Yesterday was our last full day in Ubud.
We woke up early to go on a nice bike ride up north. Most of the bike ride looked like this. Beautiful rice patties, with a back drop of palm trees. On occasion we would get glimpses of Mount Agung, which is a giant volcano towards the middle of the Island. This mountain is very important in Balinese culture. Each town has a temple of death, and normally the temple is on the Moutn Agung side of the town. Also when giving directions, Balinese do not use north and south. They have a word which means toward the mountain and away from the mountain. Obviously this direction changes depending on which side of the mountain you are on.
During this bike ride we went in to a store and took this picture. Thats a lot of cats. CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS.
After the bike ride we decided to get Balinese massages. This was a GREAT idea. They were about 7 dollars each, for an hour of relaxing soothing massaging.
We had to go to the Bumi Sehat office to get our volunteer t-shirts, and used this as an excuse to go through monkey forest one last time. And this is what we saw. There were a bunch of monkeys swimming in a small ravine trying to cool off. It was incredibly cute. We watched them frolic in the water for a while, and then said our final goodbyes to the monkeys
Once we got over our jealousy of the monkeys for being able to go for a swim, we got a taxi to Klungkung, which was the old central kingdom of Bali, until they were slaughtered by the Dutch around 1908 (Jerks). We went to the hall of Justice (what a great name). This was the supreme court of the Klungkun kingdom. There were two main huts, one for the supreme court, and one for the king. They both had ornate illustrations on the ceilings, telling traditional Balinese stories. We tried to take some pictures, but the pictures do not really convey how crazy these buildings are.
There was also a small museum which talked about the Dutch conquering Klungkun, and how the Dutch won easily since they had guns, and the Balinese had spears and daggers. The whole complex was quite beautiful, and was well worth the visit. And we also took this picture.
After Klungkun we went to Petulu. This area is noteworthy since every evening thousands of white herons return from finding food during the day. Every where you look you see these white herons. They roost in the trees, and litter the road below with their feces. We were even lucky enough to see some baby white herons. It was hard to take a picture of them without a zoom lens, since they often roosted quite high in the trees. Every morning they leave, and then come back in the evening. The birds just started roosting there in the late 60s. Legend says that these birds are reincarnations of thousands of Balinese that were slaughtered during the Indonesian communist regime in the 60s. These birds are considered holy by the Balinese.
By the time we got done with all of this, we were quite tired, so we went home to rest up, and have dinner with the volunteers who will be replacing us. The highlight of the night was dessert, when we went to a Cuban themed restaurant. I had Tres Leche cake. It was DELICIOUS! They also had a very good Latin music band comprised entirely of Indonesians. We were VERY impressed. There was also salsa dancing, which we are terrible at, but we gave it a try anyway. There were some very good dancers though, so that was fun to watch while we ate. Then we headed home for sleep.
Now we are packing to leave Ubud, which we are very sad about. We are off to the beach to spend a few days in the sand and sun before getting on a plane for 36 hours of travel home.
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