Around the World: Ubud, Bali

On Wednesday March 9, 2011 we left Phuket very early in the morning for Ubud, Bali. We had both been really looking forward to going to Bali, it seemed like a really nice place and there was a lot to do around our resort. When we got there and walked through the airport outside all you could smell was incense. We found our driver waiting for us and we left Denpasar City for Ubud which is about an hour drive. Along the way we saw a lot of statues and temples and we went through a lot of the small villages around Ubud. Ubud is the art center of Bali with a lot of small villages around it. Each village is known for something for example wood carving, stone carving or metal work. The hotel we stayed in was really nice and our room looked out onto the rice paddy fields and had a view of the volcano. The first day we stayed around the hotel which had a great restaurant and tried some of the local fare. The next day we went into town and walked the main streets. Ubud has a really big market and is really popular with tourists. It is also home of Ketuk the medicine man who was written about in Eat, Pray, Love. We made our way to the end of the road to see a bunch of temples that were in a forest that was overrun with monkeys! It was a bit scary because they run everywhere and there are SO many of them. You have to be really careful because they will take anything you have...they took a girls bottle of water out of her hand and drank from it and then used the rest to wash themselves. One also jumped on Jeff but luckily he was ok...other than the monkey prints on his pants. The monkeys are not scared at all and outside the monkey forest people have to get them off the parked cars because they run across the tops and they love to follow around the people who are setting out the offerings. Offerings are made to temples, in front of stores or to statues and they are made numerous times a day-hence why you smell incense inside and outside all the time. The offerings are made of a leaf that’s folded into a square basket and in it there are flowers, a stick of incense and some kind of cracker which the monkeys love to steal. When you walk down the main street in Ubud you have to be careful not to step on the offerings because the store owners put them out in front of their stores every day. The driving was even more interesting in Bali. We started to see how many pictures we could take of things people would carry on mopeds. Some of what we saw: children, a live chicken (held by the feet in someone’s hand), a ladder over one shoulder and woman carrying eggs and vegetables. The honking continued with people honking at everything and because the streets were narrower it made it seem like the driving was even worse. Street signs and stop lights are only a suggestion and it is common for the car to be halfway through the intersection before the light turns green. The next day we went to a temple complex called Goa Gajah and had a tour of the area temples and where we were told to wash our hands with this special water in a fountain that would bring us good luck.