Southeast Asia Vacation, Part 3: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Bali, Bali, Bali!   How I loved Bali!   I've been to many wonderful places, but Bali, and more specifically Ubud is one of my favorites.  It's a magical land, full of colorful lush foliage, crazy monkeys, beautiful people, and some amazingly tasty food.  Ubud is a bit south of the center of the island.   

Soon after deciding we would go to Ubud, I learned that it became super popular several years ago when the book/movie Eat, Pray, Love came out.  It's where Elizabeth meets the healer, Ketut Liyer and rides her bike through the rice paddies.  (Side thought: I liked the book. The movie is nice, if you're looking for some cool shots of Italy, India and Ubud, but otherwise, it was a major drag). Of course some of the locals are happy about all of the extra tourism, but some are not.  This sign made me giggle:  

 I wanted to include all of my pictures from this trip, just so you can get a better idea of the awesomeness level, but I though that might be a bit of an obnoxious overkill.   And that's what Facebook is for!  So head over there for more pictures, if you're curious.  I chose some of our favorites and will share some back stories of them here.

We stayed off the main drag just a bit, at a place called Alam Shanti.  I'm pretty sure if you look up the word "paradise" in the dictionary, you might find some pictures of this place. 

This is the driveway to our villa. On our taxi ride here from the airport, I loved how the more turns we made, the more narrow the roads got.  This is strictly a one car at a time road.

 

We enjoyed the complimentary breakfast served to us on our porch every morning.  First came the fresh squeezed juice, coffee, and tea.  Then  freshly baked bread and a variety of fruit, and then whatever main course we ordered.  My favorite was black rice pudding, which is a very popular Balinese breakfast.  See beautiful pictures and a recipe here!   Bryan enjoyed the fried rice with egg.

We (especially Bryan) spent several hours here. 

Our villa was close to the Monkey Forest and the path to many restaurants and shops ran right along the edge of it.  As you can see, there is a fence around the forest, but it's only about 4 feet high.  The monkeys are free to come and go as they please, but they know that people can buy bananas to feed them inside of the park, so most of them don't venture too far.   The locals are not a big fan of the monkeys because they often tear up the roofs on their houses.  

Monkey Forest Road. I bought some batik scarves and a beautiful wood panel in this area.  Ubud is known for a lot of handcrafted goods, including wood carvings of all kinds (we even found some pornographic ones!) and silver jewelry.

We were lucky enough to be able to take a cooking class with Chef Wayan and his assistant, Made.  A lot of the food is grown on the grounds of the restaurant.

Made is a bit of a bossy lady, but she sure does know how to cook!   We have all of the recipes for what we made, but haven't tried any of them here at home.  Some of the ingredients are hard to find and I'm afraid it's just not going to be as good as when we made it there.  

 

 

From the top and then clockwise:  Chicken Satay Bali Style, Balinese Chicken Salad, Steamed Prawn in Banana Leaf, Fried Bananas with Coconut, and Vegetables with Coconut and Spices.  Balinese satay is different than other satay.  The raw meat is ground up and then wrapped around either a skewer or lemon grass.  It was tricky to get it to stay on, but it was worth the work. 

As I mentioned, the chef's name is Wayan.  We kept meeting people named Wayan, including our bike tour guide.   I asked why this name was so popular and I learned this: (Wikipedia will help me say it in a quick and concise manner.)

  Regardless of being male or female, each person receives one of four names based on birth order. Though there are significant variations in the four names of Balinese people, some due to caste membership, and others due to regional customs and variations in the Balinese language between the North and the South of the island, there are four names in Balinese culture that are repeated frequently. The firstborn is "Wokalayan" (Wayan or Yan, for short), second is "Made," third is "Nyoman" or "Komang" (Man or Mang for short), and fourth is "Ketut" (often elided to Tut).

Our favorite day in Bali was when we took an "Eco Tour".  We were picked up at 8:00 and first taken to a view of a couple of volcanoes.  We had breakfast (more black rice pudding and fresh juice!) on a patio overlooking the volcanoes, then went to a coffee plantation, then took an all downhill bike ride to see how the locals lives.  Our tour guide, Wayan, was so nice and answered all of questions and more.  I think he was about 20 years old.  He said he's really lucky to have his job because he gets to meet so many different people from around the world and improve his English-speaking skills.  He also loves that he gets to work outside and share his beautiful home with all of us.

