Every morning we have breakfast here on the roof top of our cottages

with a spectacular view

I usually have the banana pancake.  It doesn’t look great in the picture but it’s filled with brown sugar and coconut and bananas.  The green comes from extracting the oils from a certain leaf and incorporating it into the rice flour.

Here are a few more shots of our lodging.

Today is another walking and exploring day.

We head off down the hill to the confluence of the Wos and Cerik Rivers and the Campuan Ridge Trail.  Campuan means “where two rivers meet” and is the sight of the founding of Ubud.  Very beautiful.

From here the Campuan Ridge Trail heads off into the fields of elephant grass, used for making thatched roofs.

Along the way we met this man who said (with a big smile on his face) he’d been sitting in this same spot for 20 years – painting these amazing eggs.  He seemed very happy and content.

It’s always fun wandering the backroads and I’m always grateful for Chris’ builtin GPS so we never get lost.  Here are more sights from our wanderings.

 

Typical two-way road (without the cars and scooters) very narrow, with a pile of dirt covering most of one lane.  We saw this everywhere.  Just adds to the travel experience.

Back in civilization,

you see shelves of bottled petrol for sale on every other block.

But you’d better be careful with what goes in your scooter and what goes in your glass. . .

At one point we were nearly overrun by a flock of young students leaving school all at once.

Did you know that Eat, Pray, Love was filmed in Ubud?  At least the Love part.  Anyway, it has increased tourism tenfold and several restaurants and bars are monopolizing on their claim to fame from the movie.  So we set out to visit one of them, Naughty Nuri’s.  It was written up as “a crowded roadside watering hole.  Microbrews, great martinis and slabs of bbq ribs…”  Well, there was nobody there, they only had Bintang beer which was not even cold, and the ribs were just ok.

On another note, Ubud has long been known for its arts.   Descendants of a royal family encouraged Western artists and intellectuals to visit the area in the 1930’s.  They provided an enormous stimulus to local art, introduced new ideas and techniques, and began a process of displaying and promoting Balinese culture worldwide.  As mass tourism arrived in Bali,  Ubud became an attraction not for beaches or bars, but for the arts.  One highlight for me was to visit the Threads of Life Indonesian Textile Arts Center and a street of batik stalls.

From here we wandered through the Ubud Market, a massive two-story structure with stalls throughout.  Then a stop at a warang where they had 2 for 1 margaritas then on to find a great silver shop, Studio Perak.  All the jewelry was designed and made by a local artist.  And finally, dinner at a neat little place we found on Sunday.  It quickly filled up and a nice young couple from Holland joined as as there was nowhere else for them to sit.  Very interesting conversation.  He is a high school math teacher and she is a journalist on holiday.  Finally a nice wander home and to bed.