Up and at em…..breakfast at 7:30, settle up > for those interested our daily accommodations here with a decent breakfast came to CAD 68.00 per nite. Our transport arrives precisely on schedule at 8:00 dropping us at Mushroom Beach for the return trip by fastboat. The return boat ride includes pick-up/drop off to your hotel within a certain range of the departure point, as well as luggage on and off load…a user friendly good package…….. the Dreambeach Express is good to go at 9:00 on the nose…the organization/execution has been stellar to date.
BTW for those who like boats with serious horsepower this one should fill the bill….six of them….
Ony 10 souls on board and with flat seas we fly across the strait …this time only mild Indonesian tunes. By 9:30 the driver awaits on shore, luggage into the car and we are off towards Ubud. This is a young man of few words and with only minor delays around Denpasar, we arrive at the Tebesaya Cottages in Ubud, around 11:00, well before the check-in time. As we enter the compound we are first greeted by a statue of Ganesha “the remover of obstacles”:
…..then by uniformed staff with the traditional Balinese greeting (hands clasped as if in prayer with the fingers pointed and a small body inclination) and a welcome drink of cinnamon infused tea, but being early we will need to wait for room to be prepped.
No worries, we head off for the Sacred Monkey Forest about 25 minutes from Tebesaya Cottages, Annie gets the tickets (80m Rp =8 Cad)
…….and the monkeying around starts…..there are about 600 of these varmints and they seemed to be happy to put on a show.
As well as dozens of statues of monkeys and other jungle creatures…
There is a stand selling bannanas….so if you want a monkey on your head and have a banana to offer, they will oblige. Sometimes they will even jump on you free of charge…yours truly had one clinging to my backpack ….so I had to buck him off. It was a fun visit. Although touristy, it is an actual forest with a river cutting through it. …
and a water temple in the middle …so much more than a monkey feeding site:
On the way back we take a “shortcut” and follow what are in effect laneways, our intuitive sense of direction utterly fails us and obviously we get lost in no time. Eventually we see several guys bbqing satays on the floor of a car port beside a highly decorated doorway…after asking us where we are from etc, they tell us we can go inside the compound and look around. As it turns out, a wedding ceremony has just ended and the groom meets us > he is elaborately costumed and made up as is his wife who in fact looks quite incredible ….like a prince and princess of yore. After a short discussion about where we are from, how we like Bali etc, they invite us to sit down but we thank them kindly, take some pics (couldn’t bring ourselves to ask them to pose) and disappear with lots of smiles and bows all around. It seems each day we are bumping into some neat happenings….great fun!!
…..back on track, we stop for a light lunch before settling into our new digs for a short siesta.
Out into the din of Ubud’s main drags with diesel fumes assaulting us as bemos and scooters buzz like so many flies…yours truly is paining a bit with blisters on both little toes….never mind …sites to see and dinner to eat, so must soldier on. We get to the Ubud Palace > the historical site of the royal family of Ubud (partially open to the public) and the site of nightly dance performances:
and also the Ubud Market….not so impressive but it is late in the day for them and for us. We will give it another crack in the next few days. Time to find a dinner spot and we finally settle on the Cafe Angsa:
> decent food and a table beside a rice paddy ….not a bad way to finish this day.
