Still our guesthouse was the best we've had yet, It was basically a homestay with 3 buildings including a temple, a 2 storey building with upstairs 2 superbly fitted rooms. Both with a balcony overlooking jungle where you could watch humming birds and brown squirrels going about their business every morning. The owner was a lovely man (we called him Ron Burgundy due to his rather large and out of proportion moustache and quiffy smoothed back coiffured hair).
Ron constantly badgered us for a trip advisor review which we were happy to do because the place was so nice but being the opportunist we are (and travelling on a budget is business!), we took full control of the situation and made Ron work for his review by providing us cheap motorbike hire, giving us a discount on our room and taking us to his village to watch a Kecak monkey chant dance which actually turned out to be superb. We even got him to take me and Kath down to the bus station when we were leaving so we would not have to call a taxi (on the back of his moped one at a time with all our luggage!). In return Ron got his review (bless him).
The rest of the time in Ubud was taken up with whizzing around on our motorbike, trying not to be killed with the Indonesian psychotic drivers and tourists who have literally just jumped on a moped with no previous riding experience! It was carnage out there. The roads are all gridlocked and there are people walking in the road as there is limited or no pavement and dogs randomly run out in front of you for no reason. We had done the usual walks around the town and visited the various temples and caves which were much of the muchness after you've seen so many temples in Asia it's easy to get temple burn out so a lot harder to be impressed. The monkey forest was a highlight, watching naive foreigners hold 'banana for monkey' in the air (for a vastly over inflated price) then watching the monkey claw and bite the holder and then swing about on anyone who had long hair making them scream and panic and me and Kathy watched in quiet contentment as stupid peopled were targeted by these monkeys then shown up in public for the fools they were. (the monkeys are still wild so should be treated accordingly)
We do have a bit of hassle at the moment with our visas as it is the end of Ramadan. The immigration office decided it would be a good idea to close for 10 days at the exact time our visas needed extending. Luckily for us, while I was finding out where the visa office was online, I stumbled on a blog that pointed out that the office closed on certain days for holiday and after checking with our hotel we were suddenly thrown into a panic as it dawned on us that our visas were about to expire and the office was about to close for their holidays! We both jumped on the bike and rode the torturous journey to Denpasar to show up at the immigration office which was in a flux of mayhem as everybody had the same idea and we jumped through the various hoops to be told that they would be keeping our passports and we were to return in 2 weeks to be photographed and interviewed to see if we would be granted our visa extensions. So here we sit writing this blog, having over-stayed our visas with no passports/trapped in Bali waiting to go back to the immigration office when it opens again next week to see if we will be chucked out of the country or not (or thrown in jail until we hand over loads of money?). This is what travelling is all about....the adventure of the unknown!
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| Hanging out with local kecak dancers |
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| Visit to local dog rescue center to give the dogs a cuddle. |
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| Elephant cave with Kath 'your not getting in' Bushell |
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