Days 20 & 21
Today I'm in: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
I'm a little behind thanks to an internet outage at the hotel, so this post covers two days and will be a bit longer.
I spent part of my first full day exploring Seminyak, the beach-resort town where I spent my first day and a half on Bali. I have to say I wasn't really a fan. Much of Seminyak consists of private villas with high walls, so getting around feels a bit like a rat in a maze, negotiating a lot of high-walled passageways. The restaurants were all full of Australian tourists sipping espressos and tapping at their iPads. On top of all that, the beach just honestly wasn't a very good beach. The sand was kind of grayish, the water was murky and there were hundreds of beach vendors selling towels, "artwork" of questionable craftsmanship, flowers, bottled water, you name it. Seminyak is apparently nicer than Kuta, the town with which it shares it beach, but overall this particular corner of Bali didn't really appeal to me.
I hopped in a cab later that day and spent two hours grinding slowly along traffic-choked roads to Ubud, my second destination here, which is a village on the slopes of Gunung Agung, the island's primary mountain. Ubud is really nice - it's lush and green, set among rice paddies and coconut trees, and the entire town is deeply spiritual. There are Balinese Hindu offerings everywhere - on the sidewalks, tucked into niches of buildings, in front of temples, in the windows of shops - everywhere you turn there are little banana-leaf baskets filled with flowers, herbs and rice as an offering to whatever spirits happen to be resident in that corner of town.
Like the rest of Bali, Ubud has been over-developed, and the town has swallowed up some of the surrounding villages, creating a patchwork of streets several square miles wide lined with guest houses, boutiques and restaurants. There are a lot of tourists, but it's infinitely nicer than Kuta and Seminyak, even if there's no beach. I'm staying at the Oka Wati Inn, a small hotel run by the eponymous Oka Wati, a local woman who built the inn on land her family owned back in the 1980s when tourism to Ubud was just taking off. The rooms are done up with lots of Balinese carvings and teak wood, and the buildings overlook a small rice field behind the town's main road.
I got to spend last night in the company of a pretty large lizard that was on the ceiling of my bedroom. I didn't notice him when I checked in, and by the time I spotted him (at about 10pm) the hotel office was closed. He was basically a giant gecko (about a foot and a half long) so there was nothing to really be afraid of - in fact, he was probably eating any mosquitoes that were in the room. All the same, I didn't really want to spend the night with him on the ceiling above me, so I spent an eventful hour trying to cajole him out the door. Snapping him with a towel didn't work, creating a little pathway for him out of my dirty clothes didn't work, spraying him with hair product didn't work. So finally I resigned myself to the fact that my single room was now a double. In the morning he had left, hopefully without pooping in my suitcase.
Today I woke up to a downpour outside. It rained very heavily all morning, so I relaxed on the balcony of my room, chatted with friends online and did a bit of planning for South Africa (where I'll be in 48 hours - crazy). At lunchtime the skies brightened so I headed out to do some of the local area walks from my guidebook. I spent a few hours wandering through rice paddies, small villages and along ridges above very thickly jungled rivers. Once I got off of the main Ubud road there were no tourists, and I mostly passed locals carrying whatever fruit, vegetables or crops they had just pulled out of the fields. All told I walked about six miles.
I finished up my walk at the amazing Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary at the entrance to Ubud village. The name sounds like an incredibly hokey Asian tourist attraction (and it kind of is) but it was also pretty impressive. It's a thick patch of forest on the edge of town that's home to a very large, very active colony of Balinese macaques who live in and around a few temple complexes. The monkeys are not afraid of people at all - they lie across the pathway, run around your legs, and jump onto your shoulders from the trees. They're looking for food, but they weren't as aggressive as the monkeys on Langkawi. I had a few monkeys climb up my legs, but once they realized I wasn't going to give them anything they quickly let go.
So what have I been eating? Tonight I had a pretty awesome meal at a cafe recommended by some friends who were on Bali a year or so ago. I started off with a bowl of soto ayam - glass-noodle soup with shredded chicken and chili sauce - and then had mie goreng (stir-fried egg noodles with turmeric and lemongrass sauce) for dinner. The menu at this particular cafe was huge and it was tough to pick, so I'm planning to swing through there again for lunch tomorrow.
Thus concludes the last two days in Bali. I have most of tomorrow to continue wandering around Ubud before I catch my evening flight to Hong Kong and onward to Africa!
