Bali: the adventure begins!

Hi friends!

So, a bit of updating is in order. The internet on Koh Tao crashed on us on our last few days! So I am currently updating you from our new hangout in.... Bali!!

We left Koh Tao four days ago, after a lovely going away celebration (aka drinking lots at our favorite bar with our favorite Koh Taoians) and headed over to Indonesia. It was two solid days of travel: one day from Tao to Bangkok and one day from Bangkok to Bali, but we made it!

We're spending just over two weeks in and around Bali, before we head to England and Florida to see Mikes and my family. We've started our journey in Ubud, made famous by the movie/book Eat, Pray, Love. It's a very cool town. Lots of interesting shops, lots of temples and its all surrounded by mountainy rice paddies on all sides.

Rice paddies near Ubud

Our first full day in Ubud started out meeting old friends! I worked with Dan and Emily back at Biscayne when I was still a marine biologist, before all this traveling started. They moved out to New Zealand while I was living in Australia, and I had every intention of going out there to visit, but somehow to trip to kiwi-land never quite happened. Dan and Em happened to be in Indonesia about the same time as Mike and I! We met up for lunch and caught up on our respective lives in the Pacific. Pretty cool! It's certainly a small world. They had to jet off just as we were getting to Bali, so we had to split ways after lunch. Mike and I spent the rest of the day exploring on foot. There are so many temples and beautiful spots around Ubud. There's the Ubud Palace right in the center of town and a beautiful temple surrounded by ponds of lotus flowers.

Ubud Palace

One of the deity statues at the Ubud Palace

Lotus temple

There's also a scary, scary part of Ubud.... the monkey forest... It's actually not that scary, but after my monkey adventures in Phi Phi and Koh Tao, I'm generally a little wary of primates. There's a big forest just outside of town with a large population of long-tailed macaques. It's been a tourist stop for many years, so the monkeys are very comfortable around humans. Even going so far as to jump on unsuspecting tourists carrying something of interest: sunglasses, water bottles, even saw one monkey going after the keychain on a woman's backpack. There are also some beautiful temples and grounds within the forest, so there's and added draw it as well. Despite a general wariness of monkeys, the calmness and apparent tameness of the monkeys there eased my suspicions. One even jumped on my lap when we were sat down taking in the scenery. And then his buddy ran across my lap as well! 

One very curious macaque...

Komodo dragon statue selfie!

Day two in Bali we decided to expand our adventure to the outskirts of Ubud. We rented a motorbike and decided to get lost and see what we could find. Luckily, there is one road out of town with all the good spots along it! We started off at a beautiful terraced rice paddy alongside a mountainside. Had a brief snack (a banana split and spring rolls, obviously) and enjoyed the scenery. We were headed in the general direction of one of the dormant volcanoes in the center of the island, and along the way had a few adventures as well.

Suddenly, as we were driving along, a local guy pulled along side our bike and started chatting to us about all the things to see in the area: coffee farms, temples, and the volcano. He kept on talking up all these places, so we finally stopped into one of the coffee plantation "agro-tourism" centers. We saw the different types of coffee that are grown on the island and learned a bit about "luwak coffee". Basically these little cat/mongoose/fox creatures called luwaks (or civets in English) eat the best coffee berries whole. They can't digest the bean inside the berries, so it comes out the other end. The luwaks poo is then collected and cleaned to get the bean out. The beans get cleaned like six times, then roasted, then cleaned again and then ground into possibly the most expensive coffee on the planet. It goes for about $60 USD for a small bag of beans. Anyone for some cat poop coffee?

When we left the coffee plantation (no cat poo coffee for us, thanks), we headed toward the volcano. On the way, Mike had his very first run in with traffic cops! Lucky for us, they were pretty cool about him not having a license for motorbikes and let him off with a ticket. Poor thing, it was his first traffic ticket since he's never had a driving license ever!! He manged to convince the scary Bali police he had left his license in our hotel room. Even still, he was all mopey about it, but I promised him if we converted his fine into USD, it would be nowhere near what I've paid for some speeding fines ;)

Traffic ticket in hand, we finally made it to the volcano lookout. Definitely worth the fines. We stopped at a stunning viewpoint and could see the volcanic mountain and the lovely lake beside it. We took in the sights, had a drink and started our motorbike journey back into Ubud.

Tonight is our last night here, we're heading to an island just off the coast of Bali called Nusa Lembogan. It's supposed to be awesome for beaches, surfing and most importantly diving, so obviously we have to go. If the wifi is good, expect more updates soon!

Love and fishes!