Ubud, Bali Indonesia

One of the things we did when Gma was here was take a little side trip. This was my first trip in Southeast Asia and a real turning point for me. I was just Gma and I all alone in Bali! What an amazingly beautiful country! We had so much fun and I took a ton of pictures, all of which you will see! I thought the place was so lovely I can't help but show all aspects of our trip. We ate amazing, wonderful Balinese food!

There was beautiful woodwork to be seen everywhere we turned.

Amazing foliage everywhere

Ubud is roughly in the center of the country of Bali so it wasn't a beach destination, which was perfect for us. Our villa was really outside of Ubud and along a dirt road that wasn't what I would call, "accessible to cars". The night we got in it took our cab driver almost 3 hours to find it. We flew in at midnight so it was pitch black and there aren't many road signs so we would drive up into peoples houses and wake everyone up to find out where we were going. Everyone we asked sent us a different direction. So you could say our place was pretty remote.

But it was so absolutely lovely. This was the pond right outside of our little villa. There were only 8 in total so the place was quiet and peaceful.  This is the shot from the deck where we would eat breakfast. You could see over to the pool. Which we never did get a chance to swim in!.

The sights were always beautiful. From the pool you could look down into a ravine of lush jungle. And there were statues everywhere, which I just love.

These are little huts on the road to our villa. They were apart of another villa and restaurant. Some people were eating breakfast there when we went by. And every time we passed them I wanted to get a picture. They were just lovely to look at.

Bali had the most amazing flowers you could ever see! And they were everywhere!

This was our little "welcome home" plate when we arrived at 3 in the morning. I am pretty sure they were totally annoyed by us. I mean, would you want to blend up a fruit smoothy for 2 crazy ladies in the middle of the night? But they did, and with a sweet smile. Their fruit was so good and the room was full of fragrant flowers. We couldn't stop sniffing they air. And there is something about their bananas. They are the best bananas I have ever tasted. Part fruity, and part flowery and with a little honey taste at the end. Totally unexpected and fabulous! I couldn't stop looking for bananas to eat after this first one.

Of course there is a TON of shopping. Which we did until we couldn't stand it anymore. And that didn't take very long since they love to lure you and grab at you and barter with you, which is something that wears me out. We didn't spend that much time doing it because it was really exhausting and luckily it was all the same stuff so we could stop looking at a certain point.

Gma and I on our first morning We were SO happy to be there. We couldn't stop saying, "We are in Bali!!"

One of the traditions of the Balinese culture is to give offerings to the Gods. Every morning and afternoon they place offerings out. You see them everywhere! The front steps of shops, the door openings of hotels and restaurants, on the dashboard of cars and of course mounded throughout the temples. They are beautiful little baskets with flowers, herbs and even sweets. They burn incense and leave them out as a prayer. I felt like I was always tiptoeing around them as we walked, which one person said was unnecessary. They would just put another one out later so it was ok to step through them. They didn't find it offensive, but to be honest, I did. I was really worried about it. I mean, I wouldn't want someone trampling through my prayers, but I guess after so many centuries, they were used to it.

One of our adventures was the monkey forest, which I guess they have a few throughout Bali. There are a lot of monkeys after all. And they were everywhere. We bought some bananas before going in and were given a good rundown of the do's and don'ts of holding bananas in the monkey forest. We were a little on edge after that. And they do like bananas! We were hounded right when we got in and went through an entire bunch very quickly. One wasn't that easy to open and was quickly ditched by one monkey who knew there were way to many easy ones at his disposal to bother with trying to open a difficult one. Luckily all the bananas went without incident and then we were left to walk around and watch them. They were all sitting around doing monkey things. Not really caring about all these people checking them out. Some people were brave enough to hold one here and there but the person we were with really warned us not to. We weren't too keen on doing it anyway. We were happy to just watch. It's funny to see so many monkeys and not be in a zoo or controlled environment of sort, although I am sure they would consider this "controlled", but it didn't feel that way to us!

Bali is such a beautiful culture rich of history. The people are so gentle and kind (uh, except for one driver who did NOT like us very much) and were helpful beyond belief. We had such an amazing time!