Ubud, Bali

After Myanmar and a quick stopover in Bangkok, Thailand, we were ready to relax in Bali. Now it might have been because I had just spent 8 months in India, but to me, Bali was an absolute dream. I am always trying to find the places that are a bit off the tourist trail (eg. Myanmar) but every now and then I go to somewhere like Bali and it reminds me – there’s a reason why everyone wants to go there. Now, of course there are crappy parts of Bali, but the second you escape them, you find the most beautiful scenery, thousands of different things to do (I could have stayed a couple months), and an extremely interesting culture. So yes, Bali is touristy. But in places like Ubud, it’s touristy in the best way. There are hundreds of really cool restaurants, boutique hotels, bike tours, etc. Traveling there is easy – everything has been perfected by the decades of travel, but somehow it still feels authentic and cool. As always, your experience is always based on your perspective, so for me, after traveling and living places with no tourism infrastructure, I was in heaven.

Above are some pictures from Ubud. I should first apologize for the excessive monkey pictures from the Sacred Monkey Forest, but it was just too much fun to shoot them. There were thousands of monkey’s crawling all over the temples (some even jumped on us) and I couldn’t get over how crazy it was – no fences, little staff, and wild monkey’s everywhere. I shouldn’t have been surprised, there are monkey’s everywhere in India, waiting for you outside the grocery store to steal your food, but I hadn’t seen so many at one time. Especially in such a beautiful and natural, yet accessible place. Other pictures include a festival procession that we somehow wound up in the middle of and rice paddy fields at sunset. After Ubud, we head for the beach, and my camera stayed sand-free inside my bag. The last stop of the trip was Singapore, where I experienced the ultimate culture shock (it’s pretty much the exact opposite of India) and after we headed back home to our beautiful city by the bay. A wrap up post of my favorites is to come, but for now, enjoy the monkey snaps!