Whitewater Rafting!

Today, we went whitewater rafting down the Ayung River!

It. Was. Awesome! 

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time (and that's saying something, because my husband makes me laugh quite a bit!)  We left our camera at the hotel and were bummed we weren't gonna have any photos of such a fun experience, but low and behold, there was a photographer who took the next 8 photos and sold them to us for $5 at lunch, which was totally worth it to us to have them as our memory!  They're cheesy, but we love them.

We had the best guide who was full of pranks and always laughing... and the funniest Chinese friends (from Shanghai) on our boat.  Before we headed off down the river, our guide taught us a couple important key phrases. When he said GET DOWN, we had to get on the floor of the boat as fast as we could. When he said BOOM BOOM, we had to put our heads between our legs and hold on for dear life.  As he was telling us these, my heart was beating out of my chest!  Then when he explained that if we didn't follow exactly what he said, the boat could tip over and it would be very dangerous, I almost jumped out and ran back to the taxi!

I'm obviously glad I didn't, because it ended up being one of the best experiences of our entire trip!

As I said before, our guide was a bit of a prankster... all in good fun of course. One of the girls couldn't swim and the guide pushed her out of the boat when it looked like the water was really deep, but it was only about a foot deep!  She was a great sport about it and we all died laughing.

He would steer our boat so that we would be going backwards really fast and ram us into a wall sending us flying backwards into each other's laps!  I know this sounds terrible for some of you, but we all laughed like little kids when it would happen. Or he would push our boat straight into a waterfall and yell "massage time" as it practically drowned us all!   

We rafted down the Ayung River for 2 full and exhilarating hours with stunning views of Indonesia's lushest jungles on either side, blue skies, waterfalls galore, stone carvings on the walls, and hardly anyone else on the river the entire time! Have I mentioned that I love being here during low season? Because I do! 

  

Between narrow ravines, double drops, and whitewater rapids, there were areas where the rocks would clear and it became a calm flowing river.  At those points our guide would let us jump in and float down the river next to the boat.  Thank goodness for those life jackets!

I made it to the end of the 10 kilometer trip with tired arms, sun kissed skin, and a perma-grin on my face!  I can't express how much I loved this trip and would recommend it to anyone heading to Ubud for vacation!

After getting out of the boat, we climbed 400 STEPS through rice terraces, up the side of the ravine, to a busy street where we were handed some water and a towel.  Then we followed our guide a couple minutes more and landed at the Payung Restaurant where we were able to take showers (yes, at the restaurant... weird, but kind of awesome too) and had a buffet Indonesian style lunch together before our taxi driver took us back to our hotel.  

Like I said...

 Today. Was. Awesome!

The Royal Water Palace and the Art Market!

It was a VERY lazy morning this morning. :)  That's what vacation are for though right?!  We left the hotel around 11am and headed for lunch at the vegan/vegetarian restaurant Bali Buddah, which was recommended to us by our friend Meg!  Bean burgers... yum!

We decided we wanted to try our hand at silver jewelry making (since it's the #1 thing to do in Ubud) and we had seen a silver making shop in the middle of nowhere a couple days ago during one of our drives, so we backtracked and made the trek back over there to check it out.  We were met by these 3 schmooches and their older sister who kept laughing and calling them "naughty boys"!  She called her dad, who makes the jewelry... He was out working in the rice fields and came up to meet us. Sadly, he doesn't offer classes but gave us directions to the two places that do offer them in Ubud, Perak Studio and Chez Monique. 

FYI: Perak Studios is $35 per person and you get 5 grams of silver.  Chez Monique is $40 per person and you get 10 grams of silver. We were too late to make today's class at Chez Monique, so we're scheduled to get some jewelry makin' done on Monday at 9:30am.  They charged us $40 total because we said we wanna make something together.  :)

Next stop was the Ubud Royal Water Palace - Puri Saren Agung.  

This was the palace of the Kings of Ubud until the 1940's and some of the royal descendants actually still live here.  It's the only temple that we went to that didn't have an entrance fee - another perk! :)  I LOVE this place.  

These doors lead into the worship area of the temple, which isn't open to the public for sightseeing, however if you're a Hindu and are interested in going in to worship, you're more than welcome to. 

