Legian to Ubud - Bali, Indonesia

Yesterday was a success! We moved a mileish up shore to legian. It's still in the Kuta beach area, but a little bit less insane. Kuta is a huge touristy westernized town, legian is the same but it doesn't have long stretches of KFC, McDonalds, ect.


After taking um... the scenic route... To our new hotel, we were pleased to hear that the room was in our price range. It also has a pool, which took us all of two minutes to jump in, and a lovely little patio in a garden. We rested up then went on a quest for smoothies. We're still fighting jet lag, so we haven't been that hungry during the day because our bodies think it's the middle of the night. Since a huge meal sounds reeeeally bad when you think it's 3:00 AM, we've formed a new obsession with fruit juices/smoothies.

Fate was some how on our side that evening,because we stumbled upon, what I assume, was the only vegetarian restaurant in a 20 mile radius. Steff was so happy, and they put a little flower in her juice. No random pork/chicken meals and flower decorated juice? Perfection.

Since we walked soooo far, with our heaaavy backpacks, we decided we, obviously, deserved a warm stone massage. I can't even describe how wonderful a 90 minute stone massage is. I just tried in my head.. And it can't be done. Afterwards they gave us some kind of honey tea, and we chit chatted with a German girl. She was amused to no end that we had just quit our jobs and came to Asia, as they must give 3 months notice to quit their jobs in Germany. Intense.

Now at this point we were fed, massaged, feeling all happy and zen. Hey, maybe we should stay an extra day? Then we walked back to the hotel... Up until this point we really hadn't minded the shop owners yelling at us to buy something every 2 feet, the itty bitty sidewalks that made us walk single file to avoid the other people, or the moterbikes zipping past us (inches away) constantly. However, we had both just had our fill of this on the way back. "I'm really over Kuta."

We skipped the movie bar idea, watched the end of little shop of horrors on my iPod, and went to sleep at 9:45.

I am writing this at my jet lag wake up time - 5:00 AM. Waiting at least for the sun to come up before I mosey out of bed.

Today's game plan: Going to Ubud! And NOT going to bed at 9:45.

Next day:

Hello readers! This is Megan and Steff reporting once again at 5:00 AM. We just made a serious hard core vow of no naps today. I think I will have to turn to our friend, caffeine, to make that dream a reality.

Yesterday we enjoyed a lovely breakfast of fresh bread and cheese, with fruit juice and coffee. Steff was more a fan of the Bali coffee, but my watermelon juice made me smile. I LOVE that every restaurant has a full fruit juice menu. Over breakfast, we planed out depart from Kuta/Legian to Ubud.

A shuttle bus picked us up at our hotel for the 1 hour ride. We shared the ride with 4 other guys (3 from Australia and 1 from Germany) and we all made friends along the way. The boys had haggling down so we all went on a quest to find a new hotel together. One of them got our room prices down from 150,000 rp to 100,000 rp (about $10).

We all went for a short lunch (yay juice) then off to the monkey sanctuary for a healthy dose of cute. A van driver offered to take us there. The boys, again, haggled he price down. The main talker of the boys asked after all that if he could drive the van driver said... Yes. The next ten minutes were hilarious, nerve wracking, and fantastic. We even some how made it with out crashing or killing any of the poor motor bike people who didn't realize they reeeeally should have kept their distance from our van.

I think I expected something more like a zoo where you see the monkeys from behind a fence of some sort. Nooooo. Monkeys... Everywhere. They came right up to people to be fed, steal food (or anything else they wanted), or jump atop you head. Luckily, Steff and I only almost had our purses stolen from these adorable little bandits, and not the head jumping experience. The whole place was something out of king kong. Monkey statues, moss, huge trees, vines and trees everywhere. Every corner was a photo opportunity.

We were driven home by, you guessed it, the same van driver. We also spontaneously booked him to take us to the hot springs and volcanos today.

On the 2 minute walk back to the hotel.. We helped build a house. There were a few men building a house ( who didn't speak English) and the boys just wandered over and just started helping scrape cement. Which was somehow totally acceptable. Before we knew it we all took turns joining in scraping cement, digging, and hauling the premade cement! The ladies at the seamstress shop across the street were cracking up. One of the Indonesian men yelled something over to the seamstress lady. She told us he said "thank you, come back tomorrow" which made us all burst out in a fit of laughter.

Once we got back to our hotel Steff and I planned to go out once the rain stopped to explore the local shops. This turned into Steff reading, and me falling asleep at 7:00 PM. Again... No 10 hour naps today.