Ubud, Bali

In the morning, Linda and I wandered into the Monkey Forest which is right next to the Alam Indah hotel. There is a back pathway that you can get to from our hotel without having to pay an entrance fee. We had 30 minutes before the group Balinese dancing class, so we wanted to check it out. We didn’t get very far.

A morning session at Alam Indah over breakfast

A couple hundred feet into the path, we started hearing rustling. Suddenly, dozens and dozens of monkeys were surrounding us in the trees, on the path ahead of us, swinging from vines above us. Since we were in an area that tourists don’t normally go, we think they were curious. We saw monkeys of all sizes including itty bitty babies being carried by their mothers and fathers. It was SO awesome to watch them up close in their natural habitat. We were a little wary – after all, we’d heard countless stories of their thievery and some more scary stories of monkeys ripping earrings off people, etc. However, we didn’t need to be too concerned. They were just living their lives, and observing us cautiously. We walked up to the main path, but realized we were about out of time and turned around. Back on the original back-road path, a mother, father and tiny baby popped out in front of us. The baby was ahead of the parents and started wandering toward us. When the dad saw us, he scooped that baby up so fast it didn’t know what hit him. Then the mother came over and wrapped her arms around both of them. They looked it us with terrified eyes, worried we might harm their baby. They then side-saddled out of our way and into the brush. It was a pretty august experience (if you don’t know what that word means in this context, look it up ;)). To see the monkeys acting just like we would act as humans were a bear to ramble into our path touched me in a way hard to explain. However, I was sad that we had scared them so badly – but I did get an amazing photo of the little family huddled together, looking up at us.

monkey drinking water

Monkey yawns

The little monkey family I terrified by accident

The gorgeous monkey forest

Gorgeous trees in the Monkey Forest

From there the group went back to the Lake Leke for Balinese dance class, but I was too sick to dance, so I just took a few photos and videos for them. I was coughing pretty badly that day and not breathing very well. That with the horrible humidity and heat made the idea of dancing seem quite impossible. I left after about 30 minutes, had lunch at the hotel and then swam in the pool. The cool water seemed to help me feel better – and definitely calmed the heat rash that had developed on my arms (but the bumps didn’t go away until I left Bali).

I went back to the market with Linda later that day and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in town.