Bali

We arrived in Ubud and could not have been closer to monkey forest, I know I wanted central but the location was way too noisy! Plus the monkeys were in the garden by the pool stealing food and even sun tan lotion at any opportunity. I actually had an NDE (near death experience for all those who don't abbrev on a regular). Sunbathing by the pool someone drew my attention to the monkeys about to steal our things, they had already taken two sun tan lotion bottles, albeit pretty empty, in the morning. I grabbed our water bottle and jumped out of the way, the monkey looked me in the eye (which apparently your not supposed to do with them) and even took a swipe for me as I jumped out of the way. In hindsight I probably should have just let him steal the water but I'd like to think it was out of principal I didn't want the bugger taking more of our things.

The first night we went to a place called watercress for evening meal, lots of healthy veggie and vegan options in ubud and it has a really creative and laid back atmosphere. We found a reggae bar called Bamboo that had an amazing band on and spent the night singing and dancing. The next day we went to jungle fish, like a beach club but in the jungle! It's a ten minute taxi ride out of ubud but definitely worth a visit, chilled beach vibes, good food and drinks all day! We were so lazy we ended up staying for our evening meal but with a setting that good it seemed silly not to. Bails was suffering his first bintang hangover and I made us move rooms for the first time at our hotel (due to a faulty shower) he was not happy about this in his current fragile state. On our last day we found a really nice restaurant called the the 3 monkeys, so nice that we ate there twice in one day!

The next day I was unfortunately not very well, Bali belly had fully got me in its grip 😷 so we didn't venture far. Booked to climb Mount Batur for sunrise and really hoped I would be feeling better by the time the 2am pick up arrived. So we drag ourselves out of bed and wait for an hour to be collected, return to bed pretty fuming and now wet as it started to rain. No sooner have we fallen back to sleep do we get a 7am rude awakening by someone banging on our door saying we are going to the Gili islands. Turns out the company had got the bookings mixed up, so we managed to get some money back and the Mount Batur trip and transfer to the Gili's will all happen on the same day, not ideal but at least we still get to do them both. I resorted to pharmaceutical intervention to help with my Bali belly and guarantee I can climb the mountain. This then causes me to swell up like the elephant woman 🐘 swollen hands and face! The climb was harder than I expected and in the pitch black with only a torch to light the path. Don't expect to be the only one up there as there are hundreds of people with other tour guides. We didn't have the greatest sunrise as it was pretty cloudy but it still felt like an achievement, especially after not being very well!Read more