Coast-to-Coast...to Coast: Ubud, Bali

After staying three days in Seminyak, we headed into the mountains to a town called Ubud, that we had heard from many different people was full of culture, art, and great food. And they were right! Ubud was one of the coolest places we had seen up until that point in our three months of traveling. The place we were staying had free transfer on the backs of motorbikes to the town center everyday before 6pm so we took advantage of that. The first afternoon there, we had them take us to the Sacred Monkey Forest, where there were hundreds of monkeys amidst the temples and ruins. There were a few baby monkeys that were clinging to their mommys...eeeeek! So adorable! I'll post pictures at the bottom of this post.

Let me take a minute to address the issue of motorbikes in Bali. As the main means of transport on extremely narrow roads, many motorbikes take it upon themselves to weave in and out of "traffic" nearly causing many accidents but not often actually causing an accident, or at least any that we saw. The cars also take it upon themselves to pass the motorbikes, which can be very scary, especially when there's another car coming from the other direction and it looks like they may crash...but they don't. It's like a zoo out there to say the least. Stop signs are suggestions, road lines and lanes...wait, what's a lane? Get the picture, it was crazy.

We were excited to find out that there were many vegetarian options in Bali at restaurants. Since we had heard horror stories about the safety standards of food and more specifically meat, we decided to stick mainly with a vegetarian diet and maybe occasionally try a little meat.

We spent a lot of our time in Ubud shopping at some of cool shops that lines every street and exploring many of the temples and palaces in the area. One afternoon, we did a ridge walk along the tops of a group of hills just outside the main town center. Another day, we rented a scooter and drove to some of the temples and ruins that were a little farther away. At one of the temples that we went to that was built into a hillside, it started to downpour. It's the rainy season in Bali this time of year so we expected it to rain at least once a day but usually not for very long. But this time it rained for hours. And we just hung out under this roof thing, until eventually we realized it probably wasn't going to stop. So I rigged a rain jacket out of the waterproof backpack cover I had and tucked it over my head and under the motorbike helmet I was wearing to keep my backpack carrying our phone and camera dry. It also kept me fairly dry as well.

Our last day in Ubud before we flew to Cambodia, I took a Balinese cooking class that was highly recommended to me and Don did a cycling tour to a few sights in the area. The cooking class was phenomenal!!! I am in love with Balinese food now...so delicious! And now I can cook it too! The class was definitely one of the highlights of Bali for me; the teacher was wonderful and made the learning experience very fun and interesting.