9. Ubud

Today we decided to visit the famous Tegallalang rice fields . We grabbed a taxi from our homestay and had a very scenic drive there . When we arrived , the place was extremely busy , luckily people seemed more interested with taking pictures of themselves on the Bali swings than the rice fields , so we managed to get out of the crowds quite quickly .
The rice fields were beautiful , we walked a fair distance around them and the trekking path took us through some smallholdings - we saw lots of chickens and some cows too . We finally felt like we were experiencing authentic Bali culture , with locals wading through the rice fields wearing banana leaf hats.
It took us about 90 mins to walk around the rice fields , we grabbed an iced brown sugar coffee ( tastes like creme brule!) afterwards and met our taxi driver .
On the way back , he dropped us off at the Bali Pulina coffee plantation - home to the famous Kopi Luwak coffee. Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected, dried and roasted . The coffee tastes very strong , but actually contains much less caffeine than usual coffee. It's also the world's most expensive coffee due to the process.
They had two tame Civets there , one of them was playing around in the garden and the lady that worked there picked it up and let us stroke him . They are so cute and comical , I think it's my new favourite animal !
At the end of the tour , we had a coffee and tea tasting session . The coffee was just amazing , my personal fave was the avocado flavoured coffee. James' was the vanilla and coconut coffee. Of course we had to try the Kopi Luwak coffee too and it was actually really tasty yet very stong ! ( I know the concept is gross !)
We went a different way back to Ubud , with rice fields either side of the road and lots of temples .
We packed our bags back at the hotel and spent over an hour looking for somewhere to eat . It was so busy everywhere as there is a dance festival for the dead starting tomorrow in Ubud- which we are gutted to be missing .
We went back to our homestay and went to bed quite soon afterwards , we are getting up at 6 to catch our ferry to Gili Trawangan- we are very excited!Read more