Five Days in Ubud (Bali)

Day One (Thursday)

Arrival.

The last time I'd been to Bali, twenty years ago, Ngurah Rai airport was a giant tin shed, now it's still small — tiny by Heathrow or even Sydney standards — but it's very shiny and modern. We arrived around 1.30pm, got through immigration quickly and after a wait for our baggage were met by a driver from our hotel and whisked up to Ubud. The building boom along the roads has been such that we barely saw a paddyfield on the entire journey!

After settling in and having a shower, we had an early dinner in a little corner warung where the lane from our hotel reaches the road. (Bali is three hours behind Sydney, so this didn't feel early.) Then we walked up the road to the entrance to the Monkey Forest, which had just shut, said hello to some of the monkeys wandering outside, and walked back.

the ricefields facing our room

Our hotel, Alam Jiwa is actually in the village of Nyuh Kuning, just south of Ubud. It combines modern mod-cons — wifi, air-conditioning, a pool, and so forth — with the traditional Balinese way of doing things — everything is made of stone, there are regular offerings everywhere, and so forth.

The layout is spacious, with just eleven rooms (only three of which were occupied on our first night) on quite a large site. It feels like an oasis, calm and quiet and right away from everything: our room had views out across a deep gullied stream onto ricefields where people were harvesting and threshing rice, and it was far enough away from the road that the only noise from outside was the distant tinkling of the children in the primary school practicing gamelan. (Being out of town does mean a bit of a walk, but a free shuttle is provided to and from destinations in Ubud.)

feeding fish with Ayu

Our bedroom was big, fitting a single bed for Helen and a large double bed for us, with room to move about in. The bathroom was huge, with an open-air shower from which we could look out over the ricefields, a bathtub, a toilet, and a sink, all in half-separated areas of their own. And there was a porch area outside the room with a little table where we could have had breakfast served if it hadn't been east-facing and too hot. (I found it nice sitting there early in the morning, waiting for the others to wake up and watching and listening to the dawn.)

The staff were really friendly, without ever being at all intrusive. Helen was a bit shy at first but Ayu eventually had her feeding fish and paddling in the pool. And when we went around with a torch looking for animals in the dark — snails and crabs and frogs and geckos — Helen wanted to rush off and tell Nik all about our discoveries.

Day Two (Friday)

The Monkey Forest and Monkey Forest Rd. Legong Dance.

It was really hot — according to a few people, hotter than it had been for the previous week — and all we managed was the walk from our hotel into Ubud and back. This took us through the Monkey Forest (where we lost our insect repellent to a monkey that was too quick, and some monkeys got a bit aggressive towards Camilla when she bumped one) and up Monkey Forest Rd to Ubud Palace. We fitted in some shopping, a lot of stops for cold drinks, lunch in Cafe Wayan, and an entirely unplanned and fortuitous meet-up with our friend Adrienne Vukovic, who just happened to be in Ubud.

There was an unexpected but pleasant dearth of hard-selling touts — the vendors in the market called out quite politely, and even the people sitting with "taxi" signs along Monkey Forest Rd seemed quite lackadaisical — so there's perhaps some kind of control on that. The traffic was terrible, though, and we just weren't used to the heat.

Legong dance at Peliatan

Our first warung meal was ok, but probably the worst meal we had during our stay, with the food improving from there and ranging from good to excellent. The hotel breakfasts were really nice: fruit salad, fresh fruit juice, and a choice of banana or other pancakes, omelettes, and jaffles (as well as a Balinese rice breakfast option we never got around to trying). And we had some great duck, satay, and so forth.

fruit salad

banana pancake

crispy duck lunch at Cafe Wayan

Day Three (Saturday)

A day tour: rice paddies, temples, views.

Pretty much the whole day was taken up by a tour, in a private car organised by the hotel (for 700k rupiah plus tip). We visited some rice terraces (small ones by a main road), the Gunung Kawi and Holy Water temples, a viewpoint over Batur and the main caldera, and a bamboo forest and traditional village.

This all went off reasonably well, apart from a short tantrum from Helen when she was woken in the bamboo forest from a nap cut short too soon. She managed most of the walking down and up at the rice terraces and temples — not big climbs (200 steps from Gunung Kawi), but hard in 30+ temperatures.

Day Four (Sunday)

Bird Park and Birthday.

They day started off well. The hotel made a lovely flower arrangement and a banana-pancake cake with candles for Helen's birthday (despite being busy decorating everything to celebrate the anniversary of the first Alam hotel). But, perhaps overexcited by the occasion, we then had over an hour of tantrum trying to get her dressed and into the car for a trip to the Bali Bird Park. That was pretty impressive, and surprisingly uncrowded for a Sunday, presumably a result of the exorbitant entry price (it's as expensive as the London Zoo or Taronga Zoo).

In the afternoon we just had a swim then walked through the Monkey Forest again to have dinner in town, again at Cafe Wayan.

That evening we went exploring the grounds of the hotel with torches, looking for animals: snails, crabs, geckos, frogs.

frog at night

Day Five (Monday)

The Neka Art Museum. Jimbaran sunset.

Rangda repelling swordsmen, Neka Museum

a last fill of our waterbottles

Before we left Ubud we fitted in a visit to the Neka Art Museum, which was rather good. Helen liked the traditional pieces but got restless fairly quickly after that. So we whizzed through the bulk of the collection (mostly "contemporary" works from the 60s and 70s) and then had lunch in a warung across the road before being picked up by the hotel's courtesy shuttle service.

We had already packed, so we were soon en route back south, for a final night in Jimbaran, just south of the airport (in preparation for an early flight back to London the next day). Our stay there helped reinforce just how nice our Ubud accommodation had been... there was nothing wrong with the Jimbaran hotel — maybe the room was a bit small — it just seemed rather soulless.

We had a nice seafood dinner sitting at a table on the beach watching the sunset, but apart from that Jimbaran seems to have only one real attraction — the beach. Which would be lovely, except that it's absolutely full of garbage.

Day Six (Tuesday)

Homeward bound.

a Red-Crested Monger?

Garuda had given us a toy rhino on the flight to Bali and Camilla had bought a Red-Crested Turaco in the Bird Park shop (Helen invented the name "Red-Crested Monger" somehow, but the closest I could find using Google images was a Red-Crested Turaco), so the soft toys were clearly winning. Helen and I made a valiant attempt to catch up at the last minute by blowing our last rupiah in the Periplus bookshop at the airport, picking up Gecko's Complaint (my choice) and Tari: the Little Balinese Dancer (Helen's choice, highly recommended).

Garuda settled this competition rather decisively, however, by giving Helen two small finger puppets on the flight home.