Bali - Ubud

Corinne's flight was due to land an hour after mine so i waited in Denpasar airport for her. It was delayed so i ended up waiting 3 hours but oh well! Immediately on landing i noticed the difference in culture, the airport was very busy and i was constantly badgered to buy things like water, snacks and taxi rides. I politely refused them all and read my book while i waited. Eventually Corinne came through and i had my first experience of bartering! The taxi driver wanted IDR435000 (A$44, £22) to take us the hour journey to Ubud. After laughing him off and walking away and up to several other taxi drivers he lowered his price, and over the next 30 minutes we got him down to IDR270000 ($27 £13) it was stressful and annoying but at least we saved some money!

The drive from Denpasar to Ubud was frankly terrifying, it was my first real experience of SE Asian roads and they are just as crazy as everyone says! There were hundreds of scooters that just rode on whatever side they wanted to and there was constant beeping, if someone overtook you, you beeped, if you overtook someone else you beeped, if someone on the other side overtook, you beeped, you beep at your friends you beep at the goat on the side of the road, you beep at the leaf that hit your windscreen! It was very, VERY loud! I also thought i was going to die as my seat belt didn't work and the driver was genuinely crazy, weaving in and out and overtaking when oncoming vehicle were about 50m away! Somehow we got to Ubud alive and in one piece!

Ubud is a beautiful area of Bali, towards the north of the island, it is very relaxed and the surroundings are stunning, the buildings are all built from rock and have pointy roofs like temples, there are stone sculptures of monkeys and dragons on every corner and really thick forests in between every road. We stayed in an awesome hostel that had a really great outside social area where we met lots of people. After speaking to some people that had been in Bali a while i booked on to a sunrise trek up a volcano. Corinne and I had a wander around Ubud town and had a curry in a gorgeous little restaurant where you sat on cushions on the floor to eat and they looked at you funny when you didn't use your hands.

We walked to two nearby temples which were really interesting and beautiful, the architecture of the temples is amazing, it is so intricate with every wall covered in carvings. We had to wear sarongs around our waists in order to enter and there were signs saying women could not enter when menstruating, and couples that were not married but had sex were also not allowed in together. There were sections where women weren't allowed at all, it was all a bit sexist but obviously we respected the different culture. After the temples we went to visit the Monkey Forrest, it was quite a walk, we were following a hand drawn map that was definitely not to any kind of scale! We got there and read the warnings about not looking monkeys in the eye and not feeding them.I was a little bit nervous as i have heard of people being bitten, but i've had my rabies vaccination so i headed in! The forrest was beautiful with stone cobbled paths and lots of monkey sculptures. There were temples within the forrest but tourists were not allowed to enter. The monkeys were really cute, they were macaque monkeys so quite small, but some of the males were enormous! As it is spring in Bali there were loots of baby monkeys who cling on to the underbelly of their mother while she climbs and jumps through the trees. I don't know how they hold on, but they do! One section of the forrest had a little pond with branches growing over it, to cool down, the monkeys would climb the trees and then dangle over the water, they would then either drop off of their own accord of play fight each other until one fell in. It was hilarious to watch and you could see that they have really individual personalities.

We sat down on a ledge at one point and within seconds i had a monkey on my shoulder, i was a bit scared at first but he was harmless, he just wanted to play with my hair. He jumped between Corinne and i for a while and then when he started to pull my earrings we stood up and he ran away. I think as long as you stay calm around them you will be fine. I got some great photos of me with a monkey on my head!

The next day i did my sunrise trek. This meant i had to wake up at 1.30am for a 2am pick up. I could tell i was in Asia as nothing ever happens on time, by 3am we were just leaving. We climbed up Mount Batur which is an old volcano standing at 1717m. It was quite a trek and took a good few hours, the trickiest part were the loose rocks that meant you kept tripping. It didn't help that it was pitch black and we just had little torches to see where we were going. After a few hours we reached the summit and within minutes (as we were late) were rewarded with the sunrise over the other side of the volcano. The sky turned a gorgeous orange and pink and it was pretty cool to see the sun come over the horizon. The views once it was light were also beautiful as we could see all the surrounding villages and lakes. The way back down the mountain was definitely more tricky as the loose rocks caused even more issues. The guides had to help me down quite a few sections as my knees were not coping well! But we made it in the end. All we had been given food wise was two slices of bread and a hard boiled egg, so we were absolutely starving, we discovered we were meant to have been given food at the top of the mountain but weren't so when we got back to the hostel we complained and they gave us a free breakfast which was very needed!

I laid in the sun for a few hours as Corinne was seeing a Balian, which is a spiritual reader. Then i met some guys who had rented scooters and invited me to come along on an ride around Ubud. It was such a great day! We visited some enormous rice terraces which were the brightest green colour i have ever seen, they are all layered up the hills and look stunning. We then visited the biggest temple in Ubud although i had to hang back as i wasn't allowed in one section but the boys were, it's so annoying!! Before we entered the temple we had to be blessed with holy water which consisted off having water splashed on your head with some bamboo. After riding around for a few hours looking at the scenery the guy who's scooter i was on the back of let me have a go driving which was frankly terrifying but i got the hang of it and didn't crash or die so all was well! The sun was beginning to set but we raced to one last stop which was a gorgeous waterfall, we had a quick sunset swim in the fall which was very refreshing after sweating in the sun all day! When we finally got back i was exhausted having been up to see the sun rise and set! I went to bed pretty early as it was already our last day in Ubud and time to head to one of the smaller islands, Gili Trawangan.