Hi everyone,

We've had a lovely chilled out couple of days here in Ubud. Post-massaging yesterday we went out for a massive dinner of chicken/fish sate to a restaurant round the corner - we went there for lunch yesterday too and all had amazing seafood/curry-esque affairs (it's looking like it might be a new favourite venue!)

Today we set out to explore a bit more of the town after yesterday ended up being a shopping-only affair! Despite this pledge, the first hour or so was spent in Ubud's market looking at all the local arts and crafts and the enormous flower stalls selling all types of flower petals, which are used together with incense as offerings to the Hindu gods. People place the flowers and incense in small banana leaf baskets all around the town and in the temples.

We also managed to have a peek inside the Ubud Palace, where some of the local royal family live. It's more of an old stone temple than a palace to be honest but quite a lot of it was private so I suppose they must have had some fancy bits in there somewhere! A couple more failed attempts to see the temples later (Gemma and I were rather inappropriately dressed it turns out!), we walked just out of the town and spent a couple of hours wandering amongst the rice terraces. The fields are incredibly green and are mostly terraced due to the undulating land which makes them look really pretty. We think they probably have a rolling season for growing the rice here as some of the fields looked like they had only just been planted where as others were being harvested. It was interesting to see all the workers harvesting the rice, separating the grains and drying it out, ready to be bagged up.

After lunch Martin and Gemma visited the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, one of Ubud's top attractions. I've been before so wasn't majorly keen to go back although I think they both enjoyed it, despite one of the monkeys trying to nick Gem's new bag! They have lots of interesting old temples within the sanctuary, which mainly holds Long-tailed Balinese Macaques (small grey monkeys) but in my opinion it's more of a monkey free-for-all than a sanctuary!

Off out for dinner tonight, probably to the same place we went last night but we might try and be a tad more adventurous! We catch a boat to the Gili islands in Lombok in the morning - there for a couple of days before we all go on our tour to see the Komodo dragons - very exciting!

Love Katie, Martin and Gem