Day 2 - Ubud

Ubud has already exceeded our expectations, by far.  The area is so lush with plant and wild life that you can't go more than a few moments without being awed by neon-green rice fields, or spotting a new bird or reptile you've never seen before.  It is truly spectacular.  

This morning we woke up very early and had breakfast at our hotel, overlooking the pool and rice fields.  We learned that the rice farmers use ducks as agriculture assistants - they eat algae and weeds that grow in the rice fields so the farmers don't have to remove them by hand.  Each morning, the rice farmers herd hundreds of ducks onto their fields and let them roam throughout the day to do their business.  That means you see ducks everywhere, even right next to the hotel pool!

Yesterday we were told there's a fantastic nature walk if you continue on the path behind our hotel, so we gathered our things and went hiking.  We saw so many snakes and lizards, but they were too quick to capture on camera.  Mostly we just enjoyed the landscape:

As our friends and family, you all know we eats a lot so it won't surprise you that we quickly made our way to a mid-morning snack of sucking pig - one of Bali's (and especially Ubud's) specialties.  The place is called Ibu Oka:

Once we had our fill, we wandered around Ubud's center to see a few temples:

High on temples, we decided to brave the dreaded monkey forest!!  Side note - the monkey forest is supposed to be a lot of fun and everyone who comes to Ubud does it.  The problem is that monkeys are little thieves!  And Sylvie doesn't like them, either, so we were considering not going.  But we did it anyway and we were actually glad we did.  Unless you had food in your hand, the monkeys didn't seem to pay any attention to you, so we had a little stroll through the forest and watched other people yelp with delight (fright?) as they fed the monkeys and had their iPhones stolen ;)

Yep, they're RIGHT there

Yesterday I promised to post more about the dragon-tail offerings, so here we go: 

They're everywhere!

There are also thousands of these very little temples everywhere, which the locals use to worship several of their gods:

Finally, you also see tons of tiny intricately-woven square plates/trays that locals put food and flowers on as offerings to the gods each day.  They're everywhere and they're beautiful.

After our morning and afternoon adventures, we jumped in a cab to get back to the hotel for a little rest (or beer, whatever you want to call it), but on the walk up the hill to the hotel, the rain struck.  Andrew and I made a mad dash for it and got soaked.  Sylvie and Henry, experts that they are, found a little bar to have a beer in until it let up.  The thunder was so powerful that you could feel the ground shake in our rooms!

After a few hours (and beers) at the pool, we collected ourselves enough to head to Naughty Nuri's for dinner - known for their ribs and martinis!

Full, we made our way to the Kecak - a traditional Balinese dance - performance across town.  It was amazing, with about 75 men chanting the entire hour acting as the soundtrack.

Fire-walking trance dance

Once back at the hotel, we found a few tokay geckos hanging out on the wall above our door.  They were huge!

Tomorrow we're off on a trek to the volcano.  We can't wait!!!