Woke up + ate breakfast (banana pancakes) + went back to my room to read more of "The Hunger Games" + fell asleep + woken up by Rachel, Maya and Kiran at past 3 pm to go swimming wouldn't be a massively interesting entry!
Swimming was fun though - I was supervising a very adventurous and fearless Maya who was determined to push my five foot three and a half inches stature to the limit when throwing herself into the deep end! Even when she managed to jump in the shallow end by herself when we weren't looking for a split second and her head went under the water she didn't seem to care! After swimming we got changed and then Made picked up Maya on his scooter and Rach, Kiran and me went to grab some dinner at Devilicious. Kiran did a bit of sleeping, but then woke up and got very excited again, especially when we went back to the hotel room! I had a yummy Laksa curry and Rach had a burger! Western food becomes a novelty when you eat Indonesian food as standard.
After Made had picked up Rach and Kiran I headed out to pick up some Wifi and grab a Bintang at Arts Cafe and look over emails and Facebook. It was reasonably busy and friendly and there was a live band who were ok at playing covers, my only grip was that they played "Imagine" when they had a request to play The Beatles!
This morning I got up again and had breakfast (vegetarian omelette) and then headed back to my room to finish "The Hunger Games" which I did, eventually, but my mistake was reading whilst lying down and so I ended up having another nap until about 2pm (let's blame the jet lag finally catching up on me perhaps?) I was planning on a massage, but Rach had messaged to say they'd pick me up about 4.30pm, and I had left it too late and there is nothing worse than trying to rush relaxation! So I wandered along the lower end of Monkey Forest Road and had my first successful attempt at haggling and bought a much needed fan for 40000 rupiah, down from 55000 (only saving about £1, but at least I felt I was doing the right thing!)
I then bought a red vest top for 75000 which was already on sale (about £4.50) as I've realised that whilst I have bought lots of clothes with me,there is a distinct lack of tops! Grabbed some lunch (only 32000 rupiah for iced tea, Nasi Goreng and fruit plate - about £1.92!) and then Made, Rachel, Maya and Kiran picked me up outside the hotel at 4.30pm to meet up with their friend Stephanie and be able to take some photos in the sunset light for THE SLING DIARIES. The blog entry is here if you would like to take a look Sling Diaries.
It was a bit of an ordeal to get there as one of the roads we wanted to take was closed, so we doubled back on ourselves back into Ubud, and then got to the other side of where it was closed and realised it wasn't the road we wanted it! It was a race to get the photos before the light went! At least we didn't end up like this truck that fell into the rice field (it did get out again)!
Fortunately we managed to pick up Stephanie in time, get to a pretty rice field and take some lovely pictures of Rachel with Kiran in the sling.
We then went for a lovely chilled meal at a Warung and I had very tasty (and quite spicy!) fish. Maya and Kiran used the opportunity to dance with their Dad.
Then we went back to transfer the photos from Stephanie's camera to Rachel's Macbook. After a few technical hitches we managed, but it gave us a good opportunity to meet her MASSIVE pet rabbit who was lovely. Kiran and Maya thought so too.
Stephanie has a very useful website for anyone thinking about travelling to Asia here which covers places beyond Bali.
Made then drove us back to Ubud and dropped me off and I'm currently at Bar Luna catching up on Facebook and drinking a Bintang listening to a very good live band called Papyafil . The leaflet on my table has this to say about them:
Mike (strings/voice), Enti (bass) and Defris (drums and percussion) are Papayafil, a band, like papaya which is easy to digest and a symbol of the tropics bearing an exotic flavour that can be heard in their music. After several incarnations, one as Cozy Republic and several musiciam changes, Papayafil was recently launched with their current line up of musicians in 2009.
The band includes the musical influences of each band member: reggae, folk, blues, funk, soul, rock and some spice from traditional and world music.
They really are pretty good. Here is their Facebook page
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