Bali, more specifically Ubud, has been an absolutely lovable and unreal place and we have only been here 4 days!! We had a rather long day flying from Bangkok but nothing we weren't expecting. We finally arrived in Denpasar airport around 8 pm after our second day of 12 hour travel. Arriving at the airport we were greeted by our totally friendly home stay father and son who woke us up in moments with their joking around (he said he's writing a book called Eat. Pray.Leave!) and frequent stops on the highway for tasty Balinese street food! They are just the type of family that make you feel like you belong with them before you've even arrived at their home!
And over the last few days Made and Ayu have been like our newly adopted Balinese parents!
There was something in the air here in Ubud and we could feel it, perhaps even more instantaneously than any
other place we have been over the last 3 and a half months.
And that feeling has been like a big Balinese hug everyday as we explore Ubud. The people here exude something that we haven't come across before, a tenderness and authenticity that is just inspiring.
We are on our last day in Ubud and I am truly sad to leave.
But to rewind, our first day we rented a motorbike first thing in the morning and headed out to see the rice fields and the amazing sights surrounding Ubud.
I know it sounds like every time I talk about an area's landscape I seem to indicate its been the most impressive but I truly think Ubud/Bali may be our top pick for landscape. The lush jungle landscape mixed with never ending rice fields is just like something out of a movie. And then on top of that you have Balinese houses that are built with a temple-esque architecture. Put it all together and you have sheer beauty.
So we started our journey at the Monkey Temple Forest which is actually in Ubud city and is essentially a city park with hundreds of monkey residents who are quite well fed by visitors and actually a little too used to humans. They are very used to getting fed as they sell bananas everywhere and they have almost come to expect food and can be aggressive. We met a women in the park who was bleeding from a monkey bite and offered her a band aid. So that was a warning right there.Toward the end of our visit I had to scare off a monkey who was trying to rip off a women's sweater jacket.
Nevertheless, the park stunning and easy to get to being in the city. It is obvious when you get there that the draw for most people is the monkeys(Macaques). If we hadn't just had our monkey dose in India we would have been right with them! We really enjoyed the Balinese Hindu Temple in the park that with the lush jungle and monkeys made you feel like you were in an Indiana Jones flick(which has been reoccurring theme on this trip!)
Very relaxing and enjoyable park and as long as you don't get to up close and personal with the monkeys they should leave you alone. Also, avoid making eye contact,this often initiates
"a relationship".
We then sailed on through the beauty and hit the Gunung Kawi Temple which is an 11th century Hindu temple carved into a cliff set in the middle of the jungle and on a river. So much in the
middle of jungle it was 300 steps down
to get to it!
We had the place to ourselves as we have learnt over the last 3 month after 3pm is always the best way to avoid the tour buses at an attraction. A fantastic historical sight and the setting was idyllic.
We then sailed further on to find a sacred holy spring that our home stay owner had mentioned was a great visit. And it actually proved to be one of my favorite sights that day. What I
absolutely love about Bali is that the holiness of the place is genuine. There are no money grabs to be had for
your visit or rush from a holy guru to cleanse you for a price. The holy springs which were discovered in the 9th century and have temples built all around them, were being visited by worshippers who looked completely overcome by their belief. They had not one care that we were there and nor did any holy guru's we saw walking around. A smile was all we got and that was what we liked. There were no touts to bless you for your dollars.
The place has incense flower offerings at every turn( which you will see all over Bali) and the atmosphere made you feel like you were among something genuine and calming. We took our turn and dipped our feet in the holy water and soaked up the ambience. I recommend this to anyone visiting Ubud!
The next day we had reserved a spot to go white water rafting on the Ayum River. Neither of us had been before so were pretty excited and it was great time! We met a great couple from
Jakarta who has just gotten married and we spent 3 hours with them rafting and having lunch afterwords.
