Accommodations: Bisma Eight, Ubud

I know when Lauren and I are nearing the midpoint of our trip when she begins to talk like the locals, not necessarily in their language but in the broken English that we hear very frequently during interactions with locals and our guide. Hearing Lauren say: “We from America…no water, in middle of country”  I know half the trip is now just a memory.

Our second to last day in Ubud was a full day. Luckily we were able to squeeze some of the scheduled stops for this day to the previous day so we made an unscheduled stop to the local village of Sangeh to visit their Monkey Forest. Now you may remember from a few posts ago, how I mentioned the story of Rama and Sita. This is essentially an Indonesian take similar to Romeo and Juliet but instead details a holy romance story rather than a secular one written by Shakespeare. The monkey connection? Well in this story there is a white monkey that talks to Sita and because of the holy nature of the story, the monkey is considered holy.
This is one of many sanctuaries located on the island of Bali and reminds all who travel the inportance of Rama and Sita and how they were the origins of the island.

Following our stop and the Monkey Forest, we ventured further inland and took the long winding roads to Bratan Temple and Brayan Lake. The Hindu religion is polytheistic, meaning they believe in more than one god, and they believe there are separate gods for fertility, prosperity and in this case, a god of mountains. Bali consists of several mountains, each housing a separate temple to worship the god of the mountain and at Bratan, there is a beautiful lake that it was built next too (see the top image).

We continued our trek a little further down the mountain to visit the UNESCO protected area of rice paddies and rainforest that lends itself to some of he most beautiful views in all of Bali.

Due to the long drive back to Ubud and our hotel (and the looming rain clouds) we had a nice lunch overlooking the paddies and headed back to the hotel.

The day concluded with a long excursion of central Ubud, as we explored the many shops the dot the tight streets of the city before settling at Watercrest, a small cafe featuring fresh fruit smoothies before heading back and preparing ourselfs for the trip to Lombok the next day.