Legian to Ubud

So it’s about 10.00pm here in Ubud and we’ve had an adventurous day but now not enough time to really write all that I’d like to.

- Travel day
- Waiting, waiting
- First morning in days it wasn't raining
- Then it started
- Wishfully, wistfully looking at the pool
- Holiday Bali hair: I like it!
- Trying to stay in the moment as I'm drifting into all I need to do when I get home: appointments, work (ugh), das Germans
- Sun's out and shining!!! And we'll be in a car!! Ahh the irony
- But glad to be on the move again
- Packed pretty quickly and had breakfast (no milk – there’s a story there) and Mick and I had last night's leftovers from the Italian restaurant. For me it was 2 small slices of ciabatta - delish
- Said goodbye to the lovely staff and we set off on a gorgeous sunny, clear day
- Drove through heavy traffic to Denpasar. A very pretty, small city with immaculate tropical gardens and street plantings everywhere
- Beautiful and well cared-for temples, majestic Balinese architecture governmental and organisational buildings that were large but not tall. Our driver said the maximum height for a building here is 4 storeys because of earthquakes and also because of the Hindu religion – your structures can’t push into the realm of the gods.
- Stopped at a batik factory and it was lovely to see how it was made. Lots of gorgeous batiks and some very, very expensive because they were all hand drawn and dyed and rightly so.
We stopped at a luwak coffee place which was actually very interesting in the tasting paddle they gave us for free with 14 different types of coffees and herbal teas. We had to pay for the lewak coffee, though I’ve had it a few times here before and I’m not a fan but when in Bali… Poor lewaks. I believe a conservation effort is in progress to prevent the industry where the lewaks eat the coffee beans and, after digesting, poo out the beans which are then cleaned, roasted and made into coffee. I don’t like contributing to the problem but it happened.

Then to the bloody silver factory. I reckon they thought caching!! when they saw me rock in with my armful of hilltribe bracelets but nup. But we saw a guy making a very intricate bangle using a number of different drills, so I reckon his second job is a dentist.

Went to a beautiful temple that I’ve been to several times before. It’s very lovely and serene and big enough for it to be interesting but not small either, Gods, goddesses, flags, offerings, flowers, fish, gilded wood, incense, manicured gardens and the elegant Balinese thatched rooves (one of which was being re-thatched OMG what a hot and hard job, also because the boys had to be in temple sarongs to do it too!!). Mick and I looked cute in our sarongs and Mick had a jaunty headband as well 😊.

Off to a waterfall. Hmmm very pretty in a deep gorge but it was dotted with resorts and restaurants so a lot of the beauty was lost. I decided to stay at the top and have a small soft-drink (not go down the stairs) in a soul destroying lookout packed with Indians, Philippinos and Russians with their cigarettes, drones, noisy fucking kids, flouro shorts and vampire complexions and psycho-coloured eyes. Ugh.

Then the loooong traffic snarl into Ubud:
- A gazillion motorbikes, even a pink one
- Beautiful birdcages with their tops made out of gold-stapmed batik - pink, blue, green, brown, red and yellow
- Life-sized anmials made out of twisted wooden branches
- Big, heavy, dusty furniture made out of massive trees still in their original form
- A cubic metre of live chickes, caramel and black, ready to be made into sate ayam I reckon
- Small shops of fruits and baskets for temple offereings
- Temples, temples and more temples, oh, and silver shops
- Hugely tall and graceful bamboo dragons haning over the road - easily 10 metres in height - adorned with coloured ribbons, sashes and beads
- Pandan and rice paddies
- Shops selling large stone carvings: monkeys, buddhas, standing Hindu gods and godesses
- Traffic getting heavier as we crawl closer to Ubud
- A woman in the back seat of a car wering and intricate gold headdress of flowers, vines and leaves - very beautiful - she must have been at a ceremony
- Glimpses of white-clad Balinese men and women sitting inside temples and praying.

Got to the “resort” where they told us we needed to get on a motor bike because a car couldn’t get to the resort. Well, Wasn’t. That. A. Suprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had a moment where I thought yes I could do that – fang it on the back of a motor bike but then common sense took over: no helmet, no travel insurance for motor bikes, skirt would have been up to my crotch. Nah we walked.

By way of a summary:
- Walked about 500 m to the resort
- There’s no denying it, we are in the middle of working rice paddies: ducks, herons, birds, people working
- Villa nice but very lean on the design elements
- All got in the pool and it started to rain
- Went to dinner and oh my, there were fireflies in the rice paddies, dancing and flickering and sparkling in the deep dark!!!!!
- Songs of frogs, crickets and bugs, punctuating the silence
- Shared the restaurant with dozens of geckoes.Read more