Day 1-3: Bali (Alila Ubud)

After the usual crazy day before a long trip, Dee and I made it to the airport for our 12:15am flight on Wednesday (really Tuesday night). It was a 13 hour trip to Taipei, 2 hours at the airport there, another 5 hours to Bali, and an hour drive to our hotel, and when we got there, it was Thursday afternoon. Still, probably because we slept well on the first leg, it didn't actually seem that long.


Our hotel here, Alila Ubud, is in a beautiful and peaceful spot along a ridge overlooking a lush valley. We decided to begin our trip luxuriously, so we got a suite with a wrap-around deck and views of the valley and distant mountains. We spent the afternoon settling in, sitting on the deck, and checking out the grounds of the hotel.

Later in the afternoon, as I was reading from our guidebook, I noticed something our of the corner of my eye and looked up to see a monkey staring at me from right outside the window. We're at the edge of a monkey forest here, and we've seen monkeys sitting in the trees and playing in the grass at the hotel. Soon, one monkey turned into three, and they all jumped onto the railing of our deck. Not bad for our first day. We crawled into bed that night very satisfied but exhausted.

The next morning, our leisure concierge (like I said, we're starting in style) took us on a tour of the surroundings to see aspects of the Balinese Lifestyle. In one of the villages, he saw that the community was gathering for a cock fight and stopped so that we could check it out. We were a bit apprehensive, but we figured it would be rude to say no. It turned out to be really interesting, because this was very much an all-community social gathering, with men gathered around the ring gambling and cheering, and women further out selling food. Apparently, communities put these on to raise money couple of times a year on special occasions (this was for the temple anniversary). I don't mean to be glorifying the practice, but it's always different when you see it from the inside. The fights are really not as brutal as you might expect, and the loser is killed quickly right there and cooked that night.

From there, we drove through the rice paddies, visited a public temple, had lunch with a view of the volcano, which is still occasionally active, went inside a Balinese family compound, and saw Balinese artists creating intricate wood carvings and silver jewelry. At night, the hotel had arranged a cocktail party and special dinner down by the pool, complete with gamelan music and Balinese dancing.





On Saturday, we got to ride an elephant. Sumatran elephants are the smallest species of elephant, but they are still quite big. Our elephant, Melanie, did a great job showing us the park, where they rescue elephants who can't survive in the wild and try to teach people about their plight.

After the ride, there was a show, where the elephants showed off their skills, including dunking a basketball. For the last trick, one of the elephants sprayed water into the crowd. Dee was standing directly in front and got completely soaked.