This was taken after eating breakfast.  Behind us is Mount Agung (I think).  The dark parts in the background are not shadows, but where everything is burnt from lava.   The last big eruption was in the 1960s.   All of the monkeys that lived in the area evacuated about two weeks before the eruption, which alerted the people to also leave.  How cool is that???

A sign at the coffee plantation.  I don't like coffee, so I didn't try this, but Bryan did.  He said it was good, and really strong.  Yeah....I'll just take his word for it.  It is very expensive, at $6 for a small sample cup.  (In Bali prices, that's really expensive!)  They had cacao, vanilla, tea, coffee, and so many herbs and seasonings growing in their gardens.

Complimentary coffee and tea samples.  Delicious!  My favorites were the pandanus tea and the hot cocoa.   The little white bottle is sugar.  

Once we got on our bikes, we made several stops.  Our first stop was at a traditional Balinese community.  The communities are gated and usually house several extended families.  There are many buildings within the community.  Bedrooms are of course private, but many communities have shared living rooms and kitchens.  Our tour guide told us to feel free to take pictures, as his company pays this particular family every month so that we can come see how they live.

We also stopped at a rice paddy.  The worker is weeding the rows of rice.  He's wearing wading boots, but there are elevated paths around each field that we walked on.

Kind of reminded me of my days working at PF Changs!  Rice, rice, everywhere!

Bryan took this picture while we were biking.  Scooters are by far the most common form of transportation, so the size of the road isn't really a problem.   There didn't seem to be an age restriction, as we saw kids who looked like they were about 8 years old driving them.  Also, people put infants and toddlers on scooters as well and no one thinks this is strange.  Just a way of life.   We thought about renting scooters, but since most of what we did was close by and our villa had a free driver, we didn't find it necessary.   We met several other tourists who did rent scooters though.  Of course they enjoyed driving them, but you're an automatic target for the local police.  Legally, you need an international drivers license to drive them.  However, the people who rent them just want to make money, so they'll rent them to anyone.  Many tourists are easy to spot, so the cops sit at intersections and ask non-Asian looking people for their drivers license.  And then when you don't have one to show them, they ask you for money, to pay them off from writing you an official ticket.  I hear they start at $50 but you can work them down to $10 or $15, as long as they don't see you whip out a wad of cash.  So it's an interesting corrupt system.

We saw several Banyan trees on our tour.   They're huge!!  It's a type of fig tree and those vine-like things are called aerial prop roots. 

Wayan, our tourguide, even gave us a tour of his own community.  We met his parents (his dad is in the center of this picture), wife, grandmother, aunts, uncles and nieces.   Cock fighting is very popular in the area.  Some fights are legal and some are not.   In this picture, his dad and uncles are massaging the cocks and about 2 minutes later, they had them practice fighting.  They don't have them wear the spurs when they practice and if it gets too serious, they stop them.   Very interesting. 

Wayan's grandmother, cooking in their kitchen.

More of Wayan's family.  The aunts are making decorations out of flowers and palm leaves for the upcoming holiday.

This is one of Bryan's favorite pictures from the trip, but I wish you could see his face.  This boy and his friends were having a blast, swinging from another Banyan tree.  This was where we stopped biking.  We rode a little ways to a lunch buffet and then we were dropped off back at our villa.  Awesome morning!

Monkey family!!   It's hard to get a group of them to cooperate for a picture.

After walking past the park many times, we finally went inside.  We bought bananas to feed to the monkeys.  They claim that the proceeds go towards maintaining the park, but I'm not so sure I believe them because there's a big sign above their stand that says "Don't feed the monkeys!"  But we did.  And oh my!  Turns out those little monkeys are strong!  They jumped on me and grabbed the bananas out of my hands before I even knew what was happening.

Some of them didn't want to be friends, but this one did :-)

We were told to put away our cell phones, sunglasses, and anything else light and small because they will grab it away from you and run away with it and you will never see it again.  And they LOVE zippers!  They come running at the sound of zippers opening and closing and are really curious about what's inside the bag.  

And they loved my dress!  Here's a short video of them playing with it.

The tall things on the left side of the road are hand made decorations for the holiday.  We were told that they celebrate this holiday twice a year, and that it's very important, and most comparable to our Christmas.  There are decorations like this outside of most homes and businesses.  They're all made out of tall bamboo and dried and dyed palm leaves. 

Other highlights Ubud include a Thai dinner at Siam Sally's, browsing through the many tourist-traps of stores, and getting massages.   I hope you enjoyed reading :-)