Bali - Ubud

Ubud and it's surrounding villages are the cultural center of Bali. As you drive through the villages, it's incredibly exhilarating. There are so many interesting shops and I wish I had days and days to wander through the streets. We moved from the Westin in Nusa Dua to the Barong Resort and Spa in the heart of Ubud. Barong is a Balinese style hotel and is much smaller than the Westin. We had a cottage style room with a private sitout. The kids loved the Westin mainly because it's American style but Prasad and I liked both hotels. The spa and restaurant services at Barong were inexpensive compared to the exorbitant prices at the Westin. Being in the heart of Ubud was thrilling, even though we didn't buy too many things, I shopped and shopped and shopped mainly because it was raining for 2 days and we had nothing else to do. Every time we drove through a new street, I felt like stopping as I spotted more interesting things to see. On our way into Ubud, we stopped in Mas, a village known for its wood carving artistry. The prices marked on the items were outrageous, $1500 for a wood carving! We selected a few pieces thinking we will probably not buy even one but finally purchased a lovely Rama and Sita carving for 10% of the marked price! We went through a couple of other villages, we thought of buying a furniture piece as we always loved the Balinese dining tables at Crate and Barrel but unless you ship a large number of items, the shipping cost is too high for a single item.

That first night, Sindhu and I went to see a Legong and Barong dance program. Barong is dragon character and two people handle the costume and dance. I and Sindhu could not relate to the dance and didn't find it too interesting. Legong on the other hand is a form of a dance drama and it depicts scenes from Hindu mythology and has multiple characters all dressed in colourful costumes. At the beginning of the program, they handed out sheets explaining the various acts in the play, the sheets are available in multiple languages, English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese. We spent the next two days shopping along the streets of Ubud and at the Ubud market. The market was a disappointment, most of the items were of poor quality and the same items were found in every store. We picked up a couple of t-shirts and a few painted wicker fruit baskets. The baskets had a retractable net to keep the fruit flies away, I thought it was a great invention and especially useful in India!

On our 2nd day in Ubud, Shobha and Prashant surprised us at our hotel, we knew they were going to be in Bali, but we were not sure we would meet since they were staying at the Westin in Nusa Dua and we had already moved to our hotel in Ubud by then. We spent a few hours chatting, eating and shopping. It was a perfect way to spend a lazy rainy day.

Our last day was sunny and warm. We took a walk through the Monkey Forest in the morning. As you can guess from the title, there is no dearth of monkeys in that forest. The monkeys have laser eyes as Rushil would say and could spot a banana a mile away. Many people bought bananas to feed the monkeys and the monkeys would jump on them to take the banana away, it was quite frightening to watch. Even though, there are plenty of monkeys in India, it was still fascinating to watch them, especially the babies, we saw one mother with newborn twins carrying them with ease. Next we went to the Elephant Caves. Till now, we had not seen a fully operational temple and we heard from Shobha and Prasad that this was a good temple to visit and they were right. The caves themselves were a small component in the whole experience. The compound was bustling with temple activities. It was poornima, full moon day which is extra special in Bali. They perform special rituals and have more offerings for the gods. The men were preparing elaborate offerings, the women were weaving decorations out of bamboo, the kitchen was busy with the food preparations and everywhere you looked, they had the tiny bamboo trays, with flowers, food and incense being offered to the gods. Inside the elephant caves which is the temple shrine, they had statues of Ganesha, Bhairava and the Siva Lingam. It was a very interesting experience, Prasad had to cover his legs with a sarong before entering and we had our last tender coconut juice before we had to headed to the airport.