Today I'm in: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
I'm a little behind thanks to an internet outage at the hotel, so this post covers two days and will be a bit longer.
I spent part of my first full day exploring Seminyak, the beach-resort town where I spent my first day and a half on Bali. I have to say I wasn't really a fan. Much of Seminyak consists of private villas with high walls, so getting around feels a bit like a rat in a maze, negotiating a lot of high-walled passageways. The restaurants were all full of Australian tourists sipping espressos and tapping at their iPads. On top of all that, the beach just honestly wasn't a very good beach. The sand was kind of grayish, the water was murky and there were hundreds of beach vendors selling towels, "artwork" of questionable craftsmanship, flowers, bottled water, you name it. Seminyak is apparently nicer than Kuta, the town with which it shares it beach, but overall this particular corner of Bali didn't really appeal to me.
I hopped in a cab later that day and spent two hours grinding slowly along traffic-choked roads to Ubud, my second destination here, which is a village on the slopes of Gunung Agung, the island's primary mountain. Ubud is really nice - it's lush and green, set among rice paddies and coconut trees, and the entire town is deeply spiritual. There are Balinese Hindu offerings everywhere - on the sidewalks, tucked into niches of buildings, in front of temples, in the windows of shops - everywhere you turn there are little banana-leaf baskets filled with flowers, herbs and rice as an offering to whatever spirits happen to be resident in that corner of town. 
Like the rest of Bali, Ubud has been over-developed, and the town has swallowed up some of the surrounding villages, creating a patchwork of streets several square miles wide lined with guest houses, boutiques and restaurants. There are a lot of tourists, but it's infinitely nicer than Kuta and Seminyak, even if there's no beach. I'm staying at the Oka Wati Inn, a small hotel run by the eponymous Oka Wati, a local woman who built the inn on land her family owned back in the 1980s when tourism to Ubud was just taking off. The rooms are done up with lots of Balinese carvings and teak wood, and the buildings overlook a small rice field behind the town's main road.
I got to spend last night in the company of a pretty large lizard that was on the ceiling of my bedroom. I didn't notice him when I checked in, and by the time I spotted him (at about 10pm) the hotel office was closed. He was basically a giant gecko (about a foot and a half long) so there was nothing to really be afraid of - in fact, he was probably eating any mosquitoes that were in the room. All the same, I didn't really want to spend the night with him on the ceiling above me, so I spent an eventful hour trying to cajole him out the door. Snapping him with a towel didn't work, creating a little pathway for him out of my dirty clothes didn't work, spraying him with hair product didn't work. So finally I resigned myself to the fact that my single room was now a double. In the morning he had left, hopefully without pooping in my suitcase. 
Today I woke up to a downpour outside. It rained very heavily all morning, so I relaxed on the balcony of my room, chatted with friends online and did a bit of planning for South Africa (where I'll be in 48 hours - crazy). At lunchtime the skies brightened so I headed out to do some of the local area walks from my guidebook. I spent a few hours wandering through rice paddies, small villages and along ridges above very thickly jungled rivers. Once I got off of the main Ubud road there were no tourists, and I mostly passed locals carrying whatever fruit, vegetables or crops they had just pulled out of the fields. All told I walked about six miles. 
I finished up my walk at the amazing Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary at the entrance to Ubud village. The name sounds like an incredibly hokey Asian tourist attraction (and it kind of is) but it was also pretty impressive. It's a thick patch of forest on the edge of town that's home to a very large, very active colony of Balinese macaques who live in and around a few temple complexes. The monkeys are not afraid of people at all - they lie across the pathway, run around your legs, and jump onto your shoulders from the trees. They're looking for food, but they weren't as aggressive as the monkeys on Langkawi. I had a few monkeys climb up my legs, but once they realized I wasn't going to give them anything they quickly let go. 
So what have I been eating? Tonight I had a pretty awesome meal at a cafe recommended by some friends who were on Bali a year or so ago. I started off with a bowl of soto ayam - glass-noodle soup with shredded chicken and chili sauce - and then had mie goreng (stir-fried egg noodles with turmeric and lemongrass sauce) for dinner. The menu at this particular cafe was huge and it was tough to pick, so I'm planning to swing through there again for lunch tomorrow.Thus concludes the last two days in Bali. I have most of tomorrow to continue wandering around Ubud before I catch my evening flight to Hong Kong and onward to Africa!
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