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  • Day 5

    Day 5: Ubud Rice Paddies

    June 20, 2016 in Indonesia ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    Again, a day where we had no plans. I'd finally finished editing together the Northern Territory video, and Shandos had finished her blogging (including editing a video of her own), so we were pretty keen to find somewhere with decent Wifi to upload - our hotel's wifi is pretty spotty at best.

    So after a long-ish breakfast we got the 11am shuttle bus into Ubud and wandered for a little while, eventually settling on a large "international restaurant" which had dishes described in six languages and big pictures of everything. Lots of burgers and pizzas, precious little Indonesian fare - yes, we'd stumbled into a ridiculous tourist trap, but at least the wifi was decent. We grabbed some chicken satay skewers and a couple of fruit juices and set about uploading. After an hour or so we were done, and wandered away feeling slightly guilty, but at least we'd gotten done what we needed to.

    When we'd gotten out of the shuttle bus which drops you at a cross-roads, I'd suggested to Shandos that we head west which was the only direction we hadn't explored (including our previous visit here in 2014). And now we had our best unplanned moment so far - Shandos spotted a sign that said "rice paddies 50m -->", down a tiny little alleyway lined with concrete. Keen on exploring, we headed down to see what was up.

    And we were well rewarded, after a rough stumble through some alleyways and a couple of backyards, we emerged blinking into a series of enormous rice paddies bathed in brilliant sunshine. Today was so far the clearest day we'd had (heavy rain overnight had pushed away a lot of the smoke), and the view was just incredible. The fields are so ridiculously green, with a brilliant blue sky, some coconut palms and a few little Indonesian houses dotted around. It's so different here, the way that every house, shop and building is constructed as close to the road as possible, and once you venture more than about 50 metres through the buildings you're just in open fields.

    And indeed that was where we now found ourselves - open fields in front, buildings and urban headaches behind. We pressed on, and soon came across a tiny restaurant in essentially an oversized gazebo or hut. Even though we'd already had a snack we decided it was lunchtime, so settled in for the duration. It was reasonably busy with other tourists, as it seems like there are quite a few homestays and guest houses out in amongst the fields.

    After lunch we followed the trail further and further along, meandering this way and that. Sometimes nearer the river, sometimes further. Occasionally you'd have to dodge a local on a moped but otherwise it was pretty much just us - though we'd continually encounter friendly local farmers as well. After turning off the main road in Ubud just on a whim to follow a small sign, we spent probably 3 hours wandering around out in the fields, and only made it back to town by around 4:30pm (after stopping of course at another farmhouse for a fruit juice!).

    Shandos did a little shopping in town as her sandals were basically worn out already - H&M cheapies aren't really up to the rigours of daily walking, and her canvas bag was absolutely filthy so that got replaced for $2.

    A little more bar hopping and a visit to another Indonesian restaurant for dinner took us through to 7:30pm when we hopped on the shuttle bus back to the hotel for our last night. Ended up staying up much later than intended after downloading the latest Game of Thrones episode on hotel wifi at an excruciating pace. And of course you can't download and not watch, so I didn't end up sleeping until nearly 11:30!

    Probably the most surprising day we've had so far, and definitely one of the best.
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