After the beaches, we went to the countryside in Ubud where we spent four days. Ubud is the cultural center of Bali, a charming little town with its great Hindu temples at every corner. The city is fairly quiet and surrounded by rice fields. There are many nice cafes and restaurants, lots of tourists (mostly French) here all the young surfers have disappeared and gave space for couples, families and older people … There is a monkey forest at the entrance of the city where live a lot of monkeys, better not to go inside with food in your hand because they are quite aggressive. And in the middle you will find a Hindu temple, we were lucky to arrive in town a day before the Hindu religious ceremony which takes place only 2 times a year. We saw a wedding ceremony in a local private area and asked if we could have a look, they invited us to to get in, to eat and drink, it was really different from the type of marriage as we know, the costumes and decorations were wonderful!
Ubud is a great place to relax in pleasant except maybe the guys who offers you taxi in the street because there is one every 10m. We rented a scooter again and went around Ubud to visit some temples also terraces with view on the rice fields, we went to the north of the island to see the lake Batur and its volcano.
Carol by asking farmers working in a rice field has learned to beat the plants to recover the rice. Tomorrow morning we leave the island of Bali to the Gili islands.