We had to get up early this morning as we were being fetched by Wafiki promptly at 9 o’clock. We had breakfast in the restaurant and had taken all our bags with to the restaurant and left them at reception - he arrived on time and our bags were packed in the car; we were then whisked off to the monkey forest, our first stop.
 
It was only a short drive to the forest and this visit had been an impromptu inclusion, as it was not on our original itinerary - Edd and I had driven past it the day before on the way to the whitewater rafting and spotted a troop of monkeys; we had therefore suggested it could be something fun to do before we left Ubud
 
Edd had taken a bottle of water with him, but we were advised to put it away, as the monkeys had a tendency to confiscate things out of peoples pockets. It was pouring with rain and everyone had taken an umbrella; I, on the other hand, was wearing my waterproof and hid under Edd's umbrella every now and then when the rain got a bit too heavy.
 
We passed a few monkeys on the way in and Wafiki advised us to walk along the path to the left. Monkeys were running around under a covered area and a few other early riser tourists were watching them when we arrived. One monkey bee-lined straight for me and I ran over to Edd and hid my face in his chest. The monkey then started to climb of my left leg and I squealed to Edd that it was touching me! It turned out that it was only interested in Edd's bottle of water that had been placed in my pocket - it took the top off the bottle of water quite easily and poured half of the contents onto the floor; another monkey arrived and then started playing with what was left of the bottle of water. I had managed to regain my composure and took a short video of the monkey pouring out to the last half of the bottle; it then continued to play with the empty container and Edd was concerned about leaving a plastic bottle for monkeys to play with - he did not want to litter in the monkey forest.
 
The monkeys lost interest as the bottle was empty and moved on to other people with backpacks on; Edd then took the empty bottle and placed in a recycling bin - I was glad we had not brought our backpacks with us as monkeys were climbing on top of other tourists, trying to get into their bags and inspect the contents.
 
We walked over to the undercover area and watched the monkeys play with each other and interact with other tourists. Many of them had little babies with them in varying degrees of age and size. They were quite entertaining to watch, as their long limbs were quite awkward and lanky as they climbed up and down the railings on their own.
 
We ended up spending an hour at the monkey forest and left on a high note - vendors had arrived and were selling bananas to tourists in order to feed the monkeys; they in turn took full advantage by climbing all over said tourist to try and get to the treats. It was hilarious to watch, especially when other woman squealed and screamed, because the monkeys suddenly jumped onto their shoulders and proceeded to peel bananas above their heads!  
 
We walked back to the mini van, after all making use of the bathroom in the monkey forest, and then jumped in for our one hour ride to a temple. I spent the ride downloading the millions of photos and videos I had taken of the monkeys - we needed space on our SD card, as it was a newly purchased 16 GB and all we had left for the next three weeks! (We had managed to fill up six other SD cards that were 8 GB each over the last 3 months, this one was extra and there were no more where it came from!)
 
The ride to the temple was not as arduous as other rides Edd and I had experienced; Edd's dad, however, was quite concerned with the fact that the driver did not like changing gears; he kept turning around and looking at Edd as if to say, 'second gear isn't the only geared this minivan is capable of!' We got to the temple one hour later and Edd and his dad had a quiet conversation about the fact that the driver had managed to move to third gear and at one point even made it to fourth. As far as they were concerned, it was nothing short of a small miracle.
 
We had the usual starter, one-sided conversation, about woman's monthly's and pregnancy and children and death to ensure that we were not offending the Hindu belief system. I assured our tour leader that I was pregnant and muttered to myself that it was probably twins. (He double checked with Edd’s mum that I was indeed not ‘unclean’ and could enter the church, this was out of my ear shot). We were all wrapped up in long sarongs, even though our knees were covered - it was interesting that they weren't particularly interested in shoulders; it was, however, a high crime to be in the temple if you had a child that didn't have teeth. Crisis.
 
The temple was beautiful and very very large, we walked up the stairs and managed to get a good view of the beautiful surroundings; it was not a perfectly clear day, but the clouds did not hinder our view. We spent one hour walking around the temple grounds, our guide making sure we did not go into any of the ‘holy’ areas and inadvertently offend which ever deity resided there; we watched families arrive for their Saturday afternoon offerings, no rugby for them today.


 We then walked back to our minivan, took our sarongs off and climbed in. We stopped off on the side of the road to take a picture of on of the volcanoes; there was a beautiful lake at the bottom of it and Edd's mom decided it would be a good idea to sit at the lake and have a drink. Our driver took us down the winding roads, in second gear, to a car park with a few stores where we could buy drinks. 
 
Unfortunately, the vultures descended, offering us massages, bracelets, hair wraps, hair platting and scarves. I had a conversation with one as to whether or not she managed to learn the word ’no' in the English language, as everytime we said it, we might as well have banged head against a brick wall - it might have been a lot less painful if we had done the latter. We took a few beautiful photos, finished our drinks and were on our way.
 
As it turned out, the area we were driving to, and had a drink in, was originally an ancient volcanic crater - I personally could have done without this little nugget of information. I also learned that the volcano we were taking beautiful photos of had last erupted in the year 2000. The last major eruption had been in the early 60s, the black area around the volcano was the result of the earlier eruption. Fantastic.
 
We were dropped off at a restaurant / accommodation where we were to have lunch. Apparently Edd's folks experience of lunch the day before had been disastrous; his mum was quite concerned about the fact that we might spend most of our time eating flies instead of food. We walked into the restaurant area and immediately realised that this would not be the case. We were seated at a table overlooking the paddie fields, but we did not get to see the volcano backdrop, as cloud cover was too low.
 
We had a delicious buffet lunch, which included a delicious bottle of rosé wine, and then walked back towards the car park - our tour guide was waiting for us at the entrance and lead us back to our minivan, which took us to our new hotel. 

 We were dropped off at the entrance area and our bags were taken to our rooms. We handed over our passports for check in and were given welcome drinks - then a number of people came and spoke to us about a long list of things, including a massage voucher, potential daily activities and the times for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All we wanted to do was get to our rooms and unpack, collect our thoughts and then decide what we were going to do during our stay.

 We were eventually taken to our rooms and Edd and I were taken to room 206 - the room was smaller than all the others, didn’t have a bath, but did have a beautiful balcony overlooking the swimming pool and the sea that you could see between the gaps in the trees. Beautiful.
We unpacked our things, put our costumes on and all went for a swim; the water was very warm so I suggested we get our soap and have a bath while we were at it! I then got the laptop out and sat and blogged for a bit, while Edd’s dad sat and read his book, his mom caught some rays and Edd read the news on his phone.

 We all went back to our rooms after 5.30pm, showered and got ready for dinner, heading down to the restaurant at 7pm for a drink. We had one dinner included in our stay and decided to have it that evening, but then decided against it as it was 3 courses and we’d had a huge lunch, so would have been a waste. We ordered from the a la carte menu instead and Edd and his dad had a delicious mushroom risotto with sea food, his mum had slow cooked Balinese pork and I had pork belly.

 The food was delicious and we ate as much of it as we could! We finished off our bottle of rose and then all went to bed - we’d had quite a busy day and were all required much needed beauty sleep.