We found someone to take us on a tour around Ubud – to a few temples, rice terraces, volcanoes, etc. It was a pretty cool day

Stop 1 – Elephant Cave temple. 15,000 pp. Women on their period can’t enter, must wear sarong. We “hired” a guide which we didn’t need – who of course wanted a tip and then entire walk he just kept saying “rock broken, fall down”. Crazy long fingernails – representative of the god who carved out the rocks with his fingernails, one tooth and a crazy long eyebrow hair. The temple didn’t really knock our socks off but we also don’t really “get it”

Standing infront of Elephant Cave temple

Stop 2 – temple in rice terraces. 15,000pp Really liked this one – except for all the school kids running around and was amazed to see so much litter in such a “sacred” place. We walked down/up a bunch of stairs and headed to see a small waterfall. Very pretty. The craftsmanship from the vendors was pretty spectacular – mostly impressed with the bone carvings and ended up buying a cool bone carving, some carved coconuts and a puppet – spent a bunch of money out there. We had a nice drink – a lassi for me and a watermelon juice for Chris at the café there.

Temple offerings

Stop 3 – Coffee plantation – I wasn’t really excited about this one but really glad we stopped. After seeing the coffee plantation in Hawaii I couldn’t really be bothered but we checked it out. Saw the coffee where the cat eats the berry, doesn’t digest the bean, poops it out then it is cleaned and roasted taking on different flavors from being inside the cat. We  saw the difference between male and female coffee – who knew and then got a chance to try a bunch of different coffees and teas. I still don’t like coffee. The area was beautiful and glad we stopped.

Didn't try the cat poo coffee but every other flavor was there

Stop 4 – Volcano. 15,000 to get in. Very cool as well to see the lake and the volcano – but very cloudy and rainy so didn’t get too much of an amazing view. Would be really cool to spend more time there and do some hikes. We had the most expensive lunch we have had so far – a buffet that was 100k pp. Good food but would have been happier with a la carte.

Stop 5 – Fruit stand – cool fruit stands on the side of the road with interesting fruits to try, very picturesque.

Fruit stand on side of the road

Stop 5.5 – Pura Tirta Empul – Another temple – maybe 15,000 to get in as well – can’t keep track. Cool spring, beautiful setting, holy water.

Pura Tirta Empul

Stop 6 – Rice terraces – very cool again. We stopped a couple times getting to them and were swarmed by kids trying to sell us postcards, and some adults. It got a bit overwhelming. I can handle the stores where I can keep walking but this was more than I had experienced. Three kids, 2 girls and a young boy came up to me selling 8 postcards for 20,000. I could barely get out of the car to take a picture before they were trying to sell to me. I looked at each book and it was very interesting – especially the little boy who when I looked at his cards held out his arms to the girls so that they wouldn’t give their cards to me. When they could tell I wasn’t all that interested the price went down to 15000 and when I tried to get in the car the middle girl saw the fruit I had bought and begged for some of it. I felt like I almost needed to pick her up and move her out of the way. Even as our driver tried to back up they were still tapping on the window.

The kids selling postcards

Somewhere along the way we drove past two police checkpoints where the cops stop you to get you to pay a “fine” which is basically them stealing from you. Our driver didn’t stop and motioned that he had been stopped earlier and kept on going. It sucked to know that this happens all the time out here.

We ended up going to Three Monkeys for dinner – a bit spendier than normal –but for fancy food it was a decent price. I don’t think I would rush back but it was good.