Ubud

We're in Ubud now and it's just looooooovely! We're staying in a Balinese family compound and they are just so friendly and helpful. Everything is cheaper here too. Last night we bought some mosquito coils, a large bottle of water and some toilet paper from a roadside stall and it cost just over $1 AUD. We spent yesterday walking the streets of this little charming town. Steve found himself a gym to visit for about $1.20AUD a session, which he is very pleased about. Ubud is very 'arty' and has many yoga retreats and hippy organic food cafes etc. I was looking forward to doing a bit of yoga, feeling a bit stiff after the travelling and night spent on airport floor, but the price of a single yoga class is 100,000 RP which is about $11 AUD, and I just can't bring myself to spend that when you consider we're spending 120,000 RP between us per night for our room!

We've arrived at a good time because in a few days there's going to a be a big cremation ceremony for the King's mother! Just down the road from where we're staying in fact. They've built a huge bamboo structure that's to be carried somewhere else in town with the body on it, and then burnt. There's a changeover of men carrying the structure every 20m because it's so heavy. Usually the distance between changeover is a lot greater but because the King has lots of money (and hotels, apparently) he's had an unusually large structure built. The matriach of the family whose home we're staying in, Biang, says we are very lucky as this is a very rare event and the whole street on which we're staying gets blocked off to traffic for kilometres and everyone has to walk to watch the event.


We were planning on renting bicycles and riding out to the rice terraces this morning but it's been raining since soon after we woke up! So now I've uploaded all my photos so far to picasa but it takes I think a day until it works out that I've made a new album so I can put it up as a slideshow on the side. Lots of reading today I think.

Amiee