After breakfast this morning, we met up with our driver for a visit to Ubud, which is a major art and cultural center that’s located amongst rice paddies and ravines in the island’s central foothills. While much of southern Bali’s beaches focus on ‘fun in the sun’ tourists, Ubud has a more artistic, natural, and contemplative feel. It’s more really Bali. And, in hindsight, Ubud is really the area we should have stayed in for our visit as the beaches in Nusa Dua aren’t great and the other southern beach towns might be too ‘party central’ for us.
From Nusa Dua, the drive to Ubud is rather lengthy due to have traffic congestion. We made relatively good time in the morning (about an hour and a half) whereas the drive back to our resort took almost two hours. That’s crazy bad considering it’s only a distance of approximately 30 miles.
At least the drive was interesting. I can’t say that the drive was generally picturesque until we approached Ubud, but I was struck by simply how much there is to explore. For example, I simply lost count of the number of arts and crafts galleries that one could explore for carvings, paintings, and metal work. There are a seemingly endless number of shrines and temples. The culture and spirituality feel very deep; not something you’d ‘get’ as a Western visitor here for just a few days. Of course, Bali is still very much part of the developing world with obvious infrastructure limitations and the sort of griminess (such as trash/liter) that you don’t see in a place like Singapore.
Our main stop in Ubud was at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. It consisted—rather unsurprisingly—of a forest that contained both sacred temples and monkeys. We fed the monkeys bananas, explored the forest grounds, and visited the temples. The setting is spectacular, but the monkeys are clearly the main attraction and fascinating to watch in close proximity.
Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary
Portrait of a Balinese macaque
Monkey moms and tots...
After the forest, we spent a little time exploring the arts and crafts vendors along Monkey Forest Rd. We then departed Ubud to visit the temple Pura Puseh, which dates from the 11th century, in the nearby village of Batuan. To enter the temple, Libby and I had to don sarongs. The grounds and buildings were covered with intricate carvings. Unfortunately, our driver was just a driver… a tour guide would have been really useful to explain to us more about the symbolism of the iconography, as well as the uniquely Balinese religious/spiritual beliefs.
Pura Puseh, Batuan's village temple
On the ride back to our hotel, Emerson had a bit of a mini-meltdown again today. She was also rather fussy once we’d returned to our room. Unlike yesterday, this was completely out of character and arose for no obvious reason. After a while, I noticed that she seemed to be tugging at one of her ears. Eventually, she admitted to not feeling good. Today, Libby too complained about her ears starting to bother her. No bueno.
What to do? Try to wait it out and see what develops, risking one or both getting worse? Or, call a doctor here in Bali for some antibiotics? Ultimately, I concluded that with our flight / travel schedule it would be best to seek medical attention now. So, I called the front desk around 6pm. Within 30 minutes, we had an entire medical team (doctor, nurse, and assistant) here to check out Emerson and Libby.
The doctor gave them an examination (nothing serious / no infection yet… just some inflammation in the ears due to their earlier cold worsened by swimming and air pressure changes with flights) and provided a veritable pharmacy of medications for their treatment (antibiotics, decongestants, topical solutions, analgesics, etc.). Total cost for the house call, two examinations, and bounty of medications? Roughly 2,000,000IDR or about $200USD. Amazing! And, I’m sure this was a huge mark-up for a Sunday evening visit to see us at a resort hotel.
I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring. We have to check-out by 2pm, but our flight doesn’t depart for Sydney until late in the evening. Given that I don’t know how everyone will feel and where we’re located, I’m afraid tomorrow might be a bit of a waste. However, we’ll try to make the best of it!
Oh, my goodness! We are so sorry to hear about the illness. Hopefully, the medication and some rest will have a good effect before your flight to Sydney. Please keep us posted and know we are thinking about each one of you.