I love finding flowers that I've never seen before!  Leave it to the Royal Palace to have such beautiful gardens.

What I would give to have been here when more of these beautiful lotus flowers were blooming in the pond!

One last photo for good measure... just to prove we were really there! :)

We went back to the hotel to cool off in the pool for a while.    

...and then got showered up and headed back to the Ubud Traditional Art Market for another round of perusing!

This time Aaron picked up a nylon hammock for $8.00 for us to use on our camping trip next month!

We finished off the day with a $2.00 dinner at this spot near the market.   I can't remember the name of it, but it's family owned and the food is fantastic, especially for the price!  The mom and grandmother do all of the cooking, and tonight we were in for a real treat!  The mom's 5 year old daughter not only professionally (yes, professionally) handed us our menus and bowed to us, she then danced around and sang while we ate. (sooo cute!)    

 After dinner we went next door to the tour agency and booked a whitewater rafting trip with a company called Payung for $20 each, instead of their usual $65 (including private air conditioned taxi to the river and back to our hotel, 2 hours of rafting with a trained guide, lunch and a shower)!  Man, I love traveling during the low season! 

Waste of a day...

When you're traveling for a month with no set plan, you're bound to have one of those days where you look back and think, "Well, that was kind of a waste!"  That was today.  We didn't do anything cultural  or see any temples, get massages, or watch any performances.  Instead, we started our morning like we do every morning with a banana pancake, fruit and coffee delivered to our porch. Oh and we switched hotels to Ubud Terrace Bungalow, because we wanted to be somewhere where there were people around.  Here is much more busy, which is fun for a people watching person like myself!

After breakfast, I walked out by the pool to watch all of the monkeys who roam through the grounds in the early morning, looking for food and things to break!  I saw about 20 this morning and one very scared hotel guest who was yelling at the poor grounds worker, saying, "The monkeys are everywhere!  You have to do something about this!"  I wanted to yell back, Lady, you booked a hotel next to the Monkey Forest!  Did you think they were just gonna stay in there all day? lol  Here's our bungalow, right next to the pool!  Not too shabby for $35 a night!

After breakfast, we jumped on the scooter and headed in search of some beautiful rice terraces that we had read about that are just north of Ubud town center.

While we never found the one's we had read about, we did find some of our very own that we thought were pretty nice!

Bali is known for it's stunning rice terraces... some famous, some not so much!  The great thing is, almost no matter where you scooter around this area, you're bound to find lush green fields of rice!  Who knew rice was so beautiful! :)

As a side note... check out the ends of my hair.  I think it might be completely dead. :(  See, there are negatives to living like this for a month - There is such a thing as too much sun, saltwater and chlorine!

Our good friends Jess and Mayo bought a huge hand carved elephant when they were in Sri Lanka a couple years ago and Aaron and I have always loved it... so, when we saw that wood carving was prevalent just outside of Ubud's center, we knew it was the time to find our own little hand carved Indonesian elephant!  

For a measly $10, we got this 5 pound gorgeous, one of a kind, hand carved elephant, which we appropriately named BALI.  As he sits on our future bookshelf in our future home, we'll be reminded of this chance of a lifetime that we've been blessed with, to travel such a fabulous country!

The rest of our day was spent at the hotel where we swam, laid out by the pool, I blogged, we ordered pizza in from Pizza Bagus for $3.50 a pizza and watched Eat, Pray, Love (about 1/5 of it is filmed where we are) before calling it a night!

Goa Gaja and the Traditional Art Market!

I hope you're not sick of seeing photos of temples yet, because there are temples galore around this place, and when you have two photographers together, you're gonna end up with a lot of pictures!  Today we checked out Goa Gaja, built in the 9th century (801-900), about 5-10 minutes south east of Ubud.

The temple and it's surroundings are nothing short of extraordinary.  It was believe by the early Balinese that this was the actual fountain of youth.  Ahhh, If only that were true!

Now the water that pours from the jars of these 3 maidens is considered to be holy water and used for purification in the ceremonies.

