Ubud and the Monkey Forest

Our room in Ubud.

Statue outside our place in Ubud.

We went to the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud.

One of the temples in the Sacred Monkey Forest.

Monkeys having fun jumping in the water.

Wrestling monkeys.

This monkey was fascinated by Braeden's palm.

Male macaque

Mother and baby.

Baby monkey

Love this monkey's expression!

Hey, are there more bananas in here?

A group of female macaques and their babies.

Baby monkey.

This monkey decided to eat his banana on Braeden's shoulder. His shoulder was covered in banana bits after this monkey was done!

Little macaque eating a banana.

This monkey decided he would groom Braeden. He was checking his head for something!

Graveyard in the Sacred Monkey Forest.

Steps down to the temple by the creek.

Macaques sitting on a branch.

A male macaque lounging around.

A worker in the Monkey Forest carrying his offering to the gods to place in the temple.

Stone carving near temple in Monkey Forest.

Stream near another one of the temples in the Monkey Forest.

Stone carving in the Sacred Monkey Forest.

Stone carving in Monkey Forest.

One of the temples in the Sacred Monkey Forest.

Woodcarver in front of his shop near the Monkey Forest.

Rice field near Monkey Forest.

Balinese glockenspiel?

Man playing flute or some type of wooden recorder.

Man on the right was the leader of the group. He was very enthusiastic when he was performing.

This women had the most expressive eyes.

Balinese women dancing.

Young boy dancing.

This dance seemed to be about what it is like to be old.

A modern dance.

After leaving Gili Trawangan we headed for Ubud. We were not able to book accomodation online so we were going to Ubud not knowing where we were going to stay. We were picked up at the boat launch and along with some other tourists we were driven to Ubud. We met an American guy who was also going to Ubud and had been there before. He gave us the name of a hotel we could possible stay at so we had the driver drop us off there. It turned out the hotel was fully booked but there was a guy on the street who told us he could take us to the hotel where he worked and so we followed him. We ended up staying in a family room with two queen sized beds. It was the nicest hotel room we had stayed in so far. It was also the most expensive. I took some pictures of our room at the Sagitarrius (sp?) Inn. We had dinner at the Inn's restaurant and the food was cheap and good.

Ubud is the fine arts capital of Bali. The area surrounding Ubud has villages that specialize in stone carving, silver work, painting and wood carving. I have never seen so many beautiful and huge stone carvings. There was a nice one outside our room at the Sagitarrius Inn that I took a picture of. I know that they ship the stone and wood carvings and furniture all over the world. I also enjoyed looking at all the silver jewellery. I really like Ubud because it is smaller and slower than Kuta.

The boys loved The Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The monkeys that live in the sanctuary are called Balinese macaques, also known as long-tail macaques. About 300 monkeys reside in the monkey forest. There are approximately 35 adult males, 95 adult females and 170 young. These macaques live primarily in three clusters of females and males. Each of these groups tends to use different areas of the forest at different times of the day.

However, nearly all of the macaques use all of the forest. Conflicts sometimes arise when two groups are in the same area. We observed this when we were there. Some monkeys seemed like they were getting angry with some other monkeys. Tourists are encouraged to buy bananas and feed them to the monkeys. This can cause some fighting over who gets the bananas. Adult males weigh up to 8-10 kilos and have large canine teeth, broad shoulders and facial hair that resembles a moustache. the adult females are smaller than the males (4-8 kg) and have long facial hair resembling beards.

Balinese macaques society is centered around groups of related females called 'matrilines'.Male macaques usually migrate in from other areas and attempt to associate with the female matriline.

There are three holy temples in The Sacred Monkey Forest. In addition to the three temples there are also two graveyards. We saw one of the graveyards.

The boys enjoyed feeding the monkeys and we all enjoyed watching them. In one part of the forest there was a small pool that the monkeys used to play in and interact with one another. One disturbing thing we saw was a monkey sucking on a aerosal can. We tried to offer him some bananas but he was not interested. It just goes to show you how human garbage can affect wildlife. It was so sad to see. We spent at least an hour in the monkey forest and took many pictures.

