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Published: March 25th 2010
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We arrived in Ubud, Bali, quite late in the evening and settled down in a hotel with all three of us in a very grande room, which although being a bit more than we wanted to pay, did afford us the first hot shower we had had since arriving in Indonesia. Ubud was lovely, it had a really quaint feel to it that we hadn't really experienced before and was very different to the brash Kuta side of Bali that we had come to expect. Ashleigh and I spent the first morning browsing around one of the markets, bartering over-enthusiastically for souvenir jewellery before heading out to spend our money in the boutique shops and watch local women selling the Hindu sacred offerings that most establishments leave outside their doorways.
After lunch, it began to rain, so at a loose end we all decided to go for a Balinese massage. Not quite sure what to expect, we were surprised when they asked us to strip almost completely. We eventually convinced them to close the curtains between our beds to preserve some dignity, but I had the misfortune of being next to the curtainless window that was overlooked by a high
rise building. After entertaining all of the neighbours, we had an hour of niceness punctuated by minutes of intense agony, not helped by the masseuse asking me a question I couldn't understand, I made the error of answering 'yes' only realising minutes later that she was asking me whether I would like to be pummelled harder, it turned out Tom made the same mistake too.
Ashleigh became a minor celbrity in Bali, with numerous cases of mistaken identity. One man riding past her shouting 'you look like Lady Diana', we thought yes,yes there could be a very slight resemblance there. Our reasoning was shot to pieces when an hour later another man shouted at her 'hey, you look like Beyonce'. We were all in tears.
Early the next day we decided to go to the monkey temple. A word of advice for any prospective visitors: don't do it! The monkeys though hilariously cute at times became pure evil at the sight of bananas. We had put some inside Ashleigh's bag (which she then made me carry) and the monkeys were running all over us, trying to yank Ash's bag off my shoulder. One monkey climbed straight onto the
top of my head, and I started getting really upset trying to get it off. A circle of tourists including Tom and Ash just stood around me in fits of laughter shouting nonsensical words of advice. Meanwhile I managed to shake the monkey off so that it was hanging off my hair in front of my face, as if this wasn't enough, when it did eventually fall off it started running at me threatening to bite me whilst hissing and baring it's teeth. I was so scared I had to stand with the ranger men for about 20 minutes and even then we had baby monkeys crawling all over us ripping up our guidebook, picking our pockets and trying to tear open our bag. On the other hand Tom loved it and had no qualms about allowing them to clambour all over him, but even he met his match when a massive male monkey barred our path,hissing and chasing us. We watched as he stole our only bottle of water from us, took two mouthfuls from it and then proceeded to pour the other two litres into a pond. I am officially off monkeys for life - or at least
Balinese Macaques that live in temples.
After escaping the monkeys we decided to take a 7k walk around the outskirts of Bali and through the rice paddies. The scenery was stunning but about half way through the walk the heavens opened, we took shelter in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere which although looked nice had terrible food. After waiting for an hour, we called a taxi to take us through the already flooded roads back to the hotel, where we sat out the biggest and most awe-inspiring storm i have ever seen (there were alot during our visit to Indonesia.) The thunder was actually shaking the foundations of our hotel - it felt like small earthquakes. Once the storm had passed, we headed out to a local reggae bar where we danced the night away to athe sound of Bob Marley covers before being followed all the way back to our hotel by a dog who we had pat on the way out of the bar. It was the strangest thing, the dog kept running ahead and then waiting for us to catch up, he then ran to our hotel and waited before running up the stairs
to our room where he patiently sat again. Bizarre! We named him BW and he spent the next 4 hours sat outside scratching at the door and whining as meanie Ashleigh wouldn't let him in.
By morning BW had gone and it was time for us to leave beautiful Ubud and the many of wonders of Indonesia behind. Our experience of Indonesia was very varied but always magical. Whether it was orangutans, bus journeys from hell, beautiful beaches, volcanoes or the people who seemed to be either incredibly friendly and helpful or comically rude - whereby you ask them a question to which they will say no and turn their back on you. These moments sum up our experience of Indonesia as a country of contradictions and polar opposites, where the highs are surreal and the lows are rock bottom which somehow makes the experience all the more special and definitely my favourite country that we have visited so far.
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Mum G
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Magical Monkeys
Well I'm in the middle of a truly awful day at work, the day's grey and wet when into my inbox pings a little bit of south east Asian sunshine! As always your blog has put a smile on my face darling! What is that monkey whispering to Tom? Your day out at the Padangtegal Mandala Wistata Wanara Wana Sacred Monkey Forest Santuary (Check out photo 16 - Glad I'm not in the office answering the phone there!!) looked like great fun! Speak soon, Love Mumxx