A Few Temples and Many Monkeys

Ubud, Indonesia
8.5069°S, 115.2625°E   

When we booked our trip to Bali Sarah and I considered a number of other places in Indonesia we’d like to visit. We talked about heading up to see the city of Jakarta or over to the island of Lombok, among other places.

What we didn’t appreciate at the time was just how much there is to see and do on the island of Bali. Sarah and I realized our first week there that we hadn’t done enough homework on the island and we had a lot to learn about what to see, eat, and experience.

Bali only makes up about 1.5% Indonesia’s total population, but in a country of more than 260 million, that’s still about four million people. Not exactly a tiny island.

We decided that we would stay in Bali for our four weeks in Indonesia, and leave exploring the rest of Indonesia for another time.

Ubud

Our first stop after leaving the Bukit Peninsula was Ubud, where we planned to spend three days. Ubud is often referred to as the cultural center of Bali, and so we decided we’d use our time in the area to check out the local temples and some of the many other tourist attractions.

After Sarah, Katelyn and I arrived at our Airbnb, located about a mile outside of the town center, we enjoyed the pool for a bit before walking into town.

We all loved Ubud’s walkability, even though the state of its sidewalks meant keeping vigilant about where we were stepping…especially at night.

After exploring the town a bit we decided to call it an early night and rest up for the long day of touring ahead of us.

Take Us Everywhere Please

We hired a driver for the day, figuring that was a better option than us trying to navigate the streets on scooters. Our driver, Wayan, was informative, funny and extremely friendly (like nearly all of the Balinese people we met). In the two days we spent touring with him, he took us to experience some amazing things, including…

A Luwak Coffee tasting….

We went to Ubud’s local markets….

We saw an amazing waterfall…..

We visited the Elephant Cave Temple….

We visited an elephant sanctuary….

We had some delicious traditional Balinese meals….

And we visited the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The Monkey Forest experience was one of my highlights of our trip so far. I love monkeys (who doesn’t?) but aside from visiting zoos I’ve never been up close with one. At the sanctuary this wasn’t a problem….

There are hundreds of macaque monkeys that live inside the forest, and a group of them occupy the each of the three Hindu temples inside the sanctuary.

These monkeys remain a very important part of the local community’s spiritual life, and because of this there are parts of the Monkey Forest closed off entirely to tourists. Aside from the monkeys, the forest itself is beautiful and we saw some very impressive trees as well as statues made out of both wood and stone.

After two very full days of sightseeing and hanging out with monkeys, Sarah, Katelyn and I headed back towards the coast to the town of Canggu.