First days in Ubud

Hello family and friends!


We're currently in the town of Ubud, relaxing in an environment that is slower, calmer, and more open than what we had experienced in Kuta. This is a place that is more about bike rides and rice paddy walks, about buying art and eating long, nice dinners. And that's exactly what we've been doing.


In our last days in Kuta, we met up with some girls from Holland (and Dad, I'm definitely a Van Vossen and not a Van Fossen, like you said) who are great travel buddies. They have much the same attitude that we do - try everything, move as the mood suits you, and enjoy the company that you're sharing. The shorter blonde with the curlier hair is named Laura, and the taller blonde with the straight hair is named Paulina. Their English is fantastic, so we've had nothing but great conversations and awesome jokes. We've probably taught them a bit more American humor than they needed to know, but I think they'll survive our sarcasm and pranks (but will Benjy? read on to find out!). We've gotten along really well with them, though today we have to decide if we'll continue traveling together or if we'll part ways and just hope to meet up later.


We went on a long bike ride through the town of Ubud and saw a lot more of the local residences. We still get a lot of attention for our white (too, too white) skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, but I think we've still managed to put a good face forward for America and Holland. There is another monkey forest here in Ubud, and we took the time to walk through it, thus creating one of my favorite moments on the trip, and probably one of the meanest pranks. We were able to buy bananas from some local vendors in place of the peanuts that we bought at the other forest. Apparently peanuts have too much cholesterol, and the results were quite visible on the older monkeys. So, they made the healthy switch to bananas.


Anyhow, I bought a bunch of bananas for the group, and kept most of them in my pockets (a bad decision, as it turned out later... monkeys are smarter than they let on). Later, I placed a banana half into a pocket on Benjy's backpack and stepped back to watch the show. It took about 5 minutes, but eventually a monkey saw the banana, climbed up onto Danielle, who ran forward to her hero Benjy (serving quite well the purposes of the monkey, who was going after the food). Then the monkey jumped from Dani to Benjy, at which point Scott calmly remarked, "Benjy, just to let you know, you have a monkey on your back." I don't know what it is about calm, distant comments about crazy animals on people's backs, but that's the way we roll. Benjy reacted in the expected way: priceless face; small, helpless, squeaky noises; and a healthy, but panicked shoulder-shrug to roll the medium-sized monkey from his back.


I was laughing too hard to get a picture, but someone took a picture of me rolling on the path, red-faced from a lack of oxygen. Benjy was way cool about the whole thing, gave me a high-five right away, but I'm still checking my back for revenge bananas every now and again.


Yesterday, we went on a long walk and met up with a man who lives next to coconut trees. Apparently his whole job consists of watching for tourists, climbing the trees, cutting down coconuts, and then cutting them up for us to eat and drink. The coconut juice/milk/water was pretty refreshing, but the meat of the nut was a bit hard. We guessed that ours wasn't ripe yet, but there are few things more astounding that standing in the middle of a path through green fields and lush forests, drinking and eating coconut that literally just came off the tree. Well worth the $2 we paid for the coconuts.


Well, it's probably time to go off to breakfast. We'll come up with another post later to let you know the decision about future living sites. We hope all is well with you back in the States!


Love and happiness from Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.