Taylor Boys Blog: Southeast Asia: Day Sixteen

We had breakfast in the room quickly before starting our tour of Ubud. It is a town in the middle of the island of Bali, Indonesia known for holding the traditions of Bali like art, dance and temples. We drove through rainforests and fields to get to it.

Our first stop was a cultural dance at an outdoor theatre. We grabbed some seats and soon the show started. There was a bunch of dancing and no real plot that we could figure out. I don't know how to describe it but what seemed to happen was a tiger ate the villager's children so the they fought and the tiger won. Then it skipped to a man trying to sacrifice his son to the gods when he was saved by a creepy sorceress who killed the father. The villagers ran out and fought the sorceress who turned herself into a wild boar. Throughout the entire show there were people playing instruments (mostly drums) on the side of the stage. We really didn't know what was going on but we were told it was a traditional Balinese dance - the music was trancelike and the costumes were very colourful and odd. In the end it was good to see how they pass their traditions down.

After the show we headed over to a big building where there were a ton of big weaving looms and they were weaving everything from clothes to coasters, hand fans, placemats, flip flops, belts, and blankets. And about a million colours in all of them. We checked out their warehouse and then went on to see an art museum and wood carving museum. Then we went for lunch at an outdoor restaurant set in the rice paddies where ducks walked up the paths. Their main dish was Peking duck. (Not for us!)

We got back in the taxi van and drove to the Monkey Forest. Once we got there we bought some tickets and entered the temple ruins. There were beautiful mossy statues of monkeys in the entrance to the temple and the walls of the tunnels had monkeys engraved in them. Once we got out of the tunnel there was a group of people gathered at the edge of the path and sure enough Zaddek was sitting there with monkeys picking stuff out of his hair. Once the monkeys left we continued through the beautiful temple ruins with monkeys sitting on every perch and ledge. We explored through the jungle making sure to keep our phones out of view from the monkeys (who are famous for stealing phones and cameras). After half an hour we had seen most of the temple ruins and plenty of monkeys. Luckily no more monkeys tried to pick stuff out of anybody else's hair. Zaddek tried to get one to jump on his shoulder but he was only able to get one for a few seconds before he scrambled back up a tree. We left the forest with a disappointed Zaddek who wanted to stay.

We then went to the rice terraces on the edge of Ubud and descended down layer after layer. It looked really cool. We stopped at a side path to get out of the way of the people coming down to take some photos of the rice terraces when Mom spotted a huge rat in the terrace below. After the commotion we kept walking down the side path making sure to keep an eye for rats from then on. We found a good angle for some photos. And when I was taking Dad, Mom and Sage's photo Dad accidentally bumped Mom off the edge of the terrace. The ledge wasn't that high up but she fell right into the marsh water the rice grows in. We helped Mom back up and then headed back up the terraces. Mom's shoes were soaked (and we all know that it wouldn't be a Taylor Family trip if that doesn't happen at least once). Luckily this time it was at the end of the tour so we didn't miss anything like when we left our tour in Austria to get Zaddek dry pants and shoes.