I would never be staying in this out of the way, weird little place, if it were not for my idealist eleven year old, Morgan, who thinks it is "just the greatest!', and the tout who begged us to follow him to it. First of all, to get to it, one has to drive 2km up a steep, rocky, washed-out dirt road, ugh. Then at the sign turn right onto a two-and-a-half foot (not-so) wide retaining wall which is considered to be the drive-way and the only access I guess, crossing several layers of well fertilized rice paddies (which are very smelly mud right now) only to park spicy-bike in an impossible slippery little space where my left foot slides into the muck upon parking and now smells very bad. Once inside this 'hide-away' everything is new and nice though the padlocks on the fancy carved doors seem a bit archaic and the jungle seriously surrounds it which could be cool except for that once again the ONLY people (dumb enough) to be here, besides us, are the two guys who work here. So much for cultural ambiance in Ubad!
Hey, it's got a pool, she's happy... and her hair is totally GREEN, I think it's getting greener from pool to pool. Even the best pools seem to be off-balance chemically. I think she's going to cut it off before the Balinese determine she's a witch-child, which some of them clearly already do.
We spent the afternoon staying cool in the Sangeh Monkey Forest. We saw maybe 50 of the 200 rascals that guard the 14th century temples and bathing pools. Offerings are placed along the paths, which show the sacredness of this forest to the Balinese. The just arrived, baby monkeys were especially adorable. Two of the adolescent monkeys came and SAT ON OUR LAPS! But suddenly turned aggressive and one slapped Morgan for no noticeable reason, unless they knew what we were saying. I could swear they understood us talking about how we wanted to touch them. The big males are REALLY scary; we continually tried to avoid those testosterone beasts. One climbed up a lady and boldly took her water out of her pack, opened it and casually drank out of the bottle, another grabbed my shorts and pulled hard, the monkey police-guy told me it was because my arms were crossed he thought I was hiding food. I was just protecting myself. These guys are fun to watch though! It’s even more fun to watch the OTHER tourists with them!
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