Day 51 - Dancin' In The Rain

An earlier than planned start. First world problems but we ordered breakfast for 9am and they brought it to us at 8.30am. I was still half asleep but it was jump out of bed or be eating cold fried eggs. A tricky choice for both a sleep and egg lover.

Once the still vaguely warm eggs were consumed we headed into Ubud centre to go on the Kajeng rice field walk. Basically a nice, shady walk through rice fields and assorted greenery. We saw lots of butterflies and lizards which I enjoyed and various people trying to get us to buy artworks and/or coconuts which I enjoy less as I hate either ignoring people or saying no. We spotted a group of geese that quickly scarpered into the rice paddy. And the weirdest part, a giant foam demon sculpture just ditched at the side of a field. Our best guess is that it's a hangover from the new year celebration where people make model demons to scare away the 'real' demons. That or Blue Peter in Bali make very different projects to those in the U.K.

The route took us to a lovely little Warung (small family business) called the Sweet Orange Warung. It had beautiful views of the rice paddies and as well as delicious food (banana and cheese filled spring rolls - - amazing) and smoothies being on offer you could buy coconuts which they'd painted into faces based on where squirrels had chewed holes in them. We bought a little one to bring home but you could also buy big ones and write messages on to decorate the Warung. The money goes towards maintaining the local area.

We followed the route back into town via a diversion and Matt standing in paddy mud and headed back to the ranch. We decided we wanted to see some traditional Balinese dancing tonight (well I wanted to) but unfortunately when we asked the 3 people at reception if we had to book tickets in advance we got blank looks and 'taxi?' so ended up traipsing back into town to get tickets (spoiler alert, we could have bought them on the door). More bartering ensued for a taxi home (genuinely I think my least favourite part of the whole trip has been having to barter for anything and everything) and a quick swim before heading out to the dance show at Ubud Palace.

As soon as we arrived at the show an elderly lady was all over us to buy Bintang (beer) and I guess she doubled as usher as she wouldn't let me take the beer until she'd put us in the best available seats. They were pretty good seats, raised up so we could see so she did a fine job. The music and dance is pretty nuts, and the dancers are very talented. Even with the English description of what was going on we didn't really get it. And then the rain started. At first not too bad. As Brits were styled it out. Then the really heavy rain started and all the dancers and musicians left the stage and everyone pegged it over the road to a covered stage. Cue a bun fight for the chairs they were handing down off the stage and people then plonking their chair right in front of there to get a front row view but stopping anyone else getting chairs. It was chaos but we all got seated in the end and on with the show. It maintained its bizarreness but at least the second act had a hint of the panto about it so I could hook in. Lots of weird dancing monkeys and dance offs.

After the show we went to a restaurant called Hujan Locale for a fancy meal and cocktails. It was expensive by Bali standards but the equivalent meal in the U.K. would have been super expensive. Matt had short rib beef, I had squid stuffed with prawns and octopus. All excellent and completely stuffed we went through the taxi fun again and headed back.Read more