We checked out of the Radisson and got an Uber to take us up north to Ubud...once the driver realized how far the trip was he changed his mind and dropped us off at a McDonald's to order another Uber. After some Ice-cream, we got a driver to take us the rest of the way. It was a pretty interesting drive full of cement monument/structure stores and narrow roads.
Goodbye Southern Bali.
After having a few cocktails for brunch (oops) we we're pretty sleepy and zoned out most of the 2 hour drive. Finally we arrived in Ubud and check into our homestay in the center of the town. That night we walked around the town a bit and had an amazing dinner at Atman Kafe and stopped in to watch a beautiful Balinese dance.
It is so F-ing hot in Ubud, maybe the humidity or something but 94 degrees feels like 300. This is amplified by the fact that we have no air conditioning. This hostel, although clean, nice with friendly owners, ended up being the most uncomfortable so far. We averaged falling asleep around 3am and only getting about 4-5 hours of hot uncomfortable sleep.
so hot....
Every morning the grandmother watered all the plants.
Dreams do come true! Daily fruit and fruit shakes!
Bali style pancakes every morning yum.
Ubud is a nice, now large, hippy yoga town. Most of our days were filled up by walking the streets, peeking in interesting shops, and getting snacks and bottles of wine at various restaurants. The two best things we did in Ubud were 1: Silver smithing and 2: Balinese wood mask carving. We joined the silver smithing class at Chez Monique after a quick scan of the top things to do in Ubud. We were able to book it for day 2 and headed there after buying things at the market.
More amazing food.
Be ready for the markets in Ubud, they are loud and overwhelming at times but you can come out with great deals! *HINT* Walk to the furtherest slowest corner where they are obviously not getting any business. Our tactic would be to ask the price then respond with half (yes...HALF) of the rupiah they asked for then back and forth and back and forth and we'd end at the price we really were okay with. Our one regret? Not buying tons and tons of the beautiful wooden kitchen things for a couple dollars (You can see some from out food picture from Atman Kafe above). Debra literally had nightmares about not buying more the minute we left Indonesia haha.
Penis objects were everywhere and I mean everywhereee. We asked why thinking she would give us some cultural history and her response was "It's funny"
Silversmithing was awesome. After a friendly hug from the owner, he handed us binders of jewelry examples. We decided to be a cute couple and made each other rings. The process was interesting and they made it very simple. We picked a few of our favorite designs (coming up with a mix of a few example ones) and were handed the silver to start. Debra's is a simple ring with a coiled top and an imprint of our initials underneath. Mine is a rough band with our initials and a symbol of mine on the outside.
The workers walked us though the process and apart from heating the rings we pretty much did all of the work. The final products are quite rewarding.
On our last day in Ubud we got picked up and driven to a small homestay about 10 miles south of the center of Ubud. Here we met our mask making mentor and he walked us through the process. Masks have become high on our touristy knickknack lists and we had bought them from Thailand and Bali. Debra has a few from Korea and we thought it would be fun to expand on the collection.
Mask making is hard.....after watching our teacher effortlessly hack though the Hibiscus stumps I was ready to start carving. Our teacher showed us the basics, gave us a quick outline and demonstration and handed the masks off. I was a complete failure....and I used to mess around in my dads shop carving tiki masks when I was younger. Every few minutes I would have to ask for guidance or let him take over and fix all of my mistakes. After an hour or two we started to get something that resembled a pretty decent looking mask. Most of the finer detailing would be done by our expert (40+ years of experience) teacher.
Finished products! Roy's on the left, Debra's on the right.
In the end we finished with some pretty great looking masks that we (mostly) made. Making our own masks was a very cool but watching a local who has mastered mask making made it a great experience.
We finished up the masks and headed back into Ubud to pack up, check out, and try our hand and mailing packages internationally. At this point in the trip we have collected quite a few random souvenirs and needed to clean out or packs. In total we have 8kg of things to send off (a lot of extra weight to carry around). The post office was quite the experience as well but after quite a bit of miscommunication and confusion we were able to send the package off. We went the cheap route and mailed by boat. Depending on which worker you talk to it will either arrive in 1-3 weeks or 2-3 months. Hopefully we'll see the package in the future.
We then took an Uber the 3 hours to
Amed!
