Today is a day devoted to the exploration and appreciation of Ubud*.
I wake up quite early, and decide to walk around before breakfast. The neighbourhood is so lively; there are groups of small houses... it seems many generations live together in the closest proximity, sharing the same yard, where there is always a temple; girls are sweeping the dusty road with brooms made of twigs, women are placing the offerings outside the main entrance of the houses, men run from one place to the other. My engineering soul is glad to be witnessing the great deal of construction going on, and the use of bamboo everywhere-it should be abundant around here- is impressive.
Everyone seems so friendly, with the exception of the dogs. For someone who feels as uncomfortable around barking dogs as I do, walking around Ubud alone may quickly become unbearable. The locals laugh at me, and one of them offers to ride me back to the hotel on his motorbike, an invitation which I accept as gra(t)(c)efully as I can.
Back to the hotel I ask one of the compulsively kind staff to serve us breakfast, after being overwhelmed with questions, and set out to wake up the Man. He arrives at the terrace, where the first dish of a lovely breakfast has been served with me happily sipping a cup of aromatic local coffee in the background. Everything is delicious... let the day begin!
Our first stop is the Neka gallery. We are the only visitors, and wander through a rich collection of paintings, the guard following us in every room. We walk a bit more in the streets of Ubud, stopping every now and then to hydrate with delicious watermelon juices-ask them not to add any water. We end up in a wood-carving workshop, where we spend three hours making our own artifacts under the instructions of a balinese artist.
We lunch in an establishment on Monkey Forest Rd, where we find it a bit difficult to find local dishes in a menu featuring anything from Spanakopita (greek pie with feta cheese and spinach!) to spanish tapas and pizzas. I succeed in locating a 'balinese chicken', and relax overlooking the rice fields where the ducklings are having lunch as well, noisily gulping through the water.
Some of them have a pretty developed fashion sense:
We continue walking toward the south along Monkey Forest Rd, making our way through what seems to be a children-hive, all in school uniforms, running back home after school. But we are looking for what else but the Monkey Forest! Apart from being the residence of countless monkeys,
the Monkey Forest is also home to the Pura Dalem Agung, the first temple that we will visit in Bali. It is the temple of the dead; there is one such temple in every village, normally surrounded by the graveyard. Before entering, we need to wear sarongs around our waists to pay respect to the temple.
Leaving the Monkey Forest we continue walking south, entering the village of Nyuhkuning. Yes, we finally found the graficity we were looking for... I feel the people around me want to take my picture as much as I want to take theirs!
We decide to continue walking towards Pengosekan. It is around this point, walking along a curvy "highway" with no pavement that I realize it is going to get dark soon, and we still need to walk for at least half an hour to get anywhere near a pavement. The Man decides that "I am lost" would be more suitable to describe the situation. We walk a bit more, take a turn (now I am lost), and meet a family of five, none of whom speaks english to my despair. To cut a long story short, somewhere along the way a taxi driver finds us and takes us back to Ubud (he also rips us off, but that's the price we have to pay for graficity). The Man gets a balinese massage, I get a Tiger beer and hang out to a bar featuring live traditional music. There's a man playing with his son(?), little cutie glows from excitement whenever there's some clapping. BTW don't bother checking out the shops in central Ubud. They're more expensive than Athens!
The day finishes with a visit in Ubud palace, where we get to sit in the royal yard under the open sky, and enjoy Gamelan music, played by a band of about 20 impressively well dressed Balinese people. After a while, the dancers make their way to the stage. First, three elegant ladies in elaborate dressing and make-up dance the Legong for us. I have never seen more intense eye movements in my life.
Afterward, we watch the more vivid Barong dance. The Barong, protecting the good and enacted by two dancers, and the evil monkey(!not the one in your closet!) are certainly the highlights of the show.
Tips: Read the story before you go, as it may not come out as explicitly as what you are used to. We got the tickets for 80.000Rp each, in the morning from the tourist centre right across the road. They had an extensive list of all the dance performances for the night (more than 10), could sell tickets for all of them, and were organizing free buses in the evening for the venues that were further away.*Our satt-ratio, defined as the things we intended to do over the things actually done was about 30%.
next dish served here
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