Temples, traditional dances and shopping

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All the books praise Ubud a lot, so we thought we should see the capital of Balinese culture, art and entertainment. We booked a hotel in a hurry the evening before arrival; it was far out of town, but they provided a shuttle service to town and there was a nice pool. It was a strange place… it needed a bit of maintenance but it had something charming and for some kind of reason we got a royal suite, so I did not complain ( for now!).

Anyway, first day Ubud ended up being a day in the water: I (stef) spent the entire afternoon with Skye driving from one hospital to the next one; his hand got stuck earlier that morning in the Jacuzzi ( the whole that sucks air to create the bubbles) and looked quite blue and sprained and he was crying a lot… X-rays were made in the third hospital because in the hospital of Ubud there was no X-ray machine and in the second hospital the machine was broken! Anyway, back to the Ubud clinic with the X-rays where I woke up the doctor( I don’t know what his specialty was but not what Skye needed) from his nappy and he wondered what I did there?? Didn’t they give you a diagnosis in the hospital? NO, they sent me back to you… Okay, so he took out the X-ray, held it in the air, looked 10 seconds and concluded that nothing was broken, only the soft tissue was swollen. I didn’t get happy about this, waisted a day and €50 for an X-ray without proper diagnosis… Skye wasn’t bothered that much anymore so maybe it wasn’t that bad at all?

Back in the hotel I asked for some insurance papers because this was clearly their responsibility, but 3 days later we left without any papers (of course), so bye bye compensation…

So day 2 we could finally see a bit of Ubud.

First we headed to Monkey Forest, a little piece of jungle where you get are overwhelmed by ... Monkeys. There are 3 temples here and there are many more apes, harrasing you all the time. They got hold of a plastic bag with dypers (pampers), because they thought there was food in it... When we told the beast off we got a nasty look in return with some big teeth... we weren't charmed by these Monkeys (Macaques).

We saw the Ubud Palace, partly accessible for the public, but still inhabited by some Royal family members…, a little further the Water Temple also used by the Royal family for praying, but a nice area where during the right season lots of lotus flowers grow in a pond and where some typical Balinese dances are performed. We saw a lot of rain that day and Jesper took advantage of this to chill out with coffee in the lotus bar, but also suffering from we don’t know what in his stomach… (let’s not discuss the details…). I guess we take turns!

Ubud is a real shopping place with on the central market and everywhere around actually, lots of hand crafts for sale and rubbish as well. Bidding again is the message: first half their price and then try to stick to your offer, it works!! It is also a very noisy and busy place, lots of scooters and cars, and lots of people.

Day 3 Jesper took a cooking course, but as we had suspected, it was more for looking then for creating something yourself. Besides stiring in the pan there were not many tasks, unfortunately. The dishes were very tastefull though and I’m sure it will contribute somehow to the cooking at home and at belgocatering. During the time Jesper was ‘cooking’, me and the kids cooked some spaghetti Bolognese ( for the first time we prepared a warm meal- I can tell you we’ve been fantasizing already a lot about food). Carole, anoter guest, joined us and we had a lovely Western meal, yummie! Later on me and the kids joined Jesper in the center and did some more walking around and drinking juices. Skye got himself a ‘Messi’ (FCB) outfit, he was proud. We grabbed us a bite (a nice one, here is where my second favourite dish comes-something with : tuna sambal…) and left to Ubud Palace for some Legong and Barong dance performance. This was very nice, Liv was very excited afterwards and the boys watched it with joy. Now and then Ask walked a bit away finding a new friend in the crowd, hanging on to them and charming them and so ended up bringing in popcorn and chocolate to his brother and sister. Ask was for some people the second performance…!

Tomorrow we leave Ubud and honoustly, we’re happy about that. All in all we think it’s too touristy and we miss the ocean!

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