Ubud, Bali, Indonesia 06/25/08-06/27/08

In many ways, Ubud, Bali is the opposite of Kuta, Bali. Instead of stall after stall of crappy souvenirs and obscene T-shirts, you have art galleries. Instead of people wandering the streets selling drugs or women, people wandering the streets are selling paintings. Instead of Hard Rock Cafe and drunken night clubs, there are quiet restaurants and moss covered temples. Sandy beaches are replaced with rice fields and green hills. Although there are plenty of tourists, there are no hordes. Raucous is replaced with relaxed.

Ubud might be too low-key for some, but I liked it. The town was pleasant enough, and walking through the greenery beyond was better. The moisture seemed to make everything green. All of the concrete had at least some tinge of green to it from moss and the like. So many of the buildings looked ancient, with courtyards and gated walls and shrines instead of just being concrete boxes. Even my US$7 a night hotel struck me as impressive. (The room, not so much.)

The one thing that did get old were the constant calls of "Transport?" from all of the people with motorbikes on the roadside.

From Kuta, Bali I took the Perama shuttle to Ubud. It was supposed to take and hour but ended up taking two becuase, due to a mistake, once we got through town, we had to go back again to pick more people up. You can imagine that some people were not too happy about that.

After settling in to my hotel, I walked around Ubud and had lunch. I walked out of town to the ridge walk, which was very pleasant. The trail started at a Hindu temple along a stream and went up from there. There were several young couples there pitching woo.

After the ridge trail, I tried to find the trail along the river. I walked along roads, some tiny, up stairs guarded by statues of gods and lions, and on tiny dirt footpaths through rice fields. It was all very cool.

I got to another major road and was clearly lost. Someone offered directions and I inadvertantly acquired a guide. I don't generally like having guides, so this was more irritating than helpful. It was the wrong trail anyway. I would have enjoyed it much better without him. The river view was fine, with the terraced rice fields. I got a bit muddy.

The next day, I decided where my next destination would be. Surprisingly, it was back to Jakarta and then to Malaysia. I was going to skip the rest of Indonesia. I know that I had only scratched the surface of Indonesia, but it felt like it was time to go. I cannot see everything everywhere, and I need to guard against burnout. At that moment, I needed a city. A place where I was anonymous and not a tourist to be focused on. I wanted to be in a place where if tourism dried up, the town would not blow away.

I had lunch at Warung Ibu Oka which is famous for its babi guleng (roasted pig). In fact, that seemed to be pretty much all that they served. The babi guleng was very greasy but very tasty. It even had something on it that seemed an awful lot like crumbled blood sausage, which I haven't had for decades.

After lunch, I walked to the Monkey Forest. There were certainly tons of monkeys. The park managers did not seem to disuade people from feeding the monkeys. It was a nice forest. There was a temple up top, and lower, by the stream, there were some lizard statues, a stone bridge, and a few other structures. The trees overhead had vines hanging down from them.

While going down the stairs to the stream, there was a woman whose hand was being held by a monkey. He would not let her go. When she tried to slowly pull away, he bit at her, even breaking the skin a little. She had no food to give him. Eventually, he let her go. It made me even more wary of them than I was. There were a lot of people in that park that seemed to forget that these were wild animals.

The next morning, I took a shuttle to the airport and flew back to Jakarta. On the flight, I saw Gunung Bromo and surroundings from the plane. It was really cool. There was a break in the clouds just so that I could see that. Then the clouds closed in again.