Hello again, Ubud!

Yesterday, we went onto www.agoda.com and booked a great hotel for Ubud. We were planning to stay on Nusa Lembongan for a couple more nights, but I got so excited about the 50% off deal that agoda was having on this particular hotel in Ubud that I booked it without making sure it was the dates we wanted!  Sadly, it's for tonight!  So, we slightly reluctantly left Lembongan...

... on the Sang Sugriwa speed boat this morning at 8:30am... 

...and arrived in Sanur at 9:00am....

...where we were met by a taxi driver who drove us 1 1/2 hours over to Ubud. (175,000 rupiah each - $17.50 total for the boat and taxi.)

We checked into $24 a night hotel, thanks to the 50% off discount from www.agoda.com...

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..did a little swimming...

... and worked out a deal with a scooter rental place on Monkey Forest Road ($3.50 a day for 7 days) and scooted our happy little faces over to an overpriced lunch. (Sometimes we fall into the tourist trap because we're lazy and hot!)

After lunch, we decided it was a good day for the Monkey Forest, where for $2.00 each, we were free to roam with A LOT of wild monkeys!

Looks like even monkeys have to go to the gynecologist sometimes!

Thankfully these guides are around to help if the monkeys get too feisty or steal something.  One monkey stole a little boys sweater and went running up a tree!  It was hard not to laugh when the little guy was wailing because his sweater was taken, but it's pretty funny!  Another girl brought some bananas in and was trying to hand them out to each little monkey, but one of the granddaddy monkeys (which you DO NOT MESS WITH) started tugging at her skirt which was enough to send the bananas flying in the air and the girl running!

The thunder started to come as we were walking through the monkey forest and we knew we needed to find a good cafe to duck into where we could get a little wifi and fresh juice while it poured overhead!  Where else but Juice Ja Cafe?, one of our favorite cafe's from our last time in Ubud!  We stayed here for a while, and chose to sit on the front deck, the only spot where we could sit on the floor, with floor pillows under our butts!  Can you tell we've been influenced by our 4 years in Korea?!

As we were walking through town today, we had been handed about 15 massage pamphlets!  So, we sat and looked through all of them and decided we would have a little "spa day" with the rest of our afternoon!

We decided on Warsa Spa and spent the next 3 hours in pure indulgence mode!  I had a one hour Balinese massage, manicure, pedicure and facial for... get ready for it... $20 total!  The title of my blog is no coincidence!  I'm not the same since I've lived in Asia!  I'll never be able to pay for a $100 massage again in America, ever! 

Aaron decided he would channel his inner spa-man and came with me.  He chose one of their packages too and had a 1 hour massage with me, facial and chocolate body scrub (yum!!) and he only paid $20!  When they brought us into the room, they told us to take off all of our clothes but our undies, and the girl handed Aaron a pair of those 1 size fits all, cloth bikini briefs and told him to wear those!  I almost died laughing as he tried to change into them while the two girls kept peaking through the curtain at him!  Can a guy get a little privacy!?

For and extra $8, he tried ear candling (which, holy crap, was awesome... and disgusting!)

After spending 3 hours at the spa, we walked over to Three Monkeys, a fantastic restaurant overlooking rice paddies and a Koi pond.


 We ordered a Margherita pizza ($4.50) and spinach and pesto lasagna ($5.50).  It was the best $10 dollars we'd spent in a while!  YUM!

Then it was back over to Juice Ja Cafe for some after dinner carrot cake, beer and coffee! 

I couldn't be happier being back in Ubud, one of my favorite places on the earth!  Tomorrow we're planning to get out and find a couple temples.