Monkeys? Massages? Roosters? Oh my! Tis is our second week of our stay here in Ubud. We have a lot more activity this week compared to last week. We've done a few more activities this week that will  are up blog more interesting. Now that we're settled into Ubud we've had a chance to sample more the local restaurants, learn more about where we're staying, and see some more of the local wild life. Lets get into it.

Relaxation with Bugs

We've been taking it pretty easy, as we planned and expected. Having activities every day gets very weary after a while and expensive. Since we like our resort a lot we decided to negotiate a better rate for a longer stay, and we got it, so here we are with all the insects, frogs, and birds I mentioned last week, as well as a few new guests we met this week. One of them is the insect that chirps every morning for us nice and loud in the trees. We thought they're some type of cricket until we did a little research, after having a chance meeting with one of them. Let me say after hearing him yell and seeing him, I preferred them in the trees instead of the restaurant. It's called a Cicada and its about the size of your thumb with a wingspan that is about as wide as a small hand. Here's a link to learn all about it.


They're generally very benign. When chirping together as a group, it's nice. When one chirps all alone, it's not too different from nails on the chalk board. It can be startling if you're not used to it. Another guest who checked in was a spider. He made his way into our room. They're not to be feared, after all, we had a gecko named Fred stay with us for a bit. He was a squatter, but took care of the small bugs so at least he earned his keep. This spider probably could've eaten Fred. It was about as big as Anna's hand. When the hotel caught him he looked like a bad kid being dragged by his ear to the principal's the way he tried to explain himself. He didn't take it well and now spidey's older brother (he never gave his name) is watching our room from cross the courtyard. He's about the size of MY hand and is staking us out. I think he's watching us waiting to make his move.

Farmer's Market

We did spend some time at the farmers market this week. We had a few items we wanted to get from here before leaving and now that we've scoped out the layout of the market went in prepared. The market is densely packed. People are always nice, even when pushing you to buy their stuff, and push they do! Everything is negotiable and watching Anna negotiate is plainly a scary experience. Rule  #1, never say a word when Anna is negotiating. It will result in as she says "raising her prices". When she looks at me during a negotiation I just stare back and start to sweat. What surprises me is it works! We ended up paying less than half the vendors asking price most of the time. 

Monkeys!!

We visited the monkey forest! It! Was! AWESOME! I now LOVE monkeys and hope to have one some day. I know I never really can, but I'd love to think its possible. These monkeys are in their natural habitat in the monkey forest and sanctuary. They're used to humans, but are unpredictable, so never let them bite you, or it's off to the hospital. Other than that, they're ADORABLE! Once inside, they're also everywhere. If you have a banana in your pocket, they will know it and never leave you alone. One lady was playing dumb when some monkeys were tailing her (get it? tailing her? never mind). When asked by staff she copped to having a banana in her pocket. They're furry, fluffy, and very family oriented. They will walk around you and let you take their photo. They have the most adorable little mustaches and definitely take care of one another. They also have a very open and undiscriminating sex drive. Basically the big male (I named him Mr. Wrinkles Butt) lifts the tail, inspects the "anus", if it passes a cursory circular finger motion, he's in. Witnesses are not an issue, and maybe they're welcome, I really don't know, but he took rejection so well he only took seconds to recover and try again.

Cultural Dance

We attended the Legong & Barong cultural dance recital. This is a form of dance and theater that dates back over 1000 years based in Hindu Culture. This is a must see and something we've never experienced before. We arrived a little early to get a nice seat. Naturally, there's little old ladies who try very hard to sell you beer and snacks. Say no all you want, she will eventually get you to say yes. The orchestral is setup with all Asian instruments that I've never seen before. This is a story from ancient Hindu mythology regarding a princess, chasing away birds, two brothers who want to invade Heaven, Nymphs, magical creatures, and of course…MONKEYS! The dancers started and their movements were very striking. They make hand movements that makes them look double jointed and very much like marionettes. It's pretty cool, but the weird factor gets upped substantially when you factor their eyes into it. They move their eyes to the music and the movements are quite mechanical looking. Anna and I'm sure many others found it kind of creepy looking. It was very cool to watch and it takes incredible skill to perform. I didn't know people could move that way. The instruments are mostly brass based and will be ringing in your head long after the performance finishes. Well worth it thought. You will not see this kind of this anywhere else. It gave us a really good look at Balinese folklore. 

