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Ubud, Bali

Yoga and meditation centers, spas, temples, art galleries, excellent restaurants, museums, and countless shops selling goods from artisans of nearby villages all come together in Ubud.  It has been an important center for the arts since the 1930s when Western artists were drawn to the area.  Hiking, rafting and bike tours in the countryside are also available.

With reservations secured at a centrally located hotel, we were within easy walking distance of many things the town has to offer.  For the most part, however, we kept our visit to the area pretty low key.  Alan’s priority was to experience a Balinese massage.  With a recommendation from our hotel, he was picked up and whisked a few blocks away to Jaens Spa. (http://www.jaensspaubud.com/)  His 1 1/2 hour massage was the “best ever” and this is after a lifetime of semi-regular massages.  It was also, by far, the most reasonable, at $20 including a tip.

Not surprisingly, I signed up for a Balinese cooking class.  Picked up at the hotel, the first stop was the local market where I met with Chef Ketut and the other 6 students in the class.  (http://www.ketutsbalicookingclass.com/about.html) During a walk through the market, Ketut pointed out, identified, and described the flavors and uses for a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices.  From the market, we were driven to his kitchens.  With individual work stations for each student, menus are a general outline with modifications based on each person’s likes, dislikes, and food preferences or sensitivities.  Over the next few hours, we prepared, from scratch, 3 different sauces, a soup, an appetizer, 4 entrees, and a dessert.  For the peanut sauce, we fried the peanuts, ground them with spices using a mortar and pestle, and thinned it with chicken stock and coconut milk.  At the end of the session, we sat down and ate what we had produced.  Luckily, I had leftovers, so Alan could enjoy at least part of what I had prepared.   
With several quality museums in town, we decided on the nearby Agung Rai Museum of Art.  Three open-air galleries,  nestled in beautifully maintained gardens, house the collections.  Intricate Batuan-style works from the 1930s and 40s, as well as some modern art, are included.  There were also works by Javanese artist Raden Saleh, including his “Portrait of a Javanese Nobleman and His Wife”, an Indonesian version of “American Gothic”, completed almost a century before the American version.  Hindu god statues at the museum, and throughout Bali, are frequently draped with saris and/or covered with decorative umbrellas.  We were told this is done to humanize the gods. 

Another tourist destination is the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary which is inhabited by 600 long-tailed, gray-haired Balinese Macaques.  The monkeys overflow the sanctuary out onto the nearby streets, where store owners stand by with brooms or slingshots to prevent the animals from making off with their merchandise.  Visitors are warned not to show your teeth or make eye contact, as this would incite the monkeys to more aggressive behavior.  Grabbing sunglasses, dangling earrings, or anything else they can snatch is part of their daily routine.  We watched one fellow hop onto a nearby scooter, dump a beverage he didn’t like but snag a hard-boiled egg that he wandered away to peel and eat. 

Nearby, we found the Ubud Palace, Puri Saren, built in the early 1800s with some reconstruction following the earthquake of 1917.   The palace is open to the public with a number of international events hosted here each year, but the royal family still lives on part of the property.  Countless shops and restaurants line the surrounding area.


But, we also enjoyed hanging out poolside at our hotel to avoid the midday traffic and sun.  After 3PM or so the influx of traffic from tours quiets down and the town becomes much more peaceful.  We walked everywhere, but walking in the evening requires extra caution and a flashlight since street lighting is intermittent and there are occasional, sometimes large gaping holes where a sidewalk should be.  

Some locals feel that Ubud has been a bit ruined by its own popularity following the town's introduction to the world in 2006 by Elizabeth Gilbert’s book and the subsequent movie, Eat, Pray, Love.  Certainly, the book has brought a large number of tourists to the area, but then that means more jobs and more money also, so maybe it's a balance.  At least for now, most of the tourists disappear with the tours and the town returns to some level of peacefulness in the evenings.  And now it was time for us to move on as well, heading to the northwest coast of Bali.





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