The next day Latanya and I woke to a beautiful morning. We had breakfast on the veranda again. How pleasant. We took a dip in the pool. Jess and Fran were now at our hotel and Fran jumped in with us. It was so refreshing just what we needed to start the day off right. Instead of a lazy beach day we decided to head back to the Ubud area and check out the town itself. We split a cab to Ubud with Jess and Fran. They were packing up and leaving Sanur to stay in Ubud. They had a place set up in the center of the town for a few days.
Ubud was by far Latanya's favorite place, it is one of those places that books will never do it justice. You need to live, breath, absorb the culture, nature, and inspiration of the city. Ubud is surrounded by scenic rice fields(terraces), organic Bali spirit, small villages, art and craft communities, ancient temples, palaces, rivers, and cheap accommodation. When we arrived the town was bustling with backpackers tourists and locals. There were several stores selling you name it. Plenty of places had souvenirs. There were also plenty of art, furniture, flowers, yoga studios, organic soaps, and clothes shops. Jess and Fran headed to there place and we strolled around on our own. We checked out the local market filled with lots of vendors. It was a great walk peaking in the different shops.
Latanya wanted to stop by Wayan's shop from Eat Pray Love which happened to be four blocks from where we were dropped off. We walked four blocks away from the main strip down an alley and walked passed Wayan's shop. It was unnoticeable, the shop was covered with plants and a sign that says Traditional Balinese Medicine and restaurant (there are one of these shops on every corner). Latanya didn't want to go inside and after hearing the bad reviews from TripAdvisor she settled for a picture.
It began to pour, the rain momentarily halted our sightseeing. We headed to a local bar, Buddy's Belly, to cool off and wait out the rain with a fabulous Indonesian micro brewed beer, called Storm. The rain stopped and we went by the monkey forest. Which is completely filled to the brim of monkeys. Knowing Latanya as I do I knew we were not going to even think about going in. The outside was good enough. We saw lots of monkeys, who were friendly and cute at a far. The name really does describe exactly what it is, a monkey forest. We moved on from the forest to check out some beautiful rice terraces. Because the sun was beginning to set and the light reflected off the terraces so elegantly. Stunning views for sure. After our nice day in Ubud we took a taxi back to our hotel to plan the next day. Tomorrow we wanted to take full day trip across the island. We called up Geday to drive. We had to get up really early the next day because we wanted to the sunrise at the Batur Volcano, and I mean early.
