Ubud - Bali's bustling, booming centre
14th to 19th January 2017
Our last stop in Bali was Ubud. Ubud is located at the centre of Bali, and is a haven for hippies, artists, yogis, and expats. If you've seen Eat, Pray, Love, you'll recognise Ubud in a heartbeat.
To describe what this town looks like, I'll have to start with the word "green". Aside from the centre, which is packed with more boutiques, cafes, art galleries, and yoga studios than you can shake a stick at, Ubud is filled with rice paddy fields and greenery for miles around.
Central Ubud and the surrounding countryside have 2 very different personalities. The centre hums with a soundtrack of tourist bustle, market chatter, coffee machines, and laid back music drifting from every restaurant (except for the odd one that has Ed Sheeran playing).
Outside, it's quieter, with the sounds of day-to-day family life going on as you pass through little villages, and of course, the ever present crow of roosters.
We explored quite a bit of Ubud, with our cycling tour coming in as the best part. I promise this is not only because it was all downhill cycling. There's also something really lovely about cycling through rice paddy fields, once you don't think too much about losing balance and falling in!
During our cycling tour, we visited a family compound, the type of home most Balinese live in. We learned about the structure and daily life of the compound. It's all tightly bound to the family unit, and you'll find that most Balinese stay within their compound, usually moving only for marriage.
We tried our hands at making some chanan sari offerings. These gorgeous little woven baskets with flowers and herbs are scattered all over Bali. We did our best, but threading bamboo through banana leaves is probably a life skill you need to work at!
Of course, we couldn't leave Ubud without a stroll through its famous Monkey Forest. We were lucky enough to get there early in the morning, before the forest was crowded. It's a pretty cool place, with different groups of monkeys hanging out in each area. They roam free, but naturally enough, fall into different families and mini-communities. Some were still munching on breakfast (bananas definitely proving much more popular than raw sweet potatoes), others were grooming each other or snoozing. As we saw in Japan, hilarious monkey-dramas are inevitable, usually unfolding every 5 minutes or so.
Leaving Ubud, I thought about how to describe it. As with everywhere we have spent time, it is many things, but if I had to sum it up in one phrase, I'd say "Ubud is too cool for school"!
Ubud Snapshots
- Tapas tasting menu at La Ramona.
- Waking up to the sounds of roosters and an almost panoramic view of rice paddy fields.
- Catching glimpses of Mount Batur, Ubud's famous volcano, as we cycled downhill through the countryside.
- Eating nasi campur, a dish which gives you a taste of many different Balinese foods.
- Our driving tour with Agung, who always played the Beatles in his car. We loved it!
- Trying to wet my head at Tirta Empul (the water temple) without falling head-first into the pool.
- Seeing kids learn to play Balinese musical instruments, and learn traditional dancing at the Agung Rai Museum of Art.
- Seeing the iconic sprawling rice terraces at Tegallalang and being just as flabbergasted with the mega tourist strip that has sprung up on the opposite side of the valley.
