More temples, Cocoa and Monkeys!

As we were only supposed to stay in Ubud 2 days and it is now our 6th we decided to power on and see as many sites as we could! First stop was a temple hidden in the depths of the jungle.

The drive was really lovely although 2 hours to get the temple was maybe somewhat unnecessary. It was pleasant but not memorable. Next stop was something I've been wanting to do since coming to SEA, visit a cacao farm. We went to the local Cau Chovate farm which was small but cute with a small tour around the farm, free hot chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream and tasters of all their different types of chocolate with milk and palm sugar. The tour although simple was really interesting as I had never seen a Cacao fruit or seen the beans inside. We tried the beans raw straight from the fruit and they had a slimy white sour outside with a bitter purple bean inside. It was a very interesting flavour! Feeling very very full we headed to monkey forest.

I was slightly disappointed as I was hoping to see the monkeys perform something mischievous but actually they were pretty good monkeys and did not steal people's food or sunglasses ☺️

It was about 4:30pm and after a bit of umming and ahhing whether to head back to the homestay or whether to head to watch the herons we decided to watch the herons. It was a bit of a far drive but we got to the viewing platform with plenty of time to spare. We didn't have high expectations of this but had read that at 6pm 20,000 egrets fly in to this small town to sleep after a day of eating insects in the rice fields. And honestly I wasn't disappointed! It was amazing to see all the birds swoop in large flocks and take rest on the trees around. Unfortunately my picture don't show how impressive it was but it was one of those you had to be there moments!

For dinner we found a lovely lady on the side of the street selling chicken and rice and then headed back to the homestay for our last sleep in Ubud.Read more