Bali: Other Assorted Ubud Shenanigans

While in Ubud, we participated in a lot of activities, but we also did our fair share of lounging around in our relaxing suite at Alam Jiwa.  Here are photos of some of the other leisure activities in which we partook:

Looking shiny, drinking Bintang besar and eating some excellent sate at Kafe Batan Waru:

 

Taking a break from our power shopping around town to watch the cute local kids play soccer in the main square:

Eating lunch (and taking terrible photos, see below) at the famed Ibu Oka's babi guling (roast suckling pig) restaurant.  Made famous both because it is delicious and because Anthony Bourdain stopped by several years ago to indulge in the porky heaven and record a segment for No Reservations, Ibu Oka's is an Ubud institution.  I've tried babi guling before in Bali and enjoyed it, but this experience was above and beyond that.  We ordered the "special" and were served a mound of rice topped with large slices of super tender roast pork covered in an awesomely fragrant spice mix, some fresh long bean and coconut salad, caramelized crispy pork skin, some blood sausage and these amazing  spicy crispy bits (I don't really want to know what they are) that are to die for.  This place was hilarious, too.  Overrun by people every day (I read that some days they go through 8 pigs at lunchtime), it has developed somewhat of an attitude and the surly service associated with U.S. diners and the Soup Nazi.  I'm sure it's a turn-off for some people, but I actually found it amusing because service in Indonesia is usually so over the top.

Continuing on our "treat yo self" quest, we indulged in massages and manicures at the Alam Wangi spa.  The massages were lovely and the manicures less so, but the tasty tea and snacks at the end made up for that:

Getting our cultural fix at the ARMA Museum, a large museum devoted to maintaining and making available to the public Balinese artwork, both traditional and contemporary.  The museum had a dizzying collection of beautiful and detailed paintings and sculptures depicting life on Bali and various Hindu tales.  I would recommend the museum to anyone visiting Ubud...

My favorite part of the trip to ARMA was actually at the ticket booth.  We had a little bit of confusion about whether the entrance fee quoted to us by the ticket seller was for all 3 of us or just 1 of us.  In the confusion, Meghan had paid for all of our tickets, so Liz and I handed her change to cover our portions.  The ticket seller made an attempt to convince Meghan to give him the small bills we had handed her in exchange for the 100,000 rupiah bill with which she had just paid him.  She quickly shot him down, basically telling him (with a wink) that she had been in Indonesia long enough to realize you don't just give away your small but highly-coveted bills.  Bravo, Meghan!  Small bill hoarding is necessary here, as many shops, stands and taxi drivers will not have change for the larger bills (or will claim to not have change even when they do, which results in a stand-off/stare-down at each transaction, both sides waiting until the other breaks and looks for change.)

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the museum, but Meghan captured the great detail in the carvings on the outside of one of the museum buildings:

Eating a tasty dinner at Cinta Grill (where we had sparked the interest of the bartender and a random dude from Boston earlier in the week) on our last night in Ubud, followed by drinks with all the long-haired locals and aging hippies at the Laughing Buddha next door.  The cover band was pretty good (somewhat of a rarity, I've found), doing twangy and bluesy versions of Superstition and some Rolling Stones tunes.  However, they confirmed my suspicion that the '80s-era Sting song, Englishman in New York, is Indonesia's favorite song.  I have now heard at least 4 separate Indonesian cover bands play this song.  So random.

We were excited because they were the first bar we'd been to in Bali that actually had Storm beer in stock...  we drink it all the time in Jakarta, but seemed unable to find it in Bali and I wanted the girls to try the alternative to Bintang.  Also, Meghan got a really fancy looking watermelon mojito that she enjoyed:

Bali: Ubud's Monkey Forest

One of Ubud's famous sites is the sacred monkey forest sanctuary (Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana), which is a combination nature reserve and sacred temple, housing somewhere between 300 and 600 crazy long-tailed macaque monkeys.

The monkeys spilled out of the forest and literally onto the streets- we caught these two chillin' in the road as we walked from Alam Jiwa towards the forest:

 

The monkeys, as the guidebook warned us, are "greedy" and "ever vigilant for passing tourists who just might have peanuts and ripe bananas available for a quick hand-out."  Another source called them "ravenous," and suggested that by going in the forest, we would "risk bites and a need for rabies injections."   Furthermore, a couple we ran into the night before we planned to hit up the Monkey Forest told us their story, which involved monkeys climbing on the fellow's head, stealing his water bottle and sunglasses, and generally harassing them.  Comforting!  After hearing this, we were a little bit worried about how aggressive these monkeys would be, so we stripped our bags of all food and drink, hid our sunglasses and earrings and soldiered on. 

