Trip to Ubud

 08/04/2013
  We overdid the sunbathing a bit yesterday so thankfully, today being a dull and overcast sort of a day, it  didn’t feel like we were missing too much by spending an hour or two on the shiny thing. The priority after email was to go online and find a hotel for our stay in Kuala Lumpur, not a problem, Trip Advisor has 600 alone. Every time we find a hotel in the right place at the right price, we lost the internet connection. This went on for some time and we still haven’t booked anything. A trip to the one and only internet café in Sanur is our plan for tomorrow.
 More of the same this evening as we found ourselves marooned in a bar watching another monsoon. The bar owner plied me with Arak to keep us there and to listen to the band he had hired. We were his only customers. The band was good, the Arak was good but we still got wet walking back to the hotel.

 09/04/2013
 The trip to the internet café was a success, much less stressful than trying to boot up our shiny thing. We came away with a great deal thanks to Agoda (or was it Trip Advisor?) We are booked into a 4 star hotel in K L , in the heart of china town, the best place to stay apparently, for £26 a night with breakfast. All we need to do is bone upon our Malaysian so we can find our way from the airport to the middle of Chinatown.
 Having tried several restaurants in Sanur, some of them twice or three times, we have come to the conclusion that tonight’s Warung is the best. It’s the Crispy duck Warung though tonight we tried a couple of pork dishes, absolutely delicious, must look for a Balinese cookbook.

 10/04/2013
 I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, our evening meal was pretty poor by the standards we have been used to. We wouldn’t have minded too much but it was at a Warung most local to the hotel and was recommended by a couple of expats we had been talking to. We pass this Warung every time we go out and have been promising ourselves a meal there ever since we arrived. The meal was cheap enough but not good quality.
 We had to change rooms today as our room had been booked sometime ago by people arriving today. Why they should want that particular room is a mystery as we have moved two units down and it’s exactly the same.
Indy called this morning with a huge watermelon for us. We had a chat and decided to go out with him for the day tomorrow.

 11/04/2013
 If there is some sort of Highway Code in existence here in Bali I have yet to fathom it out. The whole adventure of just being a passenger in a car in the madness of Bali traffic has to be experienced . With hundreds of motorbikes, sometimes with as many as 4 passengers on each bike, seemingly knowing where they are going weaving in and out of three lanes of cars where there should only be one, is just mind blowing. Put that with packs of dogs roaming the roadside, pedestrians completely oblivious to the metal mayhem around them, it’s a wonder half the population isn’t maimed on the roads everyday.
 So with Indy driving we have spent the day in central Bali and the big tourist town of Ubud. Here we not only had the traffic to contend with but once again hoards of Japanese tourists wandering around, photographing everything and generally getting in the way.
 We managed to get into Ubud Palace, where the local royal family still live, and for a donation we were guided up to the actual living quarters of the Royals. Here we got some  photos without the usual bevy of Japanese in the background.  We wandered around the huge market batting off dozens of sarong and sari sellers and haggled over some packets of Bali spices knocking 60p off the last price. Indy still said we had spent double what we should have. ( They cost about £2 60!)
 Ubud is a cultural and spiritual centre with many art galleries offering pictures for sale at silly prices. We agreed that we wouldn’t give them houseroom even if they gave them away. Art and Culture as never a strong point at Newton Heath Technical High School, Manchester! Having said that even we can appreciate the intricate wood carvings and stone work in the Hindu temples. Ubud is a fascinating place so we may ask Indy to take us back for another day as it’s only an hour of terror inducing driving chaos!