Rainy Season

The rain has been heavy the past few days. When it rains, it pours. We learnt that rainy season isn't just a monicker they use. It rains like crazy around here at this time of year. The gutters and sidewalks aren't exactly low. Some of them are almost 15cm  deep and they flooded over. It looked like there were waterfalls on the sides of the roads in some places. Rainy season is taken seriously here. I will admit that in the setting of the greenery here it is quite beautiful and peaceful to watch.





Getting into the groove of Bali is proving to be relaxing and good for the soul. Next week we will be getting into it even further. We will be learning about traditional Balinese cooking and visiting a village and organic farm. Happy travels!

Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali. Tis is where all the artisans reside. The painters, the wood carvers, the metal sculptures. If you're looking to really experience the local culture and get closer to the people of Bali without totally leaving your western roots behind, than Ubud is the perfect place to be. If you're looking for arts and crafts and souvenirs for home, than this is the place to go. Prices are much cheaper than Nusa Dua and Kuta for both food and accommodations. We decided this is where we're going to spend some serious time here in Bali. It's much more relaxing with a great diversity of all kinds of people if all ages from many different countries. I don't think the singles scene here is very strong, but I haven't been paying too much attention.  

We checked in at the Beji hotel in and basically got a room that has a view of the ravine into the jungle. The hotel has 5 Infiniti pools and one is right by our door. Our view is all trees, lizards, birds, and really big bugs! Our first night here we were a little nervous when they (the bugs) threw a huge dance party right on our patio that night. Swirling around the bulb over our patio like it was a disco ball in a drunken stupor of light and heat. The big beetle who was literally 10 times their size was the bouncer of course. They even invited about half a dozen geckos as well. Naturally, army ants outnumbered all the other bugs, but are so serious all the time. Even the beetle was having fun swirling and all. The hotel is on the side of a ravine and has little villa apartments and lots of steps to get anything from anywhere. Imagine a split level home times a hundred. We're basically living along side of nature in a very unintrusive way. The whole hotel is very green and full of trees and incredible jungle life.  At night they have beautiful lamps lit up in different colours and lights on all the trees as well. It's very cool both day and night. The difference is that at night, the bugs come out a lot more to go partying. The good news is that they're very polite bugs. If you wear tropical strength bug repellant its just like putting up a  DO NOT DISTURB sign on you. Oh! And frogs. They come out at night too. They croak and sit on the side of the swimming pool by the diving board. For families there are these incredible looking villas that are small two story homes. They look like small cabins. They're in a courtyard (one of my dreams) with fountains and pools and one of them has.....suspense....,,wait for it......a mote! I've always wanted mote and was told it wasn't possible and too expensive, blah blah blah. I found one! I'm NOT taking no for an answer anymore!!

Walking around we found a bunch of little places that are both very charming serve very good food. A lot of them have full main course plates for roughly $2-$3. Fruit is definitely something you should drink here, it's fresh! Our first day we decided to get massages at the local spa. I'd say definitely get massages in Bali. One thing the balanese take very seriously is there tolerance of other faiths and beliefs, their love of nature, their art, and their massages and spas. There's a spa in EVERY BLOCK! The hotel spa was a little pricey, but at $15 for a 60 minute massage, we couldn't say no. Anna and I signed up for that right on day one! I added a spice bath and almost fell asleep in the spa. I know, worse  things could happen. I got hair cut and at the end they gave me a small neck and scalp massage, at the barber shop!

Walking around Ubud we noticed a lot of farm activity and locals hanging out around here. It's not uncommon to see chickens and roosters on the side of the road walking the side walk with you. Roosters are beautiful, but bloody aggressive! Ubud is like the Kung fu capital for fighting roosters. The roosters here all have black belts and ninja weapons for their cock fights. I just give them a wide berth. If there's ever a dispute, they'll side with the rooster. 

Ubud market is a huge and densely packed farmers market with many arts and crafts to choose from. You can get anything you can imagine. Decided to walk around and get a feel for the town before committing to any vendor or activity. I'm glad we did, there is so much to choose from. The painters here are very talented. It was also somewhere in the mid thirties for temperature that day and we walked under for about six hours and I think got heat stroke. We had red faces and head aches. Rain was a welcome site after that.  We decided that this is the place to settle and do almost nothing. We're doing just that and with style! 

