Ubud, Indonesia

Day  10

My flight was in the afternoon so I we were just hanging around at Mayko’s home in the morning. He took me to the airport and we said goodbye to each other there. I’m really hoping to see him again in the future! I’m sure without him my experience of Jakarta would have been totally different in a bad way. The flight from Jakarta to Bali was surprisingly full of western tourists. Or actually that is not that surprising.

I landed to Bali in the late afternoon; there was even a change of time zone on the way. My first challenge was to find a reliable taxi. I stepped out of the airport doors and soon I was surrounded by people offering me rides. I kept myself and I was looking around and trying to find a taxi stall or something similar. I saw a small supermarket and went there to buy water and on the way I saw the official taxi stall. Phew, I was glad I didn’t need to haggle of my taxi ride. So I first bought the water and then the taxi ride to Ubud where I had accommodation reserved. I couldn’t find any couchsurfing hosts for Bali.

Dark came during the taxi ride and it was pitch-dark when I arrived to my hostel in Ubud. Hostel stuff had some news for me: the hostel was over-booked but they had reserved a hotel room for me at the same price. I didn’t mind that at all, the hotel sounded perfect. One of the hostel staff gave me a ride on scooter to the hotel. Hotel was called Nick’s Hidden Cottages.  I basically had my own cottage there and the staff was super friendly. I went to eat at a restaurant near the hotel and I was shocked when I saw the prices: they were much higher than in Java. The prices were one the things that I found disappointing in Bali.

The whole day I really didn’t realise that it was Christmas Eve until I called home before I went to sleep.

Day 11

Today my plan was to get to know town of Ubud. Ubud is a small town so everything necessary is in the walking distance. Even though my hotel was in the middle of rice fields and forests it was under 10 minutes walk from there to the centre of town. This day I already realised that Bali was a totally different world from Java. Firstly, Bali is full of tourists. I didn’t see many tourists in Jakarta so now it was a little shock to be totally surrounded by them. Secondly, people in Bali are mostly Hindus so there was small temples at every corner and what I found very beautiful was that they put these little flower offerings in front of their homes and shops for protection probably. They even did that my hotel room: there was small new offering for gods or spirits in front of my door every morning.

But on my first day in Ubud I decided to go see first maybe the biggest tourist attraction in Ubud: Monkey Forest Sanctuary. To the sanctuary it was nice walk from hotel through rice fields and forest. At the gates of the sanctuary I saw my first Finnish tourists in Indonesia and that didn’t really excite me. Monkey Forest isn’t anything special. There is monkeys and their shit everywhere but otherwise nothing else to see. There is one big temple and couple smaller ones in the area. So it was a quick stroll around the area. Good thing is that it’s cool there thanks to the big trees.

From Monkey Forest I walked to the centre. Ubud is full shops selling art and clothes and souvenirs. It’s also full of solo female travellers trying to have their Eat Pray Love experience. I visited in Ubud Palace which is nothing special and walked around in the Ubud Market which is more made for tourists than locals. For lunch I found a restaurant with prices almost as cheap as in Java. And they had good local food too. Can’t remember the name of the place but it was on Jalan Dewi Sita and there was temple on the other side of the road.

I was going through my travel guides but I didn’t anything interesting to do in this town anymore. I visited next in the tourist office. I was trying to find out if they had any organised tours to visit the main attractions of Bali. In Bali public transportation is quite badly scheduled and locals mostly go around with scooters and so does many tourists. But I have never drove a scooter before and didn’t want to start learning that in Bali’s traffic. So my only option was organised tour. Tours were actually in quite good prices, with same price you could also hire a driver for you for the day but I wasn’t into haggling with them. So I bought a place for me for one of the tours next day. There would be 2 others coming with me too.

Next thing I wanted to get back to my hotel but I got lost. I finally got back to my hotel 1.5 hours later and I was so sweaty. I put my t-shirt to dry and it stayed wet for my whole stay in the hotel. In the evening I went to have Christmas dinner in a restaurant. It was Christmas Day but it was surprisingly absent on the street scene. Couple restaurants advertised Christmas dinners and there were some plastic Christmas trees on decoration in some places. The wifi wasn’t working in my hotel so I went to find a restaurant where I could use my computer and go check important things on the internet. I ordered a little bit more expensive dinner just because it was Christmas.