Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Hello.  We hope everyone is keeping well back in UK land and I am sure that you are all looking forward to the World Cup as much as we are.  We are still continuing to have an amazing time on our trip and SE Asia has been brilliant, we are not really sure how we are ever going to get back to normal life!  The next stop on our tour was Bali, in a place called Ubud. Andrew has been to South Bali several times on his year long stint as a teacher in Indonesia but I however haven't, therefore it falls to me to give you my take on things.

Immigration at Bali's airport was a complete nightmare and although our plane was on time it took about 3 hours to get our visa and past immigration, the queues were madness. This was our 3rd flight in as many days so it wasn't really what we wanted but hey ho, thats how it goes sometimes, but we finally got out of Denpasar and made our way to Ubud.

 

Ubud is a town on the Indonesian island of Bali in Ubud district, located amongst rice paddies and steep ravines in the central foothills of Gianyur and is one of Bali's major arts and culture centres.


We had chosen to stay at Teba Guesthouse which had been recommended by our friends in Langkawi. We arrived in darkness so we had to wait until the next morning to get our first real glimpse of the place. We spent the next few days wandering around to get a feel of the place and to get our bearings.

One of things which instantly struck me with was just how beautiful the Balinese buildings are.  Even the guesthouses have elaborate entrances and it is hard to tell the difference between guesthouses and temples.  The backdrop to Ubud is lush green paddy rice fields so it really has a nice, chilled vibe going on and we immediately fell in love with the place.

 
The main religion in Bali is Hinduism and every morning we saw the local people making offerings to the gods.  These take the form of burning incense with prayers and flower parcels which are scattered absolutely everywhere; on pavements, outside shops, cars, in windows, in gardens, in the road - everywhere you could think.  It was really hard not to tread on them, which Andrew did frequently so he is now worried that he has been officially cursed.

I was in desperate need of some pampering as my regular two weekly beauty regime in India had gone out of the window due to the dramatic increase in costs in other SE Asia countries (no way my bank manager Andrew would continue to approve my beauty practices).  So I booked myself in for a well deserved hair cut and pedicure whilst Andrew went to have a look at the Monkey Forest which is a nature reserve and a temple complex which houses about 340 crab eating Macaque.


We had arranged to hire a driver to take us to various places of interests.  We had planned to spend  the whole day watching a local dance and visiting temples and rice paddies however the driver we arranged sent someone else who wanted to charge us more and make us pay entrance fees on top etc so we ended up getting him to take us back to our hotel after 1 hr.

Instead we decided to hire a jeep and drive ourselves around Bali.  The first day we went to see a volcano and a lake however we got swarmed by touts wanting to sell us their (rubbish) goods, it was worse than India so we managed to take one picture and quickly scarpered and carried on exploring Bali.

Many of the roads we traveled (and got lost on were decorated for a celebration and some were even adorned with various world flags getting ready for the World Cup.  On the first day of driving we had no problems but then on the second day I said that I wanted to see a Bali beach and so we made our way to South Bali which meant going through the city of Denpasar... BIG MISTAKE, just as we were near our destination we got pulled by the Police (for stopping when the traffic was on red!!!) and was the victim of good old Indonesian Police corruption - having a white face is very expensive in Asian countries it means you get charged double for everything, taxis, souveniours and of course you are a easy target for a made up fine!  I was threatened with court etc unless of course I paid the fine, so eventually I did very reluctantly (this of course is the edited version of events for the blog, I promised myself no more swearing).  This sort of spoilt the day as I was freaking out about driving back so we had a quick look at Sannur Beach (and if I must add, rather rubbish beach) and made our way back to the safety of Ubud, I have had enough of driving now in Asia and I have only done it twice, Ill stick to the sensible roads of the UK and Australia.

Despite it being a popular tourist destination (we hadn't seen so many western people since leaving the UK), Bali still heavily features people getting on with their daily working lives. We saw on our drive many of their jobs looked particularly back braking, as you can see from this man which is a man ploughing the fields.

Like in most (every) Asia counties we have visited, it always seems to be woman that do all the hard work!  These women are getting the rice crop sorted.















One of things we were told to try in Indonesia was Baba Guyling which is spit roasted baby pig, we stumbled across a place which was packed to the brim of people.  You had to find a space and sit down so you get to share a table with people you have never met before, so it was very much a social thing too.  One Amercian bloke had been there about 20 times on his various trips to Ubud.  It was really relly good - you can see from the picture below what the piggy looked like...(apologies to all vegans and vegetarians for this picture, I suggest you turn away NOW)...

Lots of the cafes and restaurants had views overlooking the paddy fields so it was lovely just to relax and watch the world go by.  This field was covered with hundreds of dragon flies hovering over the top of the rice.

Felt sightly guilty though as there was people working in the fields and there was us relaxing and drinking our beer, oops!

We met a lovely Italian couple Andrea and Daniela who were on their honeymoon.  We went out for a meal with them on our last night, they were really great people and we enjoyed a few beers.









Well I think that is about enough of our tales in Ubud, hope you enjoyed our blog entry.  We had a wonderful time, saw some beautiful scenary and buildings, met some lovely people and generally just enjoyed ourselves. Next stop, Vietnam and Cambodia.  Love Sarah & Andrew xxx

Here are some more photos of our time in Ubud....
 

Man cooking satay on the street

We had a look round the local market - Souveniour anyone.. Ubud had some very lovely things to buy but it also had some crap!  Why would anyone want to buy a plastic guitar or surfboard?

This is a woman trying to sell us some weird looking fruit at the market which we politely declined

This is a lotus flower which was on our guesthouse, the garden was filled with beautiful flowers
















There was huge bees everywhere, thank god didnt get stung by this bad boy!
















We went for a walk and we come across a field full of very cute duckies in the paddie fields but on closer inspection they had their wings clipped so they couldnt fly away...

This a local woman in prayer after making her offerings

This is one of the Monkeys from the Monkey Forest

Masks used in ritual dances

This is me outside the medicine man's place from Eat, Pray, Love

See Ya.





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