Bali Day 3

We started our day nice and early with a trip to Ubud on the agenda.  We had organised a car and driver the day before on a recommendation by a friend and it was a good idea. Our drivers name was Gus and he was a bit of a character.  He certainly knew his was around Bali and took us on many "short cuts" .  Some alleyways were barely wide enough for a car and it was quite tricky when you met a car coming the opposite direction.

Street Scene

We had a few destinations in mind at Ubud.....the gold and silver, woodwork, and artwork shops.  First stop was the gold and silver factory.  There was so much to choose from that it was almost overwhelming.  I finally settled on a lovely fish that had been cleverly shaped from a mother of pearl shell with lots of silver embellishment only to find that the price was $2,500 AU!!!  I didn't buy it.
Next stop was the art gallery.  Gosh, once again, the number of paintings was enormous.  Rooms, many many rooms were chock full of wonderful art.  Our friends chose an abstract and we chose an interesting mixed media buddha oil painting that I hope will look lovely on the wall in our bedroom.
Not as much to chose from at the woodwork shop but we found it interesting to watch the men sitting outside the shop carving intricate pieces.

Inside the art gallery

By this time we were looking forward to lunch so our driver found us a traditional Balinese restaurant overlooking the rice paddies.  The meals were delicious and cheap.  I chose the sate sticks and I loved the presentation on the charcoal burner.

Lunch overlooking the rice paddies

After lunch it was time to visit the monkeys, of which I am not a great fan.  They are quite aggressive and there were lots of uniformed men standing around, with large sticks in their hands, to fend off any that came too close.

Our last visit was to the place where you can taste the infamous Luwak coffee, or cat poop coffee.  I couldn't bring myself to try it but the men did.  Here is a description of the coffee from Wikipedia:

The luak, that's a small catlike animal, gorges after dark on the most ripe coffee beans, the best of our crop. It digests the fruit and expels the beans, which our farm people collect, wash, and roast, a real delicacy. Something about the natural fermentation that occurs in the luak's stomach seems to make the difference. For Javanese, this is the best of all coffees—our Kopi luak.

After our coffee tasting it was back into the car for our return journey to Seminyak.  As it was quite late we made our way to Kilo Restaurant to enjoy the meal that was included in our accomodation package.  We chose to share the pork spare ribs and they were the most tender I have ever eaten.  

It had been a long day and we were, once again, in bed quite early vowing that tomorrow would be a day of rest.

Our humble abode.  Namaste