ubud.

Ubud was so fantastic. After spending the first five days at the beach, it was nice to head toward central Bali to experience some Balinese culture other than surfing. Ubud is Bali's cultural center, full of art and dancing. Ubud was beautiful. Every little corner we turned, there were Balinese houses full of art. Little shops and art galleries lined the main road. It was such a fun town to just walk around in. The smells and sights were wonderful. Bali is predominantly Hindu, so every morning and night the Balinese bring offerings made of banana leaf and flowers to the spirit houses and light them with incense. The incense smell filled the streets of Ubud. It was so nice to smell something clean, rather than the stink that takes over Thailand. We took a long walk after first arriving to Ubud and found the rice padis. I have never seen so many different shades of green! It was breathtaking. On our walk we found an organic farm with an organic restaurant connected with it. The view was unbelievable- rice padis and a sunset surrounding the restaurant. We shared a bottle of passion fruit wine, it was delish, and then returned back to the town center for some dinner. We rented a motorbike the next day and went outside the main part of Ubud. The streets were lined with big ol' trees and rice fields with people hard at work. Ubud was so relaxing, and it is really hard to explain the feel and the vibe from the town, but I could move there for a year or more in a heart beat. The healthy lifestyle that Stephan and I both crave, was very abundant in Ubud. Every other restaurant was organic or vegetarian, with all the yummy healthy smoothies and meals that we both love. We made a decision on our second day in Ubud that we had to eat small little meals throughout the day in order to eat all the things that we wanted to try. I was stuffed the whole day, but it was so worth it. We returned to the rice fields a couple of times, one time we even tried it on our motorbike. And almost crashed into the muddy rice padis. There was a narrow walking path with little moats of water on each side of the path and then the rice fields. We were driving our bike on the path and I was filming and there were little boys fishing and Stephan put his foot down to get around one of the boys fishing and his foot went right in the moat and our bike went sideways. I was laughing so hard still trying to film. It was one of those moments you had to be there, but it was so silly . We went to the main market in Ubud. It was beautiful and I wanted to buy all the silver jewelry in site, but the locals anywhere love to try and rip you off, so it was hard to get the deal I was wanting. But I have to say, I am getting pretty good at bargaining, at least in English. Bargaining in Thai, I am still a little terrified about.

One morning we decided to go to the monkey forest. Now we don't really get along with monkeys and it took us a while to work up the courage to pay money to go see the little nuggets that we weren't so fond of. We had an incident a couple months ago with a monkey and our food and there are still some hard feelings. We decided we'd give them another chance though, and we headed into the forest. Luckily, there are monkey men around the forest that are there to protect you and your belongings if something were to happen. Where were they when we needed them before?! They give fruit and stuff in exchange for people's things if the monkeys happen to steal something. We made it through the forest without a single monkey bothering us. As we were leaving we decided to check out the rules of the forest. Number one rule: Don't bring plastic bags near the monkeys. That would have been a nice warning a couple of months ago also!

We also took a day and went on a tour that left Ubud and went to the northern part of Bali. We went to two temples, a coffee plantation--where they keep the luwak animals, these animals eat coffee beans and then poop them out and then someone takes the beans and roasts them and makes coffee from them. It is a very expensive coffee in Indonesia, that I feel is a little over rated. We then went to Lovina beach, which was nothing spectacular, and then some hot springs. I really wanted to do the tour because of the hot springs. It sounded really neat and exotic, but once we arrived I was immediately disappointed in the sight of a bunch of gross people close to naked swimming around in some nasty warm water. So Stephan and I walked around for a minute and decided not to get in the "hot springs". Instead we went and hung out with our tour van driver. It was neat to talk to one of the locals and his take on the whole tour. We also had some not so kind people on the tour with us, who believed it was find to yell at the guy driving us around. It was some grumpy Italian married to a young Chinese lady. They were so worried about time and having to wait on people, but by the end of the tour we were waiting on their grumpy tails. The tour was really disappointing, but on the drive back our driver stopped at a spectacular viewing point. We were high up in the mountains over looking two lakes with the sun setting. It was amazing. The gorgeous view really made up for the tour and it made all the grumpy people happy. We returned to Ubud late that night happy to be back and happy to get some more healthy food. During the entire days tour, Stephan and I only ate ice cream, because there was no where to eat. Moral of that story is: we don't like tours. 

Anyways, this is a really rambley post, and I apologize. Ubud was seriously one of my favorite towns. I loved the people, the culture, the atmosphere, the art, the temples. Everything. It is just too hard to bottle up in a blog post. It was just really really wonderful and I completely understand why so many expats live there.