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UBUD
Entry 12 of 56 | show all | print this entry |
Having got over the car situation and calmed down, I got on the road only to discover after about 30 mins that I was going in the wrong direction. A quick U-turn sorted that out but I ended up not getting to Ubud until pretty late.
When I did arrive, after dark, I discovered that they recently decided to put a one way system in place here too but neglected to put up any signs to tell people this. So there I was driving the wrong way around these one-way streets getting all sorts of wierd looks when a cop stopped me and politely told me the craic. (I wasn't alone on this one - there were cars in front and behind me doing the same thing so I didn't feel that stupid!)
Ubud is a quiet chilled out place and by the time I checked into a hotel and got settled, everywhere in town seemed to be closed. I went for a stroll and found a restaurant still serving, had dinner, a few beers and a good giggle about the day's earlier events.
The following morning I set off for Bali's volcano which was an hour or so north of Ubud. I'd rate Bali's signposting skills somewhere between nonexistant and brutal and once you leave the main roads you need a good sense of direction to get to any particular destination. I had been driving around these little country roads for over an hour, glancing at my compass every so often to make sure I was still heading north and was about to declare myself lost when I drove around a corner and there was the volcano in front of me.
The touts up here were armed with mopeds and would drive after you for as long as it took to offer you whatever they were selling - paintings, guided tours of the area, directions to their restaurant, etc. At one point I think I counted about 8 of them behind me waiting for me to pull over and when I eventually did, one by one they all approached with whatever they were selling. It didn't seem to dawn on them that if I refused to buy something from one guy, that I probobly wasn't going to buy the exact same thing from the next - dopes!
I drove around the volcano and surrounding lakes for a few hours (with mopeds in hot pursuit most of the time!), went for a dip in the hot springs and had some lunch before making my way back to Ubud to visit the 'Monkey Temples'. This is a group of temples in the middle of the jungle in Ubud where thousands of wild monkeys are all over the place stealing anything that isn't firmly attached to a tourist - one tried to grab one of those hair clamp things from a girl walking in front of me and nearly pulled half her scalp off in the process.
I wanted to do some diving before I left Bali and unfortuately Kuta was the best place to book a trip so I found myself heading back there that evening in order to go diving the following day.
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