So this part should probably be prefaced with the fact that just before I left for Indonesia I decided it would be a super fun idea to go frolic in some wild flower meadows and contract Lyme disease. Much to my surprise, it was not in fact super fun and was in fact a complete inconvenience. However, a quick pop to the doctors, some high strength antibiotics and a healthy dollop of total denial and I figured that it would be far nicer to recover from a life threatening disease on the beach of a tropical island rather than sitting in a gloomy and boring office back in London. I was mostly right...
Part 2 - Ubud
You may have heard of Ubud before, it's that place in Bali from Eat Pray Love which comes across as a place to visit if you've got to realign your Chakras whilst eating mountains of kale and purifying your systems with a large amount of New Wave bullshit. And if I'm honest, yeah that's basically what it is. Ubud the town is like someone took the most crystal-hugging parts of California, shoved some palm trees and extra humidity on them and dropped it in the uplands of Bali. We weren't particularly taken by the fact that all the locals were hidden away behind armies of stick thin vegan women's kaftans, nor the fact that there was a Ralph Lauren shop and a rip off Ralph Lawren shop doing battle with pretentiously named yoga studios for every square inch of space. In all honesty the town itself was an underwhelming victim of its own success. It feels very much as though it's gone too far down the tourist route and become nothing more than a way to squeeze out as much money as possible from the reams of bloated westerners walking aimlessly around the suspiciously well kept streets say things like "it's just so transformative".
That isn't to say that the Ubud area didn't have it's charms. Far from it in fact, we spent a wonderful day having a wander around the 'Monkey Forest' which is based around a selection of temples in the south of the town. The hundreds of monkeys that live there are well fed, cheeky and not too threatening, and it's always hilarious to see them getting into someone's bag and stealing their crisps. One even managed to nab a beer out a slightly gormless Australian youth's hand and proceeded to down it whilst maintaining oddly accusing eye contact with the slack jawed young man.
Unfortunately though that was about as much of the charms that I was able to enjoy as on my second day I was suddenly struck down by my good friend mister Lyme. Have you ever had a hangover so bad that you couldn't move for fear that you might break, pass out or drift off into an eternal slumber? Well imagine that but without getting to enjoy the fun the night before. For two days I had to lie in bed, unmoving except to call room service to get them to bring me more noodles and water, which I proceeded to consume whilst remaining firmly in the fetal position. My travelling compatriots were extremely caring during this difficult period and decided that the best thing they could do was to leave me alone to my pain and go off on their own adventures and tell me all about how absolutely amazing their time was whilst I try and stab them but can't because moving hurts. They went to several different temples, rice paddies and various other beautiful sites outside the town and had an absolute blast. A particular highlight for them was when they woke early one morning (about 3am) to climb the nearest volcano (mount Batur) so that they could watch the sun rising over Bali, and I'll let the photos here speak for that. Cliches like 'Breathtaking' and 'Awe-inspiring' were thrown around rather liberally. I wish I could write more about what they did but I'm still a little resentful about it so my only suggestion is to do it yourself. And don't have Lyme disease.
I whiled away my incarceration taking pictures of ants. Such fun...
What I can write about is the fantastic place that we stayed in, as during my internment I did become rather familiar with it and the family looking after it. We weren't situated in the town itself, rather out away from the hustle and bustle and amongst the forest and rice paddies. Our accommodation itself was called 'Pajar House' and I cannot recommend it highly enough. A little shuttle bus ferried us to and from the pretentious crap of the town itself and allowed us a genuine escape. The house itself was in fact just that, someones house. It was entirely family run and if I'm honest, to call it a house is perhaps a little unfair, rather it was a complex of interconnected buildings, ancient buildings that felt as though they were part of the hillside we were on. Most of the area we were in seemed to be set up in this way, it felt that instead of moving out, the family would grow up in these complexes and rotate and move around between the buildings, slowly sprawling outwards. Out the back of the complex, looking over the forest clad hills were our lovely villas, the wall of our bathroom connected to that of the family shrine, where occasionally we would glimpse an aunt or nephew laying incense or praying. I had a lovely chat with the grandma of the family on her way out of the shrine, a woman who oozed the term 'matriarch' from every pore, about a rooster that was kept in a cage by the entrance to our section. The phrase "is not for eat, is guard cock!" was a something that I will never forget, and I felt very safe at night knowing my guard cock was close at hand. The atmosphere was absolutely one of a family home however, we weren't just guests, we were included and welcomed to the complex, and were able to put our fingers, albeit briefly, on the very pulse of local life in the forests of Bali.