After leaving the monkey forest we wanted to go and see some rice fields. We wandered along a path and saw an older Balinese man carving a piece of wood. He was sitting in front of his shop. We went in and had a look at the work the woodcarver had done. Terry and I wanted to bring home something from Bali and we found a beautiful wood carving of a buddha head. The carver told us it took him 3 days to carve it. He had a lot of beautiful carvings in his shop.

We didn't see many rice fields but we found a little internet cafe and stopped there for lunch.

Later, Terry and I went for a walk around Ubud and we were stopped by some young teenaged boys. They were selling tickets to a cultural show that was to be playing that evening. I really wanted to see some dance and hear Balinese music so we bought some tickets and went. There were not a lot of people in the audience but it was a good show. There were men playing drums, flutes and a kind of instrument that looked a bit like a glockenspiel. The men seemed like they were having a really good time, especially the leader. There were women and young women who performed dances. One woman was especially good. She used her eyes, face and hands to express herself. The elaborate costumes were beautiful. There were a couple of dances done by men, one by a young and one by a man who was supposed to be old. I was glad we got a chance to see this performance.

Gorgeous Gili Trawangan

We stopped at Lombok to drop off some passengers.

Here is Gili island and a picture of the boat we travelled on.

We took a horse and cart to carry us and our stuff to our bungalow.

Rooster on Gili Trawangan island.

The road on Gili.

Our bungalow is the one you can see on the right.

Our view at breakfast. I never got tired of the fresh fruit juices. I especially like mixed juice and watermelon juice.

Eating breakfast at Coral Beach 2.

Blaise and Braeden's bungalow.

Sitting outside our bungalow.

Plants growing in our outside bathroom. Inside the bungalow it is air conditioned. The bathroom is always warm because of the outside temperature.




Here is the view of the trees from our outside bathroom.

Flat Mrs. Abbott gets ready to go snorkelling.

Blaise, Linnea, Braeden cycling around Gili.

Linnea on beach at Gili Trawangan island.

Blaise and Braeden working on their tans.

Flat Mrs. Abbott thinks Gili Trawangan is beautiful.

Flat Mrs. Abbott enjoys laying on her sarong on the beach.

Flat Mrs. Abbott found this coconut shell on the beach in front of the Coral Beach villas.

Flat Mrs. Abbott and Mrs. Abbott enjoy reading a book together.

Terry relaxing with a book on the beach.

Oct. 16-19th. Gili Trawangan is an island which is part of Lombok. This island is my favourite spot on the trip so far. It has white sand beaches, turquoise water and sun. The pace of life here is slow and the people are so laid back. We left Kuta at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 16th from BaliSandy Cottages. We were told it would be a one hour bus ride and a one hour boat trip. Just over four hours later we arrived on Gili Trawangan. When the transport arrived to pick us up in Kuta, there were three guys from France already in the vehicle. It looked like two more people could fit in and there are four of us! It was a rickety old van and the driver wanted to charge us 30,000 rupiah for each of the boys surfboards to go on top. One of us was supposed to sit on a wooden stool but the guys managed to squish the three of them onto the bench seat. I sat in the front beside the driver and prayed for a safe trip. The front door was like cheap tin and I thought that if we got into an accident I would be toast. We arrived at Padang Bai, a port northeast of Sanur, along with a lot of other tourists who were either going to Lombok or Gili Trawangan. We thought we were going on a fast boat but apparently there is an even faster boat. We had paid 500,000 rupiah or about $58.50 Canadian each to take this trip. When we started piling into the boat I was wondering if we were all going to fit in. We were not able to sit together so Terry sat in front of me. I had taken a Gravol, for motion sickness, so I was pretty sleepy. The seats were hard and so high that my legs were dangling so I sat forward and leaned my head on my arms and tried to sleep. I was surprised when an hour and a half later we stopped at Lombok. I thought the trip to Gili was supposed to be an hour and we hadn't even arrived after an hour and a half. When we finally arrived the boat was not able to dock because of the low tide so we were transferred to a smaller boat and when I first got on a lot of the people had sat on one side of the boat. The boat operator shouted ''make balance, make balance" so I moved to the opposite side of the boat. While the boys waited for our backpacks and surfboards to be unloaded Terry and I rented bikes and headed out to find a place to stay. We had heard about a place from an acquaintance in Bali and according to the map Terry had, the hotel was about 500 metres from the dock. It turned out it was 1.5 km away which was a long way to ride at noon in the blazing hot sun! The bike path turned into sand and we ended up having to push the bikes part of the way. The hotel was quite a ways away from the main restaurant and shop areas and we didn't see any waves for the boys to surf on so we headed back towards the dock. We stopped at a place with a pool but it was going to cost 1.6 million rupiah per night for two rooms which is about $180.00 per night which is way out of our price range. We found a place with two air conditioned bungalows. It is called Coral Beach 2. The place has construction going on but each bungalow has a king size bed and a very cool outside bathroom (not cool as in temperature, it only goes down to 25 degrees celsius at night, but cool meaning I liked it!). Our bungalow had a stone and tile floor as well as a stone shower. The shower has only cold water which is really lukewarm. There isn't a pool but the restaurant where we had breakfast is right on the beach. Breakfast is included in the price of the bungalow which has been our experience throughout Bali. This island is so laid back. You can sit on the beach and a couple of times a day someone will try to sell you some pearls but that is about it. Is is very different from the constant bothering I experienced on Kuta beach.

