Ubud

Bali’s famous beach town, Sanur was an interesting place- like a tacky Florida beach town. Definitely not our style…so it was off in the Kliang (a Toyota “truck”) to Ubud.

We navigated in 4-km increments since there are no signs in Bali and lots of touts willing to help you with directions (while they point you in the direction of their cousins’ shop). Once in Ubud, we explored the town by car before checking out the hotels. We looked at hotels ranging from $215 to $35.

We finally came upon the Puri Ubud. It’s the home of the Ubud royal family, still in residence. There were no signs and it was sheer opulence. The central courtyard opened into beautiful courtyards filled with vegetation, birds, fish ponds and rooms with individual terraces filled with antiques. All that, plus A/C, for $60 a night.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Ubud. It was a charming town- lots of shops, restaurants, and really charming people. It was hard to believe that we were still in Indonesia. There were a lot more white faces and a lot more Western influence…it was obvious that they had become accustomed to hordes of Western tourists. Fortunately, the numbers are down significantly. We had a great dinner, complete with cold white wine. When we headed back to our hotel, we found that they have Balinese dancing every night in the main courtyard. It was an amazingly beautiful setting and we took in our 20 minutes of dance before calling it a night.

Our Room!

Outside our room, John communed with the frogs- who seemed to understand his “bratz” and responded in kind.