Though not overly scary(I had imagined crashing waters blinding me as we smashed around!) it was still a super time. We hit a few decent drops and almost capsized a few times and again the scenery was breathtaking, we stopped often and swam in waterfalls and just admired the scenery. An absolutely stellar way to spend half a day!
Afterwords we were a little sore so we just explores the streets of Ubud and
did a little shopping. One of the many things I find so incredibly charming about the Balinese is there capacity for getting right into the thick of things with you! They are so friendly and are amazing at turning "can I try this on?" (if your are in a shop for example) to "when are you having children?" how many do you want?" etc. And they do it in a way that you actually feel totally comfortable having this conversation with someone whom you just met seconds ago! We ended up having a 45 min conversation with a girl in a clothing store that started before we had even looked at any clothes!!:) The greatest people:)
The next day we were up early and headed down for breakfast and ended up meeting a Swiss couple and chatted with them for probably two hours after breakfast exchanging stories and sharing our thoughts on Bali. It was enjoyable but a word of advice to anyone reading who may be traveling to Asia/Asia Pacific/Polynesia (or anywhere for that matter).They shared their motorbike accident story
with us they had in French Polynesia and it was pretty bad, they are both okay but she has a pretty bad scar from it all on her arm that will never go away. This is the 4th motorbike accident story we have heard on our trip so to friends, family or strangers reading please be careful driving and even practice in your own country a little before doing it abroad. It is a splendid way to travel but if you have little experience it's not worth the risk especially when many places in the world offer cheap transport(Bali included)
We then headed to by tickets for a traditional Balinese dance show for that evening but it ended up being cancelled due to a traditional festival so we visited a local market, which was mediocre but still had us buying:)
And then we did some planning for our next destination at a little local cafe with great Balinese coffee and a great patio overlooking the street. (there are some great cafes in Ubud, I recommend Coffee And, Soma, and Kue!)
The next day was amazing and something I will never forget. We got up at 2 am(and were so excited we couldn't really sleep!) and were shuttled to the base of Mount Batur.
An active Volcano that last erupted in 2000. It was one of the many experiences I have had on this trip that words just won't do justice. Imagine hiking 2 and a half hours in the dark with the smell of sulphur in the air and
arriving to the crater just as the sun rises and watching the volcanic smoke rise from the crater up into the rising sun. It was unreal, even looking in the crater had me captivated, just seeing one of mother natures little devils in all
it's splendor! We then hiked to the summit and had amazing views of the world below. It was some serious work and a sleepless night but worth every second! So much I would do another volcano tomorrow if it were available!
Our guide was friendly and fun and having breakfast (our Balinese parents packed us a lunch) on the summit overlooking a volcano was pure magic.
We spent about an hour at the top just watching the sunrise and internalizing the moment. We also met a friendly Brit named Zoe who was on the hike with us and was fun and interesting to talk to and sharing such a magical experience together gave us all
a lot to talk about on the summit!
The hike down was just as nice and much easier being we had sun!
When we finally returned to our home stay we had a second breakfast which I devoured!
We then had a nap for a couple hours before hopping back on the bike to cruise the country side one last time.(something about the rice fields is addicting!)
We then returned to Ubud and bought tickets for the infamous Legong Dance. We bought our tickets at the Ubud Palace and were lucky enough to walk in while a kids dance lesson was on. It was absolutely adorable, it was a bunch of 8 or 9 year olds who you could tell took it quite seriously and after seeing the professional show that night Niki and I were pretty convinced the kids would be up on stage one day! Check out the video, we have one of the kids and one of the professional production!
So tonight we attended the Legong Dance and it was a stunning display of dance, costumes and choreography.
The style of dance was almost puppet like and they put great emphasis on facial expression to the point that all of their expressions were choreographed down to a roll of the eyeball!!
Just enchanting which pretty much summarizes our whole experience on Ubud! We are off to Munduk tomorrow, a little mountain town we discovered through some research. It's hard to imagine anything trumping Ubud and our experiences here but I have a sneaking suspicion Bali has many surprises up its sleeve!
Peace:)
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