We have plans to visit the monkey forest and delving into other activities, but for now, sleeeeep.

Surf's up dudes! This! Is! Kutaaaaa!!!! I've always wanted to do that. Kuta has many similarities to the movie 300. The biggest similarity is that almost all the guys here surf all the time and have six packs and tans. This week we stayed at The Stones. It's a beautiful 5 star hotel on the main strip. After I got over my inadequacy issues we decided to walk around for a bit. Kuta is the main tourist attraction here in Bali, especially for surfers. This is where the surfers come and surf. The main road in Kuta runs along the beach and is a few kilometers long. Most of the major hotels and shopping malls are all along this main strip. Naturally, it's very crowded most of the time. Good news is it has all the comforts of western living. In some cases those comforts might even be a little less expensive than at home. In many cases, it will cost more. Lucky for us, places like Dominos and Burger King (which Australians know as Hungry Jack's) were actually much cheaper than Canada. Lots of young energy here. Enough to make any 25 year old feel like hitting up a retirement home. Also seems to be a lot of money here. Some seriously high end shops here, as well as high end hotels. The Stones where we're staying has a display case for cars with a Ferrari F430 convertible, Porche Panamera,  Masarati Quattroporte, and 2 Rolls Royces! They're not for sale, just there to show off a bit.

We did some relaxing in the phenomenal pool that this place has. We couldn't help but to take full advantage of it. It's large, and cool, and with most of the rooms empty, it was ours! We tanned and swam for a few more days. We also ate the biggest breakfasts. The best breakfast buffet I've ever had. We could eat western breakfast, or even Asian breakfast, which looks like Asian lunch and dinner, but with an egg on top, sometimes. At the bar there's a noodle station, which I'm not used to for…..breakfast.

We walked the strip a little bit and found ourselves loving this one mall about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. The beach we didn't love as much as it was dirty and only surfers with six packs were using it. Literally no one was even trying to swim, just surf. As a result we did other stuff. We went to the cool mall down the street. It's very interesting how climate affects architecture. Most of the mall is open air so you can view the stars from most of it. We ended up watching a movie here in some of the comfiest seats we've seen in a movie theater. The shopping is very good and there's about 100 food places in here to get food from. Further down the strip there's the Hard Rock Hotel. We may still go back there.

We explored the more off beat streets as well. Lots of little places, tattoo shops, wooden penises for sale, tours, clothing that neither Anna or I could ever dream of fitting in, and lots of DVD's of movies that are already in the theaters. Imagine somebody coughing behind their cell phone camera in a theater for 2 hours and you can pick that DVD up if you like. There's lots of food places as well, but in Kuta it's all expensive, no matter how it looks.

We did take a couple of tours while we were here. One was to see some temples. We visited the temples of Taman Ayun, Tanah Lot, and Uluwatu. 2 of those temples were on cliffs about 100' above the ocean. Beautiful. The Tanah Lot was in the city with lots cool architecture and loads of Dragonflies. It was a very nice temple with 2 resident cats living there. Uluwatu is a popular one with some little furry residence there as well. Monkeys! I love those little guys! They are very cute and look very wise due to their little beards and moustaches. So cute! All of these temples are over 1000 years old.

We also did some snorkeling. They took us out to a spot and we snorkeled. Given there were around 10 other boats doing the same thing we never got to see much from all the sand in the water and the boats scaring them away. That day we visited the beach from Eat Pray Love, and visited a Turtle Farm. Those turtles are very cute and beautiful. They're also very large. I had a particularly nice connection with the local snake and bats! The day ended with a lovely seafood dinner on the beach on Jimbaran Bay overlooking the sunset.

Kuta is a nice place with lots of hustle and bustle. Now it's time we settle down and head to Bali's cultural capital, Ubud. See you than!

Arriving in Sydney

We decided to finalize our grand Australian tour in the grandest way possible, by finishing off in Sydney! Wow! What a huge place this is. Sydney was rated last year the number 2 place in the world to live. Vienna as number one and Vancouver was number 4. I don't ask me about number 3 as I wasn't paying that much attention. One to describe Sydney? Huge! It's a massive city. Everything is big. The harbor is massive with oodles of places for shopping and eating. I'm very surprised that there's so many places to eat and shop, and all of them are full.

