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| Entrance to the bungalows |
Breakfast consisted of fruit salad, tea
or Balinese coffee (definitely not to be drunk with milk), eggs (poached eggs Balinese
style is pretty different), toast with butter & jam and banana pancakes
with palm sugar & coconut (I'm not to keen on cooked bananas so I'm having plain pancakes now). The staff are
great and very friendly.
We decided to walk along Monkey
Forest Rd after breakfast look at the shops - mainly selling
tourist stuff and clothing, and interspersed with hotels and eateries. By
hotels, I mean groups of cottages behind narrow entrances guarded by
the usual collection of statues and shrines. It was pretty warm, but we
continued on to the Monkey Forest,
ominously showing a First Aid station near the entrance. The monkeys are
notoriously aggressive, or at least unafraid, and will steal food, etc. from
unsuspecting tourists.
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| A 'friendly' monkey |
The sanctuary is larger than I remember, and so we spent
quite a while exploring the area, including a sacred spring down in the valley
- it was not only hot, but incredibly humid so it was like walking in a sauna.
Photography was also difficult as the sunlight filtering through the jungle
vegetation created areas of incredibly high contrast.
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| A woman making an offering at the temple within Monkey Forest |
We'd almost finished and were heading out when Frances
decided to take a swig from her plastic water bottle. Before anyone knew what
was happening, a monkey ran to Frances,
up to her shoulder and stole the water bottle, spraying water everywhere.Frances
was quite shocked by the suddenness of it all but fortunately she only received a
scratch on her hand. Consequently we had to make use of the first aid station we'd seen at the entrance,
attended by a nurse in an extremely highly air-conditioned room. It was almost too
cold after the outside atmosphere. After washing/rinsing her hand for five
minutes, the nurse disinfected the wound and allowed us to leave - she said she
deals with about three bites a day, but fortunately the monkeys do not have
rabies!
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| Mixed Juice drink with decoration |
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| At the Tropical View Cae |
We decided to walk back to Puri Saraswati along Hanuman
Road which is quite similar to Monkey Forest Rd. Along
the way we stopped for refreshment at the Tropical View cafe which did indeed
have an excellent view of rice paddy fields - the first Frances
had seen here. The overall cost of food and drink is quite low, although higher than outside Ubud and other tourist centres, and almost always presented well, with Balinese touches like hand-made decorations.
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| Pool in Puri Saraswati |
By the time we arrived back at Puri Saraswati over 3 hours
later, we were desperate for a swim in their pool which was
immensely welcome after the long, hot walk.
After the refreshing plunge, we met
up with Tamar & John at Cafe Luna for lunch - one of the most well-know
cafes in Ubud and run by Janet DeNeefe. She met a Balinese man from Ubud in
1984, and moved there. They own the Casa Luna and Indus
restaurants, and more recently, Bar Luna. She has published a book on Balinese
cooking and runs a Cooking School
where people are taught the secrets of Balinese cooking. She also conceived and co-founded the the annual Ubud Writers Festival, as a healing project in response to the first Bali bombing, which is now a major annual event in Ubud.
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| Lunch in Cafe Luna |
The food at Cafe Luna, although sounding quite pedestrian on
the menu was very good. Frances & Tamar both had the Nasi Campur, a selection
of small dishes serves with a 'cone' of the local pink/white rice. I had a
seafood 'paella' made with a tomato-based sauce and saffron rice - really
delicious - while John had a Tempe-based dish which he enjoyed as well.
After lunch, it was still hot, time for another plunge in the
pool. Frances
said it was the first time she'd seen me swim twice in one day!
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| View of the Barong performance with the temple in the background |
We decided to have dinner at next-door Lotus Cafe as Frances
wanted to try the Rijsttafel
which is a dish created when Indonesia was a Dutch colony, and is a type of
banquet with many small dishes of different foods. the Cafe/restaurant backs on
to the Lotus Temple
- a beautiful spot to eat or just chill.
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| Blurry close-up of the Legong dance |
About three times a week there are performances (mainly for
tourists) in the temple and there happened to be one that night - Legong (female
dancers) and Barong (storytelling). Although some distance away across the
lotus pond, we could still see and hear (very clearly) the gamelan orchestra.
We were so impressed that we decided to go to a performance if we had a chance.
