"Make your own sandwich? I want to make a sandwich with 10 layers of bacon and thats it."

The last post was typed on Friday afternoon, but just to cover what we did after that. We went looking for a Mexican Restaurant with our friends who were certain it was just down the road, which it wasn't. After walking for half an hour in the wrong direction we decided to just eat anywhere. The boys were disappointed and we are sure the search for tacos will resume sometime this coming week.

Monkey Forest.

Saturday morning we woke up and caught a taxi to Ubud, we got dropped just outside the Monkey Forest excepting to see a lot of monkeys and some Balinese people worshipping said monkeys. What we were not expecting was for one of the fattest monkeys in the forest to jump onto Lindsay, attacking her water bottle 2 minutes after walking through the gates. Unfortunately there is no photographic evidence of this event as Lindsay just stood still trying to avoid being bitten and myself and Sam were useless, panicking more than Lindsay. Needless to say that incident really put us off and every time someone offered us "Banana for the monkey?" we quickly declined.

"It is advisable to heed the warnings against feeding the monkeys - they can become aggressive."

The people who work at the monkey forest obviously do not heed against these warnings, they are just keen on making a quick buck off all the tourists. It was extremely bizarre for us to see people laying out offerings and chanting to the monkeys, all we saw were monkeys living the high life playing on vines and ancient stone temples and snatching the food being offered before it hit the ground. The funniest moment of this excursion was definitely seeing a little boy walk in as we walked out with an entire bunch of bananas, he looked extremely chuffed with life but he had not seen the thousands of little monkey eyes watching him, we all just chuckled and said "yoh, goodluck".

We then made our way up Monkey Forest road in search of our next excursion and a place to eat. There were many "tourism offices" where you could book tours, so thinking we were all cool we went to most of them trying to bargain for the best deal. We managed to organise a short tour to the elephant cave or buddhist temples and to the rice terraces and we booked an excursion to hike up Mount Batur a volcano which is still active. As we learned later, we would be jewed out of the proper experience anyway. We had lunch at an amazing little restaurant in central Ubud that looked over a beautiful rice field and we ate the most delicious food, leaving us all so full we could hardly walk back up the road in search of accommodation.

Our adventure to the elephant cave or some of the many Buddhist temples was an enlightening experience but not one that we would highly recommend. We were required to wear sarongs into the temples as a sign of respect, something which we were not too excited about as it was extremely hot. Next stop, the rice terraces, which are definitely as beautiful as what they look in pictures. We did a bit of shopping and visited a place where they showed us how to make coffee, we also got to sample different types of coffees and teas. The Vanilla Coffee was too divine for words.

Elephant Caves.

Coffee and Tea Tasting.

We went for dinner at a small restaurant where sitting on the floor on pillows was optional, we chose this option. It was not long until we spotted the mice (Plural), running around everywhere. We were all very shocked and the waiter found it quite amusing. Besides the mice, the food was good.

We managed to find accommodation at a small home-stay just off one of the main roads which we paid R70.00 each for, for the night, little did we know it would come with some surprises, nonetheless entertaining as usual. We thought we found the bargain of the century until we bathed ourselves and went to bed. The bathroom was very special, the basin was in the bedroom but if it was in the bathroom  it would have been possible to sit on the toilet, shower and brush your teeth at the same time. Efficient- yes, hygienic- not so much. When bed time came we were greeted with ginormous ants all over the floor, which later made their way into our beds. We blame this on Sammy as she thought it was a good idea to kill all their friends with her slop. As all became still and we got used to it sounding like we were sleeping in Grand Central Station with all the motorbikes up and down the road, we heard a very strange sound coming from what sounded like in my bed. We eventually presumed it was a chicken in the roof, we found out today that it was not a chicken, but a species of gecko or lizard. We are all really glad we did not know it was a gecko or a lizard because from the volume of the sound it was making it sounded like it could be the size of a Komodo dragon. We also had to lock our door with a wooden plank, how Sammy slept, we have no idea.

Too hungry to write anymore, to be continued….