Chillin' in Jeju, Korea: Papa strong, mama happy

Ubud is probably one of my favorite places on earth – at the heart of Balinese culture, right in the center of the island, this town glooms with rice fields, arts and vegetarian cuisine.

We stayed at Ketut’s Place, a surprising family-run hotel hidden in the lush gardens through which a little river flows. The swimming pool was a plus, and the staff simly charming. Though it was, again, a little expensive for Indonesia, we treated ourselves banana pancakes our terrace facing what looked like the amazon, and delectable massages to the sound of running water.

Waking around Ubud is astounding because the city is vibrant with colors, smells and contrasts. Terrazo was a nice spot for drinks and fruit, while Bu Oka served exquisite Babi Buling (spicy pork and rice, see the pig below). Ketut’s place also offered a Balinese fest (including the traditional smoked duck, fried tofu and satay, which is meat and coconut served on a stick)

Patrick and I burned off all those calories by walking around town for hours every single day. We ended up in the Monkey forest, an experience in itself as you can see on this video, with monkeys diving and playing in a little pond. It's upside down, i'm sorry but i'm trying to fix it without any image quality loss... still fun to watch...

My first encounter with a monkey was frightening. We had bought a whole bunch of bananas, and a macaque immediately saw them. I handed him one of them, but he stole the whole pack and ran away with it. I tried to steal them back but…well, he showed me big shiny teeth so I had to give up! Those were MY bananas...

Wink, wink...

Hahaha! It tickles...

Monkeys can smell bananas through your bag so it would be silly to try and hide them. Instead, the guards told us to lift our arms up, and the monkeys climbed on us to get them. Priceless!

I was astounded to realize how much humans have in common with macaques (not as much as with chimps but still). Check out this video, one of them is making sure his buddy is all clean. He looks a little nervous but you have to understand that there were like 20 Japanese around filming and taking pictures.

We had already seen some gigantic paper monsters back in Seminyak, but we had no idea what that was about. So when we saw some more in Ubud, we were told that they’re building them for Hindu New Year (which will be the topic of a whole other post!)

I told Patrick we needed to spend a whole day at the market, and we did (!) I had never seen so much crap, I mean so many things – incence, fruit, photo albums, pottery, clothes, phallic-shaped bottle openers, tiger balm, postcards, masks, paintings, Buddha statues, and so on.

You can imagine the "good price for you!", "yes, take a look" and the like going on under there... ;) I had fun bargaining too, the calculator being their main tool of communication hehe

As Ubud is incredibly culturally rich, it is no surprise that it is also quite famous for traditional dance shows. We caught little kids practicing at the palace one afternoon and it was shocking how those little girls looked and acted like grown women!

Another surprising experience was at the Elephant forest. We were greeted by Dennis, a hilarious guide who’s named all the elephants according to famous people – there was Ronald Reagan, Liz Taylor, and of course Tony Blair (whose 5th leg suggests my presence was a turn on…?)

It was incredibly sad to see them all chained, standing on concrete. Dennis said it’s so they don’t run away (I would understand if they did!) and he kept hitting them with a sharp stick. Broke my heart.

Yet they did give us a few fun times, and it was awesome to see and feel how strong their tusk is! And look at those teeth!

We decided to spend quite a few days in Ubud, and hired a driver on our last day to visit Batur, a beautiful volcano north of the island. Needless to say we didn’t stay long… street vendors got a hold of me as soon as I got out of the car, and they wouldn’t let me go! I understand they are poor, but man that was almost scary. I felt like crap.

On our way there we dropped by a small village called Taman, something like paradise on earth! There, they grow organic food, and I learned a lot about fruit trees.
That’s snake fruit