Ubud

We got an Uber taxi from Kuta to Ubud which only took an hour. After a walk around the town we decided to go to the Monkey Forest which was located at the edge of the town. It was quite a peaceful area containing loads of trees and a stream that runs through the forest area, sometimes it was hard to imagine that the town was so close by as you couldn't hear a thing in the forest. There were about 700 monkeys living in the forest of all different ages. Some of them were quite cute and then others were naughty. Una had her water bottle with her and the monkeys kept jumping up onto her, trying to steal the bottle from her. I didn't really like that it scared me a little bit but Eadaoin and Una loved it.

The following morning we got picked up from our hotel at 2am and brought to the base of Mount Batur. It was a volcanic mountain that people climb in the dark with headlights and then arrive at the top just in time to watch the sunrise. The hike was difficult at times and we climbed to 1717m but it was cool to see a stream of people's headlights all climbing up the mountain. The sunrise was very pretty and we felt such an achievement for making it to the top on time too. We ate breakfast on top of the mountain and then saw monkeys steal the leftovers. The descent was difficult as there was a lot of unsteady lava rocks that we had to walk over but as it was brighter we were able to see the unsteady rocks compared to when we ascended. I really enjoyed this hike, it wasn't too hot or too hard and then you were rewarded by watching the beautiful sunrise too. That evening we treated ourselves to a delicious dinner at the Begek Bengil Dirty Duck restaurant which had a lovely view over the paddy fields.Read more