We went snorkelling yesterday and today. The coral here is amazing. I have never seen so many varieties and colours of coral. We saw brain coral which looks like a huge human brain. There is brown, rust, pink and green coral. Some coral looks like it has tentacles of all shapes and sizes. Today we saw two sea turtles feeding. The smaller one was feeding first and then a larger one came along and took his place. They looked like they were about at least 60 cm wide and their length was even longer than that. We swam through schools of tiny, white fish and we saw yellow, black and white Angelfish, neon blue fish, a white fish that was camouflaged in the sand on the bottom of the sea. We saw big fish, small fish, fat fish and fish that looked like pencils. It is like a whole different world under the sea. The water here is turquoise in colour and the the sand on is white. There are no cars or any other motorized vehicles here on Gili Trawangan. We rode our bikes around the whole island yesterday. It only took about 45 minutes. We had better bikes than we had the first day so it was easier to ride through the sand but there were still places where we had to walk because the path was too sandy. We went in the late afternoon when it wasn't quite so hot. I'm not sure if I have mentioned that in Bali and Lombok the temperature is about 30 degrees celsius every day and it only goes down to 25 degree celsius at night. We slept with the air conditioning on every night.
There is quite a bit of construction going on here. They are building new resorts and hotels.

Another form of transportation here is horse and cart. We took two horses and carts to carry us and our luggage to Coral Beach 2. We are planning to walk back to the dock tomorrow because they charged us 80,000 rupiah which is about $9 for a 5 minute ride. This is very expensive for here.

Another difference between Bali and Gili is the main religion here is Muslim. We hear the call to prayer several times a day. It reminds me of when we were in Egypt. I saw a mosque when I was walking around the second day we were here.

The boys founds a cheap, good place to eat right near the dock. It is quite a walk from where we are staying but we have nothing but time. We had some good Mexican food there. Braeden really like Nasi Goreng which is fried rice with vegetables and a fried egg on top.

We have three nights here on Gili Trawangan which seems to be the perfect length of time with the boys. We catch the 11 a.m. boat back to Bali tomorrow and will look for a place to stay in Ubud for two nights. Today is Monday. On Saturday we fly to Perth. The boys have been talking about going there and are excited that they will be there again soon. I just want to be in the moment and enjoy each day.

Today was a relaxing day. We slept in, ate breakfast, walked to confirm our boat trip back then went to the beach in front of Coral Beach 2 where we are staying. Terry and I laid in the shade of a tree and read our books. Later we went snorkelling then went back and read some more. The boys stayed indoors and played computer games. It was very hot today, about 35 degrees celsius. It is also very humid, even I have been sweating. Bali and Lombok are very interesting places to visit but I can't imagine living in a place with a climate like this. The first couple of weeks in Bali I felt homesick on occasion but I have been really enjoying myself the past week.

I am looking forward to being in Perth and being in a house for 5 weeks. It will be nice to brush my teeth without using bottled water and I am looking forward to eating fresh vegetables, especially salad!