I Miss Tacos Already

We learn that if we want to get out of the party areas and see more of the cultural side of Bali that we must take a trip up to Ubud. It’s still a touristy area that caters to the crowds and even more so since the release of the book “Eat, Pray, Love”. It’s a 1.5 hour trip which doesn’t seem far but can be daunting on a scooter. We start riding through the chaotic capitol of Denpasar and soon the big city leads to small towns, then little villages and finally green rice paddy’s and palm trees. We get lost several times but there is always a helpful local to point us in the right direction. It’s obvious to us when we arrive in Ubud. There is colorful and painstakingly detailed art that is displayed in the streets, on clothing, jewelry, and architecture. It begins pouring rain the second we pull into town. Big fat droplets come down. Not the kind that sting but the kind that will soak you in seconds. We grab a villa to stay in which looks like an Indiana Jones Jungle temple. We drop our stuff off and realize its Valentine’s day so we look for a restaurant. We find a great spot and end up ordering several large Bintangs (the tasty local cheap beer of choice) and have a great conversation with a couple 18 year old German and Italian kids about their journeys working in a circus in Australia. The next day we visit the Monkey Forest. Again it’s obvious we’ve arrived at the right place. The crazy macaque monkeys are everywhere! Scampering on people’s parked scooters, climbing power cables, and stealing peoples’ water bottles out of their hands! We pay an entry fee and buy some bananas. I wrap my bananas in newspaper because we had just watched a woman get her bananas robbed by monkeys within seconds of buying them. The forest is more of a jungle with a giant temple in the center. We wear sarongs (aka batiks), which are required to enter and check out the ancient temple which has monkeys hanging out everywhere. We grow braver watching how the monkeys interact with each other and people until we feel comfortable to let them climb on our shoulders and ride around with us. I open my newspaper to hand one a banana when another monkey figures out my tactic and runs at me and rips the newspaper out of my hand! Luckily there was only one left. He wasn’t satisfied that he got them all, and he meticulously turns each newspaper page one by one, giving the hilarious impression that hes catching up on world events. I tried grabbing the newspaper back as not to litter this holy site and he slaps my hand away! Another monkey steals a security guard’s rain jacket and runs into the tree with it, and the security guard responds by spending the next 30 minutes trying to shoot it down with a slingshot, having a standoff while the monkey obviously teases him! The funny thing about Ubud is it does give off a sort of “yuppy” vibe. There’s a lot of middle aged white people here to “find themselves” fueled by the book “Eat, Pray, Love” and the all-inclusive yoga retreats. This isn’t a bad thing, but you can tell there is a lot of phoniness in the way people talk about their experience here. “Oh that $30 dollar free form drawing class was so uplifting Rich, it really helped to release all the shackles society has been putting on us all these years. And, “this gluten free, free -range sandwich is absolutely scrumptious! I will have to take a $50 cooking class to show those fools back home what real cooking tastes like.” There’s a lot of 50 year old men clinging to ponytails and flowing white robes and single women looking to find their one true love. It’s not all a bad thing but it just seems like people want this place to be the one experience that will change their lives. Some people are trying way too hard to sound like they know the real magic of Bali, when they have only spent their vacation holed up in their all-inclusive retreat. Enough ranting… We do feel that there may be something to some of the classes and we do a yoga class in a huge wooden villa set in a garden valley as the sun sets. We also check out traditional Balinese dancing which is accompanied by an orchestra of 30 men playing gongs, flutes, and xylophones (aka Gamelin Players). The dancing is incredible and the crazy eye and finger movements of the women are just as much a dance as the body is. Ubud, for all the touristy happenings, is quite an extraordinary place, but we decide we want to go deeper into Bali’s undiscovered places. We take our scooter to drive up to the rim of an active volcano just north of Ubud. Along the way we get flagged down by a local who would like to show us his uncles coffee plantation. His uncle shows us his incredible property including caged Luwaks (or mongoose) that eat the coffee berries, let them ferment in their stomachs and then poop them out. This coffee is then roasted and ground and sold to places like L.A. for $50 a cup. He lets us try about 10 different coffees and teas including the one I spoke of. The man that flagged us down shares some Arak, a very heavy rice alcohol, before we head on our way. We end up doing a very similar tour on mountain bikes the next day that drops you near the volcano. From there you ride down through small villages, temples, and rice paddies, as little kids walking home from school throw out their hands for high fives as you ride by.