Our first day we arrived and cabbed it to our hotel. It was almost $70. It wouldn't have hurt so much if we didn't find out that our hotel has an airport shuttle that costs less than half of that for the both of us. Luckily it saved us money when we left. The Great Southern Hotel is where we stayed. It's an old hotel that has been in operation since 1939. It looks like a gangster hotel. Imagine that new movie Gangster Squad, but instead of Ryan Gosling, think Chinatown with Australians everywhere, because that's where the hotel is located, right in Chinatown.

Darling Harbor

Once we dropped our stuff of we made our way to Darling Harbor. This place was hopping! It's 9pm and packed full of people on a Tuesday night. I'm not talking just pre & post teenagers out drinking, I'm talking people of all ages with their families. There's lots to do for everyone I got to give it to them. They have amazing public spaces here and people sure love to use them! Something we can learn more about in Canada I think. The large rubber duck was sitting in the harbor at about 12 meters tall. It an art piece by a Dutch artist who's touring it around the world. There was also a soccer field floating right in the middle of the water as well. It was part of a corporate challenge. Very cool.

Chinatown

I mentioned Chinatown earlier, and this is one of the coolest Chinatowns of any city I've seen. You really feel like it's a mini version of Asia here. All the shops, very little English being spoken, all the food and goods are all from Asia. It was a lot of fun and not very small. In particular we visited a mall called Market City a block from our hotel. It is about half the size of Chinook Mall in Calgary (Calgary's largest mall) and has around 1800 stores in it! That is no typo! They're crammed in there. All kinds of hustle & bustle. If you want some cheap goods, this is the place.

Boat Tour

We decided it was time to take a tour of the harbor. There's lots of activities off all the different ports and little islands that are around the harbor. Sydney has two major harbors downtown. Darling Harbor, which is close to our hotel, and Circle Quay, which is where the Opera House is located. We thought to start at Darling Harbor and let the boat takes us around.  We hopped on and got the tour. It was quite relaxing going around the harbor. We later disembarked at Manly Beach, which is an incredible beach for surfing and lounging. Lots of surfers there with buff, toned bodies to help us feel completely inadequate, and loads of fresh sea food to help us feel good about soft bellies. Mmmmmm fresh sea food! Anna got completely sun burnt and I laughed a little at first, but was a good boyfriend and all sympathetic later on.

The Sydney Opera House

The next day we walked around downtown a bit and decided later in the evening to see the Sydney Opera House, something I've been wanting to do for a long time. What a build it is! Very unique with such a flare for style and drama. High ceilings, incredibly unique and perplexing roof architecture, and great spaces inside. The tours are well worth taking as they get you in to see all the theaters while the cast and crew are rehearsing for their evening performances. I got to tell you, there's a lot happening at any given time in this place. For starters, there's 4 theaters in this place. The largest one is for the orchestra which was performing a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey with video and a full choir. The second largest is where the opera and ballets are performed this night they were featuring La Boheme by Puccini. The theater company was performing La Soiree in the smaller dramatic theater, which is a mix of burlesque and acrobatics which is not for children under 16 at all. The fourth has a performance of a long running Broadway play called My First Time, based on the website www.myfirstime.com. It is hilarious! Also not for kids. We took that play in and had a ball!

Night Life

Once thing we noticed with all our walking up and down George Street (and we did a lot of walking) was that Sydney has a very active night life. There were loads of buskers, including a student drummer with his drum set  out (I could've taken him. Ha!) and a band that put many bands I've seen to shame. They were a duo and put on an amazing show...for free! On the corner of a major intersection with the monorail train moving above their heads! We were impressed! We walked through a unique, upscale part called The Rocks which has old architecture and high end shops with all the cars to match, as well as some beautiful shopping malls. The most interesting thing was through a small alleyway there's a cool restaurant there with bird cages hanging between the buildings. One night a retail fashion market just popped up out of nowhere selling jewelry, dresses for ladies, and other items of fashion.....for ladies.

In Summary

In conclusion, we loved Sydney. It was one of our favorite stops on our tour. It's a very exciting and vibrant place. You could easily spend a month here and still not do everything there is to do here. It's a very active and exciting place with such energy we haven't experienced anywhere else. As a result, we are now tired and eagerly looking forward to relaxing in Bali. We'll see you than!