Ubud, Bali: Day One

Thursday, July 10: Paradise exists and its name is Bali. We never travel to a hotel as a destination -the  hotel is a place to stay while we visit our destination. However, the Ubud Village Resort and Spa might change that paradigm a bit. After arriving in the dark last night and getting a cursory introduction to our casita, we awoke this morning in our four-poster bed surrounded by mosquito netting - we think that's for show, but we'll see. Three of the four sides of the casita that we can see from the bed are all glass. It seems like we are sleeping outside, but are instead in a beautiful air-conditioned building. Directly in front of our feet is the private plunge pool, to the left is the outside daybed and table and to the right is a koi pond. Behind the bed is the bathroom with it's outdoor shower, toilet room with large glass window and koi pond, and the indoor shower room with its large glass window and koi pond as well. Directly behind is the outdoor raised bathtub, in which they had floating pink and red flower petals in the shape of a heart! The total square footage of our enclave is 3000 square feet - about the size of our house in Phoenix! I'm afraid that while words don't do it justice, neither do 1000 pictures.

The grounds of the hotel abut the terraced rice paddies of Ubud, and also consist of a myriad of other vegetation, trees, ponds, birds, etc. There are only 30 casitas and three large buildings to support the guests - the reception building, restaurant building, and spa building. All buildings, including the casitas have palapa-style roofs. In addition to the private pool at each casita, there is a great zero-edge curved main pool that probably stretches for more than 100 yards. You can do laps but you have to curve a bit! The hotel staff is amazingly gracious - and beautiful.

The rice paddies stretch for miles and we regularly see the workers cleaning and grooming the vast fields by hand. They also have flocks and flocks of ducks which they herd from field to field. The ducks, which have their wings clipped, eat the algae, insects, and weeds - remember the fields are in fact, a wetlands. They don't eat the immature rice plants and are herded away from the mature plants so that the rice may be harvested by the farmers and not the ducks! Their droppings also provide a natural fertilizer, and their walking around stirs up the ground which allows the water to better penetrate the land. It is quite an eco-friendly system!

We ventured "off-site" today and decided to walk into the center of town. As soon as we left the front gate of the hotel we were met by an intense amount of motorscooters and cars. The road was very narrow - one lane in each direction, and the lanes went in the wrong direction! Thus we had to walk on the right side of the road, facing traffic, instead of the left. This isn't hard to do, but crossing the street is a miracle in and of itself. Our goal was to hit an ATM machine since we were devoid of Indonesian Rupiah - the currency of the day. I knew that of the various currencies that we experienced on this trip - Euros, Israeli Shekel, Turkish Lira, and Indonesian Rupiah, this would be the hardest to deal with. The exchange rate is about 12,000 Rupiah to $1US. Thus after finding an ATM machine - BTW, they seem to come in clusters of 5-8 ATMs on a corner - I found myself with 40 of the 5,000 Rupiah bills or 2 million Rupiah in my wallet - about $190US. After a while we just looked at a 5,000 Rupiah bill as $4-5US and a 10,000 one as $8-10US.

While at the ATM, a guy pulled up in his scooter and asked if we needed a taxi - great idea! He said, "You wait here and I'll be back in 5 minutes." Sure enough, he came back with his car. We negotiated a price to get to the center of town - 5,000 Rupiah - you all know how much that is, and off we went. Eddie tried to sell us additional services; additional trips, but we only needed this one, we took his card and went shopping. Joani was looking mostly for Batik and Ikat fabrics, but shopping is shopping!

Our grandaughter has this thing about pink motorcycles. So here we are in Ubud, Bali, and this guy on a pink motorcycle turns into the street just ahead of us. Quickly, I yell, "Wait, I need a picture." He stops and I tell him that I have to take a picture of a pink motorcycle for our grandaughter. He says, "This isn't my motorcycle, it's my wife's. Be sure to tell people that!" So there - I did!

We hit the Ubud central market, which begins as a bunch of stalls in a two-story building and then radiates out in all directions. We then walked down the Main Street and found some nice shops and made some purchases. There wasn't much negotiating because in the shops they say price fixe - but they move a little. We have been impressed by the pleasantness of the people. Everywhere you go, and whoever you speak with, they are amazingly nice. We caught the hotel shuttle at the appointed place and time and spent the rest of the day at the hotel.