tues day 60

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Yesterday evening Danielle and I booked to be taken an hours drive north to a small town called Ubod. One way was 60,000 rupiah - £3 with just having to make your own way back. On the journey up I sat next to and chatted with a nice man from Holland. We all got dropped off at a central car park from which the monkey forest was signposted so we decided that would be our first stop. Only about a ten minute walk away, paying a small entry fee and picking up a map we headed in. The forest was quite small with obvious paths and easily signposted quite a novelty really after the walking I did in Malaysia! There were stalls selling big bunches of bananas to feed to the macaques, which of course the monkeys were fully aware of - so coming very close and even jumping and climbing on people and seemed very tame. Further on was a small cemetery and a few Hindu temples - with a sign explaining that every 5yrs they remove the corpses from the ground, take them through the town and bury them in the tradional Hindu way. Walking on - with macaques everywhere we ended up at a deer enclosure, having to retrace our steps we made it out the forest and back to the centre. Ubod being smaller than Seminyak it wasn't overrun with tourists with slightly more traditional shops, and completely inland so no beach. After booking our transport back this evening we headed up through the town to a market which not being quite as impressive as the markets in Bangkok we didn't stay too long - but did shelter from a heavy downpour that lasted just a few minutes. Next stop would be a visit to the rice terraces, but being too far to walk to we hired a driver for the trip. The first rice terrace was a big visitor attraction also containing a cafe selling the kopi lowak coffee ( the same cat poo coffee I tried in Yogyakarta) after being given a nice selection of coffees and teas to sample and sheltering from the next downpour - this one lasting a lot longer! We had a walk around the terraces. They reminded me a little of the tea plantations in the sense of being vast, very green and covering every available spot on the hillside. Next stop was to photograph another rice terrace on the way back to Ubod. We popped into a cafe to have a bite to eat while waiting for the return transport - an hours journey later and we were back at the hostel relaxing for the evening. It had been a nice day seeing another side to Bali, being quite different to the tourist trap of seminyak.

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