What an adventure it's been getting up to Ubud from Kuta. The driving is absolutely insane! There is nearly ZERO rules while on the road and only two guidelines...... 1- if you are going to make any kind of move honk your horn. 2- Try to stay in the left lane but if not, just don't kill anyone.... There were no traffic cops to be found on the entire way there and apparently splitting lanes is completely accepted and encouraged.....
Lane splitters like crazy!
Where to begin with Ubud... to start things off, it is truly an amazing and beautiful place to visit. After getting dropped off we took a 15 min walk to what would be our home for the night…
Upon arrival we were informed that our room had been given away to someone else (which we had already payed for!). The good news was that the owner's friend had an open room just a block away. We were expecting a dumpster to sleep in at that point, but when we arrived we were completely blown away with the room. The property was surrounded by beautiful gardens and statues and it only got better from there… We had a large lanai and the room was GIANT. It was the only place so far that had a fancy mosquito net around the bed. This way we could sleep with piece of mind, knowing malaria wasn't on the menu for the evening.
Ubud, Bail home stay.
We woke up the next morning with a knock on the door which turned out to be a local breakfast for two (mie goreng (fried noodles) & eggs) with coffee and tea. What a surprise to have such great service.
Super Duper breakfast!
After breakfast we were anxious to see all the sights in town, so we hit the road for a quick jaunt down to the Lotus Temple and the rice paddy fields. We were sad to check out of our room later that morning, but we had already lined our next place up for the following day.
Some Local Residents.
There is a funny story about this praying mantis picture... it started by me telling Mikaela a 10 minute story about how dragonflies are the apex predator of the insect world and nothing can dominate on them. A short 20 minutes later, I spot this praying mantis totally devouring an innocent dragonfly….and Mikaela says…..”so much for dragonflies being an apex predator pshhhh.”
Don't be fooled... This guy has a nine inch legspan! With 1/4" fangs to match!
Ubud rice terrace.
Ubud lotus temple
Lotus temple statue.
Beautiful Lotus Flowers!
After dropping our things at the next home stay (which was not nearly as nice as the previous night & was located on a busy street) we made our way to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The monkeys were incredibly cute but very greedy and looking for food from visitors. The pictures are deceiving. Although they look calm and peaceful, the monkeys are little terrors but at least we got some awesome shots!
The monkey on the left wasn't biggest fan of Mikey. Mikey blew on his face in order to get him to look at the camera and this was his ferocious reply.