Ubud Adventures, part 1

Poliman, one of the LDS members here in Bali, lives in Ubud (pronounced oo-bood) and has wanted to show us the countryside ever sine we arrived. Two weeks ago, some friends of his from BYU Hawaii came out to visit and so we took the opportunity of joining them on a tour of the Ubud rice fields.

(click to enlarge the map)

Ubud is about 1.5 hours from Kuta on a motorbike. Once we arrived, we then drove for another few hours through the jungle and countryside. The roads, only sometimes paved, were pretty narrow at places so it was slow-going but so beautiful.

Click to enlarge any of the following photos.

Any moment I could just imagine King Kong emerging through the thick foliage.

My first up-close view of bamboo. It's so tall and so incredibly strong.

Poliman took us to this organic restaurant that is raised up right over the rice fields so the views are amazing!

Here are some views from our table.

It's so bright in the sun and so dark in the shade that it's difficult to get the proper exposure on the camera. But, in case you couldn't tell, here's JP. :)

Here we are sitting with our new friends. Starting from the left:

JP, Poliman, Dan, Ryan and Drew (not shown, I couldn't back up far enough. haha)

For chairs we sat (or in Poliman's case, he sprawled out) on cushions.

The food was so delicious! Probably the healthiest food we've had since we've been here, too.

Nasi Goreng Ayam

(chicken fried rice)

They're really big on juices over here. At just about any restaurant you can order carrot, watermelon, avocado, papaya or any other juice.

Here's the watermelon juice.

After lunch we continued our drive through the rice fields. We were driving on a little narrow dirt strip with the rice fields on one side and a river or gulch on the other. Kind of intense at places, but we took it slow.

Along the way, in a little shack right off the dirt path, there was a silver smith selling jewelry he's made and some paintings that his family made.

These earrings are made to look like the grains of rice. Pretty cool!

Here are some of the paintings:

We passed on of the Hindu temples along the way. Any place where they find what Poliman called "nature in harmony" or a body of water they build a temple. So they are always in the most beautiful places.

A few hours later we found our way back onto a main road then cruised over to some rice terraces. I can't imagine the work it took to cut and sculpt the land like this to form farmable land on hillsides. Just amazing!

Those are our shadows against the roof of a restaurant that perches right over the terraces.

These little girls were selling postcards to raise money for their school. So cute!

This is one of my favorite photos. The palm trees here look so cool in they're natural setting.

The following day we drove for 6 hours up through more countryside to see more terraces, lakes and temples. Click here for "part 2" of the Ubud Adventures!