Ubud is Ufun

So we're still rockin' it out in Ubud, which has been the source of some real trip highlights so far.

A couple of days ago I think I reported we were headed for an animal safari and the sacred monkey forest. Close but no animal safari. We were told there was a free shuttle there and we waited around for a while, but that was a bust. So rather than pay a taxi guy a bunch of money, we just walked down the street to the monkey forest.

It was a good time-ish. The monkeys (and there are plenty of them) are quite used to being fed overpriced bananas, and they can get a bit, um...aggressive about their meals. The key is to get rid of your bananas as fast as possible so you don't get mauled (although as a picture above illustrates, some of them can be friendly. Also if anyone knows of a good monkey tick remedy, please send me an email). Anyway, the monkey forest was cool in the literal sense because it is so shady, and although Kat claims she was 'attacked' by a monkey, we got out of there without incident and had fun.

After that it was off to get ready to see a kecak dance we had purchased tickets for from a rice farmer (we met him on the walk the day before). The farmer's name was Made, and he said he had a part in the show...

Alison and I got ready by getting an hour's cheap massage at a nearby spa ($7.50), grabbed a quick dinner, and it was off to the show. We were treated like V.I.P's! First we knew the guy taking tickets--we had talked with him the day before at the tourist information center. Then we watched the show, saw our friend Made perform the role of grandfather, and afterwards walked up to him to say hi. He was so excited to see us, pulled us aside, made sure we got pictures taken with him in costume (Jonny & Kat have those, our camera ran out of batteries) and even took us backstage. It was a really neat experience. We plan to blow up the picture of us with him and give him a copy, if we can find him in his rice field again...

The kecak dance was fun, too. For those of you not familiar, here's a youtube clip that's kind of what we saw (I can't hear audio but I hope you can, that's a big part of it):



It was a great day. With more to come!