We’d planned to go to Waterbom Park when we got up this morning, but by the time we’d had breakfast we were already over the idea.  Sounded too much like hard work really.

Hannah stepping out for brekky in style

Brekky just filled us right up.  Juice, fruit, toast, eggs, pancakes, coffee … all you can eat for $4.  We just rolled outta there and figured some relaxation by the pool was a much better idea.

But then we started talking about taking the kids up to Ubud to see the Monkey Forest and check out the art markets.  It’d only be half a day … why don’t we do that?

So, we found a driver that seemed like good value and made a deal.

The monkey forest was our first stop and Blake wasn’t at all concerned, since the monkeys would all be in cages … wrong!  Poor boy nearly had kittens when he saw one cross the road in front of him and then another billion running around everywhere causing trouble.

We bought a couple of bunches of overpriced bananas and hid a few from view and gave the kids a bunch each.  Needless to say the monkeys pounced on them and pestered them until all the bananas were gone.  The next bunch lasted a bit longer with dad handing them out to B&H one by one.  We had the odd monkey figure out who had the goodies, but most were happy to pester the kiddies.

A meeting of minds

We had a bit of a wander around the Ubud area and checked out the shops.  Lots of different items to be found here and generally they seem to be much more arty and of better quality than that found elsewhere.  Many unique things to be found with a bit of digging around.

Time for lunch and Dusty, our driver, found us a quiet little restaurant overlooking the rice paddies.  Blake occupied himself after lunch by trying out his new slingshot.  Unfortunately, somebody showed him how to use it more accurately and effectively thus greatly increasing the likelihood that he was going to annoy someone with it.  So far he’s been good and hasn’t caused any damage to anyone or anything.

After lunch we went to a little farm where they grow all the herbs and spices.  You know they’ll be fresh when you can see how they make them all.  They also had a small cage of Luwak there.  They look a bit like a possum.

They feed the Luwak bali coffee beans and then process the droppings to recover the coffee.  Sounds great.  They then shell it, roast it, grind it and serve it.  We had to give it a try, sounded delicious ;).  You can read about it here.  They also served up about another 10 cups of various herb coffees and teas as well.  All low caffeine, they said, so we wouldn’t be bouncing off the walls.

Fresh roasted poo ... um .. coffee

We all headed back to Sanur and had a massage before dinner.  It wasn’t a very relaxing one though with the kids laughing and chatting the whole way through it, mobile phones going off and the staff chatting away too.  The massage itself was good though, but we’ll need to find somewhere different for the next one … preferably with only 1 kidlet at a time, if at all!

Dinner was at the Star Bar and, as always, was yummy.  We’ve not had a bad meal yet.

SPOT doesn’t seem to be working too well here for some reason.  Will have to hit it with a hammer or something.