I woke up on my first morning in Bali without much of a plan, and spent a couple hours doing research online to decide what to do. I planned to be in Bali for three days, and had booked a diving excursion on the second day, but did not have any plan for the first or third day.

I compiled a list of things to do in the vicinity of Ubud, and got ready to leave for the day. The only real plan I had set was that I would head first to drop off my laundry at a nearby laundry service that had positive reviews online. I took a Grab bike with my bag of laundry on my back, holding on tightly to the bike with one hand and to the bag with the other. After dropping off the laundry, I took a brief five minute walk down the street. The streets in Ubud are lined with shops, cafes, and warungs (local resetaurants). I headed into a nearby cafe called Suka Espresso for some coffee and breakfast. I ordered the Suka's iced coffee, which had a scoop of ice cream on top, and the salmon benedict, which was served on a very thick slice of sourdough toast. The coffee was alright but I think the ice cream muted the flavor too much, and the toast was a little tough to eat because it was so thick.

After breakfast, I headed to the Ubud Monkey Forest, located just around the corner from the cafe. The forest is home to more than 1000 Balinese long-tailed macaques living in their natural habitat. There are a lot of nice walkways and paths to journey down and see the monkeys in varying states of activity. Sometimes they also just sit in the middle of the path, creating an obstacle that you have to carefully navigate to avoid startling or hurting them. It was a little amusing to see a few of the visitors (all grown adults) scared to walk down the path because the monkeys were so close (what did they expect going to the monkey forest!). At the entrance to the forest, some employees told people not to bring plastic water bottles into the forest because the monkeys would try to steal them, which I can confirm because at one point I knelt down to take a photo of a monkey, and another monkey jumped on me to try to take my water bottle out of the side pocket of my backpack. Throughout the forest there are also a couple of temples to see, which adds to the aesthetic.

After spending around 90 minutes at the monkey forest, I took a Grab bike towards the center of Ubud. I didn't have much of a plan, I just knew there were a couple of nice temples to see and a few market streets that I could walk down. I quickly admired Saraswati Temple and Ubud Palace, both located right in the center of Ubud, before walking towards the market. I stopped for lunch at Puspa's Warung, a restaurant run by a friendly woman named Puspa, to grab lunch. I had a delicious exotic purple juice, made with sweet potato, beetroot, pineapple, coconut, mint, and honey and some mie goreng, Indonesian fried noodles. The entire meal cost only about $3.

I was feeling a bit tired to I headed back to the hotel to relax for a little bit. I spent some time catching up on blogs from Cambodia. While I was working, my laundry was dropped off. Around 5pm I got ready to head out again.

My plan was to go back towards the center of Ubud and walk along the Capuhan Ridge, which is supposed to have nice views of some rice terraces. Throughout much of Bali you can find stepped rice farms like these, and a huge majority of Balinese people work in the agriculture-related industry. The walk was pleasant, although I was surprised at how little you could actually see the fields from the pathway. Additionally, the path was really uneven and I found myself frequently getting my foot stuck in between the bricks on the pathway. After about twenty minutes of walking I actually tripped and fell and lightly scraped my knee. Luckily there was almost no bleeding so I was able to keep walking.

I walked in a single direction down the pathway until I reached a major road, and stopped to order a Grab bike to take me back to a restaurant I had identified on Google Maps that was located near Ubud center. Because of high demand, the ride cost $1.20 instead of the normal 80 cents! The restaurant I picked was called Warung Gauri, located on a side street just outside of Ubud center amidst some nice looking rice terraces. The restaurant had a quaint courtyard in the center with tables all around. I ordered "de rehydrating" juice made with watermelon, mint, and lime, nasi goreng with ayam (chicken) satay, and for dessert I decided to try dadar gulung, a typical Indonesian dessert of rolled pancakes (they are green from pandan) stuffed with coconut and palm sugar. The juice and food was all delicious. The dadar gulung tasted different from how I had imagined, it was a bit saltier than I expected.

After dinner I returned back to the hotel to try and go to sleep early. The next day I was going to be picked up from the hotel early to go diving!