When we arrived in the Monkey Forest, the monkeys were everywhere... on the sidewalk, in the trees, on statues, on people (more about that later!).  They were definitely getting a little bit closer than necessary and giving us the once-over to see if we had anything of interest, but none of them really bothered us.

 

The monkeys were lounging, grooming (see below, left), eating, playing, fighting...

This monkey (below, right) was doing some pretty intense stretching/calethenics.  Yoga, perhaps?

I think the strangest part of our venture into the monkey forest came right around when we decided to enter the main temple.  Prior to entering, you must borrow a sarong from a man with a big stack of them at a stand adjacent to the entrance.  While waiting in a short line for our sarongs, we watched the sarong distributor playing with a monkey that seemed to have befriended him.  The monkey was sitting with his legs splayed out (see photo below), and the sarong guy was persistently trying (successfully) to touch the monkey's testicles (and giggling each time) while the monkey swatted the guy's hand away repeatedly and practically rolled his eyes.  Seriously.  It gets worse, though.  When it was our turn to get our sarongs, the sarong guy insisted that he be the one to tie them around our waists. With his monkey junk hands.  Thanks, guy... as if we weren't already feeling gross from the sweating and heavy bug spray and sunscreen application, we really need monkey nut hands touching us, too.

 

Anywho, we made it into the temple eventually, perhaps a little shell-shocked (nut-shocked?):

The gate above is the gateway to the temple's inner courtyard, adorned with fierce guardian spirits, including Boma, to ward off evil spirits. The snakey-looking statue we're standing in front of above is Bedawang Nala, a mythological turtle who supports the world on his back... he's surrounded by 2 giant serpents that bind him to human/earthly needs.

Cool carved statues, in profile... one of these things is not like the others:

Boma, one of the guardian spirits: 

In addition to the main temple, we also visited the Pura Dalem Agung Padangtegal, or the cremation temple. This terrifying statue below is Rangda, a demon queen who eats childen:

 

Cool dragon statue: 

Once  in the monkey forest, we were finally able to observe exactly why we had been warned about the monkeys and their grabby habits... but we quickly realized that it was the tourists that were the true culprits in this scenario.  As I said above, the monkeys generally steered clear of us since we a) had no food and b) did not purport to have food.  The monkeys will only bother you if, like these folks below, buy bananas from the vendor and wave them around behind your daughter's ear, enticing the monkeys.  Then you risk having not one, but two monkeys climbing on your head/back/shoulders/legs.  Oh, tourists.  Sigh.

Aaaand one last monkey for your viewing pleasure:

Bogor, Part II

So... once in Bogor, as I said, we headed to the Kebun Raya/botanical garden, where we ate lunch (Tim had the Dutch-named rijsttafel (rice table), which is a big pile of rice with about a zillion tiny servings of all sorts of stuff from veggies to chicken to beef to tempeh and tofu to sambal to eggs...) and then wandered around for a while.  The gardens were full of peeps hanging out, picnicking, playing badminton (Tim and I have noticed an uptick in the number of kids playing badminton in parks and on the street since an Indonesian doubles team recently won a major championship), walking around.  

We took a look at the orchid (anggrek) house, too, which was quite beautiful:

 The Kebun Raya is adjacent to the Presidential Palace that I mentioned, a large columned building used as a weekend retreat:  

The palace is surrounded by a really strange sight: a massive herd (700+ head, from my understanding) of spotted deer, originally placed there for hunting purposes by the Dutch governors.  These somewhat mangy beasts look really out of place in the middle of the city, roaming around, snagging carrots from tourists walking around outside the palace gates (carrots and greens are sold by roadside vendors just for this purpose):

As we were out and about in Bogor, we saw hundreds of apple green angkots driving around, honking, pausing to let street musicians and/or kids on and off to minta-minta:

Hidden amidst all the angkots were a whole bunch of horse-drawn carriages, which seemed fairly anachronistic:

 

We also noticed that the siren song of the ice cream man is truly the international language:

Finally, we saw some interesting food carts, including one I hadn't yet seen in Jakarta- strange green, crepe-like discs... maybe pandan?