Bali: Accomodations in Ubud

In the wake of our brush with the paparazzi as well as Liz and Meghan's adoring fans at Tanah Lot, we headed to the next stop on our Balinese adventure: Ubud. 

Whilst in Ubud (did ya see what I did there?) with the droves of Aussie and French tourists, we were residing at the lovely Alam Jiwa villas in the southern village of Nyuhkuning, Ubud, away from the crowds on the far side of the Monkey Forest.  Alam Jiwa is a destination in and of itself, where even the shower has a view of the verdant rice paddies and the canopy of your bed has elaborate Balinese artwork:

 

Our suite was quite lovely- built in the traditional high-ceilinged, open style, covered in beautiful, intricate wooden carvings, full of artwork and traditional furniture, with multiple balconies overlooking lush vegetation and the aforementioned verdant rice paddies, statues and flowers everywhere...

The style of the suite was so open, however, that we shared it with lots of other creatures.  About a million geckos (I've heard them called cicak [pronounded "chee-chak," based on the sound they make]... they're good luck!) scampering around, but also a wayward bird who sought shelter from the storm in the rafters one of the nights, keeping poor Liz awake.  We were also surrounded by all sorts of chirping and whistling things we couldn't identify.

As an aside, Tim and I have one or two resident cicak in our apartment.  Mostly I don't see them, but probably about once a month one makes a mad dash across the kitchen backsplash, scaring the shit out of me and getting the cats all hyped up.

While at Alam Jiwa we had our breakfast delivered to the room each morning so we could eat it while enjoying the views (read: so we could eat it while sitting around in our PJs being extremely lazy).  Breakfast was great, especially the jaffles.  In case, like us, you don't know what a jaffle is, it's a sandwich pressed in one of those old school as-seen-on-tv sandwich maker thingies.  Who knew?  We expected something with waffles, although I suppose the sandwich press is a second cousin of the waffle maker.  Liz was so impressed that christened the jaffle with her own personal name for it: jambon.  

Don't ask.

 Meghan + jaffle = k-i-s-s-i-n-g.  But no hand holding, because that would be gross.

Like I said above, the area surrounding Alam Jiwa was beautiful... rice paddies galore, views of the two volcanoes in the distance, palm trees...

In the photo below you can just see one of the volcanoes poking out above the palms but below the post-storm clouds.  In the last photo, if you look to the far left and far right, you can just make out 2 volcanoes on the horizon.