This Elephant Cave at the temple is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It's really dark inside and thick with the smoke of burning incense, but worth going in.  I won't tell you what's inside. You'll have to go and see it for yourself! :)

You can tell this place has been around for hundreds of years, because the trees here are GIGANTIC!  The roots themselves are almost as tall as I am! 

While we were standing at one of the fountains, we met a guy from California who told us about a secret pathway that leads down into the river below the temple.  Secret pathway?!  We're in!  It took about 20-30 minutes for us to navigate through the thick jungle, over fallen trees, under bamboo tunnels and along steep drop offs...

It was completely worth the climb up and down to see this river!

 After Goa Gaja, we scooted back to town and had lunch at Budi's Warung, a cute little spot, across the street from a restaurant we ate at a lot the last time we were in Ubud!  This was equally as cheap and delicious!

Since we were close to the traditional art market, we took a little stroll around to see what we could find!  I certainly wasn't interested in a wood carved penis bottle opener, which seems to be a popular product in this market (bottom left of this pic).  No idea why!

... and while $2.00 for a beautiful sarong is a steal of a deal, I think 4 is enough for one girl!  I used my restraint and passed up buying another.

Instead, I bought 2 beautiful beaded coin purse/bag thing-a-ma-jiggys.  1 for $3 and the other for $1.50!

We went back to Three Monkey for dinner tonight!  Where else can you have delicious food next to rice terraces in the middle of the city?!  We love it here, period.

Cafe's, Rice Terraces, Temples and more Monkeys!

It's another lovely day in Ubud... blue skies, warm air, just the right amount of wind to cool you off!  We had breakfast at the hotel and then scooted over to Juice Ja Cafe for some fresh squeezed juice! 

We had to make sure not to step on today's offering, which was right at the front steps!

Hindu's place these palm frond baskets offerings filled with flowers and rice on any and everything in their home, or shop, that they want their god or ancestors to watch over for them that day, even the outdoor water faucet.  I saw one of these offerings onto of a box of cookies at the supermarket yesterday!  Whoever was doing the offerings that day must really like cookies! lol

 After we had had our fill of juice, we jumped on the scooter and headed North, in search of Goa Gajah, which we quickly found out, after asking some of the locals, was in the complete opposite direction.  Thanks google maps.  Good news for us is there was another temple we wanted to see up north, so we went in that direction instead and scooted right past these gorgeous rice terraces, which we had to stop and see!

 Turns out, the area is called Tegallalang (5kms north of Ubud) and is one of the best rice terrace views around!  Lucky for us, we just happened upon it.

Next stop: Pura Gunung Kawi Temple

In Indonesia, you can't enter a temple without wearing a sarong!  I guess it's like Southern churches in America and their rule about wearing suits and dresses.  Regardless, Aaron loves this tradition! *Insert sarcasm here!

...and girls, if it's your "special time of the month", you're gonna have to stay in the parking lot!  lol

 It took us about 30-45 minutes to scoot back over to Ubud, but the views along the drive were stunning!

Indonesians are serious artists and wood carving is one of their specialties!  Around the temple area, we would see tiny shop after tiny shop with people carving animals, Hindu gods, decorations, etc... Then as you get closer and closer to ubud, the carving shops are replaced with retail shops where the carvings are actually being sold.  I love that it's LOCAL!

 We went back to the Monkey Forest today to get another look at those crazy monkeys!  I wasn't quite as skiddish this time.  Dino really freaked me out when he leapt at me from the tree on Lembongan.  It gave me a whole new fear of monkeys, so I knew I needed to toughen up and not be such a baby!

Speaking of babies!  This was the teeniest, tiniest baby monkey!  

There's a little pathway in the forest that leads down to a stunning ravine.

... and the trees here are GINORMOUS!

But, really, the monkey forest isn't about the ravine or the trees, it's about these little schmooches!

Dinner was spent at "the cheapest restaurant in Ubud", at least that's what it says on their sign!  Cheap prices doesn't always mean bad food though.  My $2 curry was great!  

Next stop was, no surprise, Juice Ja Cafe, our favorite!  BTW: It's humid around here and we're constantly covered in sweat (or glow!) and I'm breaking out like a middle school girl all over again!  ugh

Hope tomorrow's just as exciting and adventurous as today was!