I took a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bali and arrived in the late afternoon.  I got through a long passport control line and grabbed my bad.  Met my driver and another guy and got into the transfer van for the ride to Ubud.  A few minutes after we left the airport it started to pour.  The sky just opened up and the rain came down so fast the street started to flood.  There were also huge flashes of lightening, some pretty close to us.  This slowed us down a bit but about 90 minutes later we made it to the hotel.  No dinner service and I didn’t feel like catching a cab into Ubud (10 minutes away) so I went to the room and watched some television before turning in for the night.  

Breakfast the next day was nice.  The hotel is really nice with rice paddies behind it and a little stream running through the middle of the property past where they serve breakfast.  My room was huge with a nice porch out the back and a little sitting area near the entry.  The staff was quite nice as well. 

I got a ride into town at 10:30 AM and decided to walk down the main road to the Monkey Forest, a place my travel agent had told me about and recommended.  It was a bit of a walk to get there but there was no mistaking it.  There were about 5 monkeys climbing the power poles in front of the entrance and lots more wandering around the grounds.  You pay 15000 rupees to get in (less than $2) and you can buy bananas to feed the monkeys which I did.  As soon as they see the bananas they swarm you.  I think my bunch lasted 2 minutes with one aggressive guy climbing up my leg and snatching the last half of the bunch while I was paying attention to another one.  You have to be careful with these guys.  I walked around taking lots of pictures and watching other people feed them.  These monkeys would climb up and sit of your shoulder if you had food, they would do just about anything to get to it.  After watching a while I bought some more bananas but hid them in my backpack where they could not see them.  This worked for a while until one spotted my pulling out a banana.  He came over and tried to get in the bag but only succeeded in grabbing some Gas-X tablets I had.  He was working on eating those when I left him.  I bet he ended up with a stomach ache at the end of the day. 

I walked all around the area looking at the temples and the different rock sculptures that dotted the area.  It was a big place with lots to see.  A couple times I took a break and sat and watched the people interact with the monkeys.  Most people were afraid of them when the got close and panicked when the monkey climbed onto them or leaped on their back.  Other  people didn’t mind and even seemed to get a kick out of it.  It didn’t bother me when two of them climbed on my back or when one jumped on my back and sat on my shoulder while trying to get into the cell phone holder on my backpack (which was empty).  One guy did get into my bag while I was distracted and got my spare camera battery, but I got it back a few seconds later when he figured out it was heavy and not edible.  After getting more pictures, including one of me with a monkey on my back (literally) I headed back to town.

In town there were a lot of great stores so I did some shopping, got a great lunch did a little more shopping, stopped for a couple beers and worked on my journal, did some more shopping and finally had a great dinner of Indonesian tapas, 9 small dishes of local favorites along with a couple drinks from the bar.  I was feeling pretty content when the driver showed up to take me back to the resort/spa.  I had bought a number of things for me and gifts for many of my friends and family, it was a very successful day, with one caveat which I will mention later.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast before going to a 1 hour massage at the spa.  Total damage for the massage was about $15 which was pretty high as the ones in the town were about half that.  It was nice to get massaged while listening to the creek trickle by. 

At noon the driver for the hotel picked me up to bring me to Kuta beach and the Hard Rock hotel.  I can’t say I am that impressed.  The Hard Rock over charges for everything (they want $20 for 4 hours of internet) and the room while being OK in size was dark and I could hear roosters outside my window.  I was OK with that when the room was $8 a night, but at these prices I expected better.  I decided that I am going to avoid staying at the Hard Rock hotels so I cancelled my reservation in Pattaya.  A word of advice:  If you think of staying at a Hard Rock be comfortable with being considered a sponge that they will try to squeeze dry of money.  Even the exchange rate they give is the worse I have seen anywhere in Bali, and in the welcome packet they warn you against other exchange places.  Some nerve.

Now the one problem I had in Ubud, though I didn't realize it at the time was that one of the ATM's I tried to use skimmed my card and sent the data and my PIN to the Ukraine.  When I got back to Bangkok and got me email there was one from my financial advisor adking about charges.  In about 4 days criminals had withdrawn almost $30,000 from my account.  I got it back but it was a hassle and took a while.  So be careful when traveling, the ATM looked perfectly legitimate.  If in doubt my advice is use a bad PIN the first time.  If you get any message other than your PIN being wrong move to another ATM.  It can only verify your PIN if it connects to your bank, which the fake ones do not.  The bad ones give you a generic "connection problem" or "Bank refused transaction".

Now for some pictures from Ubud...