After my "tough" week in Bangkok (sarcasm noted), I was fortunate to sit next to another independent traveler on the flight here, an English girl, and as luck would have it, she pretty much had the same travel plans as me, so wah-la! As simple as that to have a travel companion!
I had already made reservations at this hotel called Kebun Indah in Ubud,
based on recommendations from this German couple I met in Varkala, India. From the minute we got here, I can see why they loved it soo much. It is absolutely beautiful! Sooo cute, quiet, and lovely with all the fresh flowers everywhere. I have a little patio and garden at my doorstep, where had breakfast everyday, and the bathroom is about the size of my freshman year dorm room. Awesome.
The days in Ubud have been totally action packed. We started off by doing a cycling tour. What better way to see sites than on a bike! And yes, that entails me actually exercising (gasp!).
But don't get too excited, it was a "downhill" tour, and yes, most of the trip was downhill! We cycled through a coffee plantation and learned a bit about the process.
And also about Bali coffee from the animal locally known as Luwak, or Paradoxurus, formally. Basically although they live in trees, their favorite food is red, ripe coffee cherries in which they eat the cheery and the bean. Basically, it ferments the bean while it is going through the digestive tract, and then when it is pooped out, the intact beans are collected, cleaned, and roasted like other coffees. So basically "Bali coffee" is the Luwak's poop. And of course the fun experience of saying that you drank Luwak poop, ha ha.
While we cycled through beautiful rice plantations and terraces,
we also stopped a few times to see the local village life,
which was super cool. It was soo quiet and peaceful and loooved the lush surroundings and landscape, including the lake Batur and the volcano and crater nearby.
We got to see a massive banyan tree, which although is a common site around Bali, this one seemed particularly impressive.
We finished the tour with a lunch for two, which probably could have been a lunch for 10, delicious though!
Ubud, which is more or less, considered central Bali is a lovely lovely town, with a really cool artsy vibe with pretty flowers all over.
There are a ton of little cute boutiques as well as wonderful restaurants with organic and vegetarian foods, and basically just delicious.
This particular restaurant that we came across because of the cool decor, called Clear, was ahhh-mazing. The best food I've had in awhile, and so good, we even went back to it a 2nd time (which I RARELY do when traveling).
The fun part of travel is to do new and different things, things that you may not particularly like, or things that you happen to have a great fear of. I was in Kuala Lumper several years ago and had the fun experience of being handed a stash of bananas to feed some monkeys when I went to a particular temple. No problem, I thought. It would be fun. Well, I saw one coming, threw a banana, it happily ate it and I felt like I was doing a good deed by feeding a probably starving animal. Well, as I was looking down feeling good at myself at this particular monkey, I didn't see my surroundings. I look up, and what I saw was something pretty much something out of the Jim Carrey, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. There was probably about 20+ hungry, eager looking monkeys staring at me... and coming closer and closer to me. Uh oh. So I got one banana and threw it as far away as I could.... to entertain about 2 monkeys. The rest just stared a me... with their eyes on the bananas. So I then just threw the rest of them as far as I could, some of them scurried to reach it, the rest just sat there and stared at me. I had a near panic attack because then I foresaw my imminent death to monkeys who thought I was food. A family (human) then appeared, but rightfully so, stood almost 50m from me and watched me as I awkwardly started talking to the monkeys like, "I have no more food. Can I go now?"... "uhh..... go away!" But no... the beedy little eyes all just stood there, literally forming a circle around me. Well, I wasn't going to get any younger just standing there, so I just slowly started walking up the stairs to the temple. And they followed me.... to the very top. The whole way I thought that any minute they would jump on me or go for an attack. Thankfully, I made it, but then started my fear of monkeys which has continued through random encounters through Asian countries.
What was the point of that story? Well, a major tourist attraction of Ubud is the good 'ol Monkey Forest.
It's one of those where you meet someone and say, "I went (or came from) to Ubud" and they would say, "did you go to the Monkey Forest?" I thought it may be time for me to conquer my fear, and off we went. And here is me in anticipation....
