Ubud: My New All-Time Favorite Place

The door to my hotel. Note the lack of key card

Last night I fell asleep to the sound of bullfrogs and this morning I woke up to the sound of roosters crowing. Does it get more relaxing than that? 

The tentative plans I had for yesterday were all soundly quashed by the unrelenting rain (I guess it IS monsoon season, after all) aided by the fact that I had been unable to sleep for some reason (as in, just one sketchy hour all night). So while some rain wouldn’t normally stop me my extreme exhaustion didn’t help much in the motivation department to keep on pressing on. Also, as I had had a minor AC issue in my room, which I insisted was no big deal at all, the hotel insisted on upgrading me to one of the suites so, just when I thought this place couldn’t get any better, I was now in an even more amazing room! So I decided to just give in to the tiredness and have a bit of a “chill day”, to just soak in the place I was, the calming and relaxing vibe of the place…. and to, of course, get an extra-long massage!

The view of the rice paddies off of my veranda

I did, however, pry myself away in the evening long enough to attend a traditional Kecak dance (the fire dance). While the Legong dance last night was beautiful and artistic, this one was a completely different style. It did have some of the same dance elements, but the main feature is an enormous group of traditionally dressed men who sit in a circle and sing/chant throughout the whole show. From minute one, I was mesmerized by it.



Yeah, I could wake up to this view every day

Today was my last day here, sadly, and only a partial one at that as I had to leave the hotel by 4pm so I knew I had better get to it. After my last amazing breakfast in the open-air restaurant by the stream, I hopped on a bike and took off to check out the surrounding area. Rice paddies upon rice paddies. And small little village streets lined with local little vendors and restaurants and temples and traditional homes. Beyond charming.

You know you're in Asia when the mirrors only
come up this high.

I came back in time to shower and check out, then headed out once more to…. The Monkey Forest! Yep, if there’s a monkey-themed amusement around, you can pretty much bet I’m going to find it! More temples, more monkeys (a couple even jumped on me!), more enchantment. I don’t know what it is about those little guys that completely fascinates me. Just watching how they care for each other, groom each other, interact, move around and, well, pretty much everything, just never gets old for me to watch.

What does get old, however, is the sweating and the mosquito bites. The bath I took before checking out was rendered completely useless within about 5 minutes of walking around when I was COVERED yet again in sweat. And to say the mosquito bites have increased exponentially would be the grossest understatement of the year. Everywhere I go now, people are constantly staring right at them (I think maybe everyone is afraid I have the measles or something). I know I should cover them up but it’s just so freaking hot that the idea of putting on something with sleeves makes me ill. The sweet ladies at the hotel saw me scratching furiously one morning over breakfast and returned promptly to give me some ointment to put on them but, while it takes some of the itch away, it doesn’t seem to do much else. An Australian lady saw me at the monkey forest today and came up to me and insisted on giving me some pills that she swears will work. She warned me, however, that they’ll knock me out hard so I’d better be careful when I take them. So it looks like on tonight’s flight I won’t need a Xanax after all. And hopefully they’ll actually help somewhat with the bites as well as, gotta say, the looking like a freak thing is getting pretty old.


Tonight I take an overnight flight back to Seoul and I am genuinely sorry to leave here. I don’t often go back to the same place twice as I’m all about going new places and seeing different things whenever possible. But this is a place that I WILL be back to someday and for a much longer period of time the next time around. Fo shizz.