Fire Dancing and Shipwrecks

We left Legian-Kuta with Sara (our Swedish pal) and headed to Ubud. We spent the first part of the day at Gunung Kawi, a beautiful area with rice terraces and ancient stone carvings in the rock. Then we headed to the Monkey Forest in Ubud where a monkey proceeded to sit at Sara's feet and chew on her skirt...slightly frightening and cute at the same time. The monkeys were pretty aggressive-i saw one try to climb up a guy's shirt-hah...i thought it was funny. He did not. We went to a Balinese dancing show that night where they acted out a myth and then at the end a guy walked through a fire containing coconut shells. Very interesting. There was no music, except for the voices of 100 men sitting around the scene, who made different noises throughout the dance. There are nightly performances of Balinese Dance in Ubud. It is not hard to get a ticket. Again it is worth trying to bargain for a better price, especially if you are going to buy more than one.

While Sara continued back to Kuta, John and I stayed at the Lecuk Inn, which we ended up liking so much that we stayed for 3 nights. The room had a bathroom with an open ceiling and a balcony facing the woods, which was perfect for reading. That's where I finished Hillary Clinton's book A Living History. John just read it as well and found that she has a lot more experience than most people give her credit for. It's worth a look anyway.

We went from Ubud north to Tulamben, which is a small strip with no nightlife and not much to do, but it has great diving right off the shore. John dove about 1 hr after we arrived at the wall. He said it was gorgeous. Then we tried a night dive on the shipwreck that night where John saw huge parrot fish and I ended up going up early since I could not relax...it was a bit eery under there in the dark. Night diving is not for everyone. Some people enjoy it immensely since you see different creatures than you would in the day time and can see the glimmers of gold plankton that show up when you run your hands through the water. However, others find it hard to adjust and sometimes suffer from the inability to tell which way is up to the surface.

The next day was a lot better for me when we did two beautiful dives at the shipwreck. The corals were pretty and there were tons of different types of fish. The town has a group of people that have organized to carry tanks down to the beach and back for the visiting divers. You will see women with two tanks balanced on their head which is quite impressive. They pool their money and divide it equally. It's really great for the local economy. We stayed at a nice spot their called Puri Wirata, which was really cheap and nice. The activities in Tulamben are limited to diving, so if you are uninterested in diving, it is probably better skipped.