I flew from Jakarta to Denpasar airport in Bali on 29th January and took a 90 minute taxi north to Ubud, which is described and the arts and cultural hub of Bali. I had booked into the Ons Hostel where I had a great studio apartment with a balcony for £22 a night.

Ubud is located amongst the rice paddies and steep ravines in the central foothills of the Gianyar Regency (Indonesian state/county).

The town, and surrounding villages, are all geared up for the tourist market with lots of cafes, gift shops, massage and yoga places.

With many ornate houses, of which many are hotels and B&Bs. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish the private houses from the temples.

There are several Hindu temples. I visited the Pura Desa Ubud, which is the main temple in the town.

To get to the town centre from the hostel, I had to walk through or around the Monkey Forest – a nature reserve and Hindu temple complex. The monkeys were very friendly.

There was other local wildlife as well. (The chickens are eating the temple offerings left every morning by local people)

The cultural activities in Ubud mainly involved dance with different dance shows most nights at the bigger restaurants.

It is very hard to arrange an around the world trip to ensure the weather is good in every location and I knew that I would be visiting Bali during the wet season. I was generally very lucky with the weather and it was dry and around 25’C most of the time. However, when it did rain…..

Having stuck to my backpacking budget since Macau, I decided it was time for a break and I took a trip to Mandapa, which is a Ritz Carlton Reserve Hotel just outside Ubud. It is built into the side of a ravine. (Please note 3 of the photos below as stolen from the hotel’s web page as it was rather a grey day when I visited – I’ll let you guess which they are)

I just went for afternoon tea. My first challenge was getting into the hotel as I found out you had to have a booking of some sort to be allowed onto the grounds and I had not booked. I insisted I had made a booking and being a good 5* hotel they eventually let me in, apologised for losing my booking and found a table for me by the pool.

The pool looks onto the hotel’s own rice paddie with two authentic workers.

The afternoon tea cost as much as my accommodation and food budget for the previous 3 days but it was worth it.

After an enjoyable stay in Ubud, I got a taxi down to my next destination in Bali.

Addendum – I missed something important out of my Jakarta post. Having had a bad stomach for most of my Hong Kong visit, I finally arranged to see a doctor in Jakarta. The insurance company were not very helpful directing me to a hospital where they didn’t speak English so I found a private GP practice run by some European doctors. They checked me out, ran some tests and told me I had dysentery. The strange thing was that I felt perfectly OK by the time I got to see them. Anyway they prescribed some powerful antibiotics and told me to return when I was back in Jakarta on my way to the airport. On my return visit, a few hours before I was due to fly to Perth, they re ran the tests and told me I wasn’t fully cured. To be continued.