Today is our last planned day for the holiday. We have booked a driver through Bali Honest Driver for 8 hours today. Our plan is to hit Ubud and look for a carving – specifically a coat rack for our laundry to hang back packs off. Stu has been researching on instagram before we came.
Of course we started our day with the obligatory, and I do mean obligatory 6km walk. I have a touch of Bali Belly (first time ever) but we still did our pre-breakfast 6km.
Our driver Nyoman arrived just after 9 and we headed off to Ubud for the day. Surprisingly he was happy just to take us up to Ubud to shop and have lunch. In the past the drivers have tried to get you to go to places and not just park while you do what you want to do. As we drove through the wood carving village he did over hear that we wanted to buy a carving – more to come.
Nyoman dropped us off at the Monkey Forest – this has changed dramatically, There is no car parking near there anymore and you have to go in through a main entrance (which is not where it used to be). This has been totally done up has a huge entry area that is reminiscent of places like Singapore Zoo. It is very professional now.
We did our walk through the monkey forrest, saw lots of monkeys and even watched a monkey try to take a ladies backpack – she stupidly had open food in it.
We wandered up Monkey Forest Road looking in shops and came across a little frozen yoghurt place and Harriet and Beaks made me go in. Mind you I had strawberry and original so it doesn’t count because there was chocolate on offer. I even had fruit as my topping – cancelling any calories.
On the way up the road we saw two large floats (for want of a better word) which is apparently for the cremation of a member of a royal family. I think the body goes in the seat.
They are doing the markets up at the moment, there seems to be a major lot of public works being done to modernise everything tourists visit, so they are now spread out along a street I had never walked up before. We did the entire length and then back to about half way where there was a cross street that lead to Ibu Oka a restaurant that does Babi Guling or suckling pig. The old woman in the photo is someone we bought a lot of carvings off – hence her smile.
Nyoman picked us up about 1:30 and we were off again. He asked if we still wanted a carving which we did so he took us to a woodcarver’s house – again we left and they were all smiles.
We still had a couple of hours left on our booking so he took us to the Waterfall Tegenungan. Think Bali Beach Club but at a waterfall – there is a club down the bottom playing dance music with a huge pool full of 20 somethings. The water comes from Mt Kintamani but is was very dirty from all of the rain.
We ended the day with you guessed it another 6km walk (and dinner) I think my steps are at 26000 today.
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