference throughout different stages of her personal and professional life, offering new perspectives, new experiences, and a continuing curiosity that never quite faded.
In many ways, this may be one of the most interesting aspects of Clara’s story. While internships are often discussed in terms of employability, professional skills, or future career prospects, her experience highlights another dimension that is more difficult to measure. Sometimes the value of an international experience is not limited to the immediate outcomes it produces. Sometimes its influence emerges gradually, revealing itself over years rather than months.
For Clara, Bali was not simply a destination where she completed an internship. It became the starting point of a much longer relationship with Indonesia itself. What began as professional curiosity developed into cultural understanding, language acquisition, meaningful friendships, and a sustained engagement with a country that continued to shape her perspective long after the internship had ended.
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Clara and family during a vacation in Flores, Indonesia
This long-term connection eventually inspired her to establish Indonesia con Clara, a Spanish-language platform dedicated to helping travellers better understand Indonesia through cultural insights, travel guidance, and carefully curated itineraries. Although the project emerged many years after her internship, it draws upon the same interests that first brought her to Bali as a student: communication, storytelling, travel, and intercultural exchange.
Recently, Clara found herself reflecting on those early experiences and decided to look up Bali Internships once again. To her surprise, the organisation was still operating, still welcoming students from around the world, and still creating opportunities for young people to experience Indonesia in a meaningful and structured way.
Thirteen years after arriving in Bali as a 20-year-old intern, she reconnected with the same organisation that had helped facilitate one of the most memorable chapters of her youth. This time, however, she returned not as a student seeking experience, but as an alumna able to reflect on the long-term impact that experience had on her life.
Her story serves as a reminder that the true value of an international internship cannot always be measured at the moment it concludes. Some outcomes are immediate: new skills, professional experience, and practical knowledge. Others take years to reveal themselves.
Looking back, Clara does not describe her internship as a single event that determined her future. Rather, she sees it as an experience that expanded her horizons, strengthened her confidence, and encouraged her to remain open to opportunities beyond what she could imagine at twenty years old.
When she first arrived in Bali, she was searching for experience, adventure, and professional growth. What she found was something more enduring: a connection to a place, a culture, and a part of the world that would continue to accompany her long after she boarded her flight home.
More than a decade later, that connection remains.
By LK
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