I made a point of NOT having food on or near me, and not only that, tried not to stand even close to people that had food. Needless to say, although the forest was actually amazing, I had total and complete anxiety the whole time, but survived without any incidences.... and this is as close as I would get:
This girl we saw was not so lucky.... she bent over to take a picture, and then a monkey jumped on her head.
She was laughing along while her friends were taking pictures, and I was saying, "ohhhhh myyyy gaawwwwwwdddd" having a heart attack on her behalf. How she stayed so calm, I have no idea. Same goes for the guy who had 2 monkeys jump on him while he was holding some bananas. I stood as close as I could get to have a photo op, but that was about it. It was an experience, yes, but I definitely DID NOT conquer my fear. Actually, I think it made it worse as I witnessed how greedy and aggressive they can be, i.e. stealing my friends brochure and then showing its teeth (BIG SHARP TEETH) when she tried to get it back. Ahh.... fun times.
Besides entertaining situations like that, we did some lovely sightseeing like to Goa Gajeh, the "elephant cave" named.... actually no one knows because there have never been any elephants in Bali,
and also to Gunung Kwai, Bali's oldest and most ancient monuments.
We then went to see the famous heron and egret birds,
which spontaneously appeared around 1966 to Petulu Village, almost right after thousands had died during some civil unrest and the locals all believe that it is the reincarnated of those that died. There were flocks of them,
which was cool, but I was also entertained by the single ones, i.e. this one which I literally wasted 5 minutes of my life watching try to get out of this ditch. I just wanted to shout, "you have wings. You can fly!" We left it and I hoped for the best.
Well, as my friend and I were in spiritual Ubud, where pretty much everyone we met was either doing or studying yoga and/or meditation, we thought it would be fun to see a medicine man. So we asked around and were led to one.... who charged waaaay too much and it was in this awkward setting where the client was standing with everyone watching her as her palm was read. NYET. So we asked again, and our random taxi driver said, "I know one. He is well-known." Okay, fine. Well.... of course it was good 'ol Ketut Liyer, the medicine man made famous by the well-known Eat, Prey, Love book which was just made a movie, staring Julia Roberts.
So here I was feeling totally silly... and totally cliche that I am a 30-something single female traveler seeking out a medicine man. Well, when in Bali, do as all the 2309842304980329 other 30-something single female travelers do, grab a ticket and wait in line. Buuut... then we were told that Ketut, who literally looked everyday of his 90-something years,
was "too tired" and wasn't taking any more clients. We weren't too disappointed because we weren't really expecting this, but then when we heard the inevitable, "but came back tomorrow!" we thought... "well..... why not?" Sooo.... back we were the next morning. This time there were a lot more people waiting, including a whole group of Chinese tourists (No thank you Chinese New Year!) that were right in front of us. Well, my premonition dream the night before of waiting, waiting, and just when we were about to be called, we realized we had to go... came true. We had a shuttle we wanted to take at 11am, and yes, our 2nd attempt failed. But again, after 2 failed attempts, I knew it just wasn't meant to be and I was fine with that. The more I thought about it, the more I was unsure I wanted to have influences to lead my life. Plus, we asked a few people that had come and gone, and they said he said, "you are a world traveler..." JUST KIDDING (heheh, that happened in the book and movie). But that he had bad English and told pretty much every female, "you are pretty. You will live to 100, you will be rich and you will marry." Although, yes, people do it for the experience, I was happy I just got see him, he has a super funny and cute face. So there you go, my medicine man experience.
Also in Ubud we went to the Ubud Market where we bargained for little souvenirs (BTW, in ALL of Bali, you cannot walk more than 2 feet without hearing, "sarong? sarong?") and later that night
went to see a traditional Balinese dance at the Royal Palace (which, according to rumor) the royal family still live. It was really cool! The dance is very demanding and intricate with the hand and facial gestures, and awesome costumes!!!
Then it was off to Lovina, where we heard the beach was nice and quiet and it was a great town to see dolphins. Along the way we stopped at Pura Lahur Batukau, which was the state temple when Tembanan was an independent kingdom. It also has 7-roofed shrines dedicated to Maha Dewa, the mountain of Gunung Batukau's guardian spirit.
