Tuesday 10th February - Rest day :)
Today was our well earned rest day. After the excitement of yesterday and the fact we managed to sleep through the whole night we thought we deserved a rest day. So today was just spent taking it easy and exploring Ubud.
We slowly ate our breakfast before wandering into Ubud. It so nice being served exotic fruit every morning. Before, I came here I hadn't tried dragon fruit and had never even seen the purple kind. Now we get it every day, with a variety of other things either small bananas, papaya or melon. Until, I arrived at this hotel I can honestly say I didn't really care for papaya but it is certainly growing on me now! Hopefully, this will inspire me to eat more fruit when I get home. As, I tend to go through fazes of eating plenty of fruit and veg eat day one week and then practically eating none the next!
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| Tasty breakfast! :) |
My only aim for the day was to go down to Seed of Life Cafe and eat some raw banana cake. I had previously seen a photo of it when my friend was here and it looked delish, so I had to try it! And oh my God it was! It was beautiful, it was one of the best dessert I have ever had and I would definitely go back to Ubud just to get some. The texture was great, so soft and creamy, the flavour was a prefect balance between cream and banana with a hint of nuts. And the base was just like a Nakd bar, it must have been made from dates and cashews. It was better than I could ever have imagined!
The same can not be said for the drink I had! I think it contained sea salt, but frankly it just tasted like Bovril. This was not what I desired, I wanted something juicy and fruity, so this was a massive disappointment! The cake certainly made up for it though and I would recommend it to everyone and anyone!
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| Banana cream pie! :) |
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| Wandering around Ubud! |
We arrived at the Yoga barn about an hour early so stopped for a coconut and a lime squash at the cafe. We entertained ourselves by listening to a conversation between two very opinionated men, it was quite funny! They weren't talking about anything important but they just moaned about everything!
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| Yoga barn classroom. |
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| At the yoga barn. |
The intro to yoga class started at 1 pm and we were lucky enough to be in the big open room upstairs in the barn. There were probably about 15 people in the class, so we all had plenty of room. The class started once we had collected the props required for the session; a mat, a blanket, a cushion, two blocks and a band. The teacher, Eka was a Balinese man and spoke perfect English but with a strange accent and occasionally sounded Scandinavian.
The class was suppose to last 90 minutes but it overran by about 10 minutes. Eka apologised but I didn't care. I felt so good after the class, so refreshed and relaxed. The majority of the class concentrated on breathing and using yoga as meditation and the remainder of the class focus on different poses. I thoroughly enjoyed it, yoga always makes me feel so good. Rob on the other hand struggled. He couldn't even sit on the floor for extended periods. I think he spent most of the session in pain, but he managed it. I think he even enjoyed it at some points! :)
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| Rob at his favourite cafe. |
As Rob did so well at yoga we went to his favorite cafe for lunch (Terrace View) near the monkey forest to reward him. :) I ate satay tofu with rice in the shape of a heart, it was so tasty! Rob enjoy some chicken noodle soup. After drinking a glass of iced tea each we made our way out for a walk. But first I over paid for a bag at a market stall. I gave the woman $10 dollars, as I didn't have enough idr left to afford it and I'm pretty sure the ten dollars I gave her equated to much more than the value in idr. :( Oh well, what's done is done and I needed to enjoy the rest of the day, so I tried my best to forget about it.
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| Taste tofu! |
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the streets and roads near the monkey forest. We saw so many monkeys. They were so cute! Close to the monkey forest there was a small road, which just seemed to be a short cut for scooters. There was a constant flow of them and we sort of got a bit stuck waiting for them to pass. It was quite amazing though, just the shear amount of stuff that could be transported on one scooter. One guy had a whole shop on the back of his and struggled to fit down the small road. At the top of the road there was a track that led off to series of houses and hotels. We followed this path and watched a number of monkeys playing in the grass and climbing on walls. They looked liked they were having so much fun until a dog came along and scared them away. The poor little monkeys. It was the dog that was enjoying himself now. Luckily he didn't manage to catch any of the monkeys! Phew! :)
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| Dragonfly!!!! |
Our hotel owner informed us of a traditional Balinese ceremony that was happening at a near by temple. So we strolled over to take a look but it was unsuccessful and confusing! It was very busy and we kept getting pestered to buy a sarong! A sarong is only required if you want to go inside the temple and we just wanted to look around and see what was happening. So after much stress we left and ended up back at Warung Sopa. Again we ate gyozas and sushi rolls. We sat here for a while listening to happenings and the music from the small temple next door. It was nice but very noisy!
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| Monkey field! |
