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Published: April 8th 2010
Bali Day 6 001
Restoration of the fence surrounding the templeIn large part due to the cacophony of the millions of roosters that seem to live in Ubud, I was awake bright and early. What is a girl to do at 5:45 am with nowhere to go ... email her mother of course! There were some serious questions about souvenir ideas that needed to be answered! The boys (that's you dad and JF!) are hard to shop for and I refuse to get another damn t-shirt!
I headed to breakfast to only happily discover that they had banana pancakes ... yay! The lady who prepares breakfast is also the same one that brings you the trays when you order room service. I don't have the heart to tell her that my name is not actually Calorine ... this is the woman who has control over my banana pancakes after all. She makes these little handmade donuts too. She's my new best friend in Bali!
The hotel here is a little out of the ways (you should see the winding road that gets us here!) so they have a shuttle that drops you off into the centre of town. They run every couple of hours so it's actually quite convenient.
Bali Day 6 002
Not a happy little fellow! I wasn't sure I wanted to book a hotel so far from the town centre but I certainly do not regret my choice ... it is truly paradise here.
So I took the 9 am shuttle and seeing that I was the only one taking it I asked if he could drop me off at the Monkey Forest Sanctuary instead which would save me the one kilometer walk from the normal drop off point. The name pretty much explains it. It is a forest (or more like a jungle) that houses three temples as well as two graveyards. The forest is also home to approximately 300 Balinese macaques. Having had a run in already with a water stealing macaque, I decided to leave the water bottles at the hotel and went to the ticket booth ready to hear the speech on how I needed to keep everything securely fastened to my person or risk losing it. Nothing of the sort! So I paid my 20,000 rupiahs and quickly came upon a few monkeys just hanging out at the entrance way. They had just dumped out a big pile of sweet potatoes so they were all quite occupied by that
Bali Day 6 003
A little grooming so I was of no interest to them.
It is truly a stunning place with such an atmosphere and of course the monkeys add the entertainment value. I could have sat there looking at them all day long. Their mannerisms are so human-like that you are practically just waiting for one of them to turn around and say something to you. One thing that definitely brought them out was when the gentleman was going around making the offerings to the Gods. The offerings are small baskets made from banana leaves and contain flowers, rice, food and incense. You actually see them in front of all of the shops ... actually you see them practically everywhere. Even some of the taxi cabs have them tucked under their neon on the roof of the car. So needless to say that flowers and food attract these curious little beasts. They say that the spirit gets the essence of the offering instantly so it's actually okay that they are eaten rather quickly after being set down.
So there was a lot of eating, playing, grooming and ummm ... monkey business ... going on. Once in a while you would hear a couple
of them fighting and even more often you would hear some tourist squealing because of something the monkeys did. There were also quite a few small babies that just tug at your heart string ... so cute. And with babies came very protective mothers. I did have a close encounter ... so close that his tail brushed across my forehead. I leaned my elbows on the side of this fence so that I could take a photo with my full zoom out (there was a mother holding a sleeping baby and she was sitting on this branch quite high up) and was essentially bracing myself. Well the monkey didn't care that I was about to take a picture and it essentially walked right in front of me. He literally brushed up against my camera and I literally felt his tail on my head. This time it was me who was the squealing tourist ... scared the crap out of me. The big group of tourists from the UK found that really funny! I think that you'll see from the photos that I've posted that I just had to much fun taking photos of these little guys.
So from there,
I just slowly walked up Monkey Forest Road and popped in to a lot of the shops to do some souvenir shopping. I did manage to find a small cookbook with traditional Indonesian recipes and with that found some sea salt that was cultivated here in Bali. The other thing that made my day was that I finally found some mangosteens ... my favorite fruit since having first tried them in Thailand. So for about $ 3.00 I got one kilogram which is about 9 mangosteens. I probably could have them gotten them much cheaper but I just have issues with bargaining down something that cheap ... to think that I bought 4 of them in Chinatown in Toronto and it cost me almost $ 7.00!
By the time, I was done with the souvenir shopping it was time to head back towards the Ubud Tourist Information Office for my shuttle pickup. Turns out the guy didn't recognize me so he left. I had to call the hotel and ended up waiting for about 45 minutes. Good thing that the tourist office was right there because for about 10 cents I could make that phone call to the hotel
Bali Day 6 006
Not bothered by tourists and they came right away to get me. So now I am safely tucked in my room after another beautiful day in Bali. The toad has just come out and it particularly vocal tonight as are the crickets ... calming sounds to fall asleep to!
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Mum~
non-member comment
I recall how amazed we were at seeing a couple monkeys in the trees in Belize {?} So I can only imagine how it was to see so many of them all over the place! They steal out of the offerings to the Gods??? Yikes!!! Then again, I am sure the Gods have a good laugh more than anything else!!! All is well at home. I visit Charlotte every other day this time but I stay longer. A good compromise:) Oh! and meant to tell you...YES! those sweet potato slices are highly addictive! Be safe and keep enjoying Bali without a worry in the world*