For mom's last country we are stopping in Bangkok! She leaves on Thursday and we want to make the most of of her time. We are staying in a crazy cool hotel called the Shanghai mansion Boutique Hotel. Voted top hotel for service in 2010 and you can tell! Unbelievable decor, great breakfasts- western, Asian breakfast delicacies (SOOOO tasty!!) and muesili etc...it's in Chinatown so we were in the thick of things. Non stop action all around us! We went down the s...

Yesterday we hired a driver for 300,000 rp to drive us from Ubud to an east Bali village called Padang Bai. We took a scenic route to visit some of the the artists shops on the way. The art here is quite impressive. We arrived in Padang Bai to see it is a laid back hippy type beach village. We found a place immediately - PadangBai Beach Inn right on the beach. We had a room with a ocean view and a balcony which opened out onto an ocean breeze with glass french...

The Bike Ride Down Mt Batur! Well, today was the day we subjected dear Mom to the bike ride down the volcano! She was VERY worried about not having biked for 35 years. I told her "you never forget how to ride a bike!". But I re-thought that statement when I we saw she had not seen HAND BRAKES before!! Terry held in to her bike until we felt she could do it and then we let her fly. She went a kilometer or so down the volcano and although she looked pretty tens...

It was another beautiful day in Ubud. We started off our day with a tasty banana pancake and the usual plate of fresh fruit. The sagitarius has been a wonderful guesthouse. The grounds make us shake our heads in wonder as we discover something new- (a tucked away statue with flowers in it's ears) every time we walk through them. Today I noticed three lotus flowers blooming through the mud in a stone carved bird bath. Beautiful. We hired a driver and went to the...

Well we had quite the adventure with the monkeys today! Mom was very much looking forward to seeing them, but we warned her that they are so cute and that they bite. We bought the bananas and all was good. Cute and entertaining monkeys everywhere and she was having a great time watching them groom each other, babies nursing, and young teens being silly! The temples in this jungle were once again amazing with giant monkey stone statues everywhere. As we were ...