Then we stopped at the GitGit waterfall, which was actually really misty... and mystical. I think it is 40m high, but really cool we got to get to close!
When we got to Lovina, well.... I knew the sand was black because of the nearby volcanoes, but it was a lot dirtier than I thought.
And the town was quite small. Oh well... we still stayed at a nice hotel with a pool
and saw more traditional balinese dancing during dinner one night.
Then we met this other English girl, and together the 3 of us went to the only Buddhist Monastery in Bali, Brahma Vihara Aram. It was really beautiful and I loooooved the pretty flowers and the awesome fountain with lilies. Very calm and serene.
After that, it was off to Air Banas Banjar hot springs! We made it just in the knick of time for downpour rain, but that made it especially nice to be in the nice hot water while it was raining. Really neat place I have to say!
That night we ended up at this restaurant/bar that had these local musicians that actually played really good cover band songs, and we hung out with them afterwards. Again, the people here have been nothing but uber friendly, nice, sweet, helpful, and patient. Can't get enough of the Balinese charming smiles!
The next morning, which actually happened to be "attempt #2" to see dolphins (the previous morning the waves were to big for boats to go), we woke up at 5:30am (again), but alas not only awoke to a beautiful sunrise,
BUT saw literally dozens, DOZENS, of jumping dolphins!
AND whales! I didn't even know we would see whales (unexpected surprise!), but there were a couple of them too and it was sooo sooo cool! It made me think about the whale-watching I did in the Arctic Circle, when we were all freezing and would run out to take pictures and then run back in to have hot tea. Now I was a sundress, in a hot tropical environment, and much more comfortable not having to worry about taking my hands in and out of gloves so that I wouldn't get frostbite... but also get a good picture. Lovely. Seeing the dolphins so close AND whales was definitely a highlight of my entire 8-month trip!! Yea!!!
While I was having my day o water fun,
I decided to go to Pemuteran (via motorbike!)
which is near the Island Menjangan, and go scuba diving. It was quite a trek to get there.... and find a scuba place because it was low-season, but alas it is known to be one of the BEST scuba diving places in all of Bali. And I could see why. Although I had to pay 1.5 people because it was just me, it was well well worth it.
The coral literally was one of the best I've ever seen in my 15+ years diving. The dive was along a steep vertical drop, and it was like Finding Nemo x100000. Sooo colorful and soo many cool shapes and sizes, from big o fan leaf ones to tube ones. We also saw schools of fish, including clownfish and anemone, but also a moray eel, stingray, parrotfish, and lots and lots of really cool stuff. Below is the view from the boat.
Also, what is interesting because of some dynamite and cyanide fishing (hmph) and El Nino warming of the water, the coral was dying. So with the help of private investors and the local community, they came up a solution - charge it! Literally! With electricity. Quite interesting. Basically they built large metal cages that were placed out of the threatened reef, then they were literally hooked to a very low-wattage generators on land, and basically this low-current stimulates the limestone formation which grows new coral, at 4x the rate it would naturally. A win-win situation for all, and I wish other places would do the same!
After staying at a wonderful hotel with an OUTDOOR lovely bathroom,
my motorbike taxi came to pick me up and we headed back to Lovina, with some scenic views along the way...
where I met my friend to make the journey to the south of Bali. We stopped along the way to see more great views of rice terraces and the Batur crater (again),
but saw some lovely locals with winning smiles, and that made it worth it!
Phew! What a whirlwind week! I'm now in Legian, literally only a week after I got to Bali, and I feel I've been here for ages I'm so comfortable here. Legian is a beach near the more famous Kuta, BUT it is a LOT more crowded than I imagined, and the beach is unfortunately NOT what I pictured as picturesque Bali, it is dirty and just blah. And although we thought Lovina was a bit small, in hindsight, it was quite lovely that it was so small and uncrowded. Fortunately, I literally am traveling a day at a time, and because I have NO plans, I can pick up and go whenever I want. So until my next update.... which will be more about the south of Bali, then Gili Islands and Lombok. Woo hoo!
