The view from lunch to the pool at Capella Ubud. Just to the left of the pool are steps to an opening in the jungle and the hanging bridge leading to our tent.
We’ve just completed our third and final stop in the Ubud area. We first came to Ubud 30 years ago when it was somewhat off the beaten track. We stayed in the center of town, where you could walk to the monkey forest, stroll through markets, visit temples, and be enchanted by just about everything.
Every time we’ve come back, the town of Ubud itself is more sprawling and traffic-choked than the time before. So we tend to spend time in the surrounding areas where countless magnificent resorts have popped up, surrounded by rice paddies, jungle, and cloud forest.
So here we are at Capella Ubud, where you stay in tents in the jungle and eat delicious food and experience the warm hospitality that the Balinese are so good at. They are not just any old tents; they are gorgeously crafted works of art with heated private pools, indoor and outdoor showers, every comfort imaginable. No hardship here.
We’d cross this hanging bridge to get to our tent
Our not too shabby tent, with a heated private pool
Contemplating the world from our little pool, unaware that Jim is taking a picture
Looking up from our pool at the canopy of trees overhead
One day we decided to take a taxi into the town of Ubud for lunch, in case we were missing out on its old charms. The closer you get to town, the slower and more tedious the traffic. Then we found ourselves walking in tourist-crowded, traffic-clogged streets checking out touristy, crappy restaurants. Not something we ever need to do again.
Our walk through town to look for lunch made us never want to step foot in the place again…
…unlike our first visit to Bali in 1996, when we were joined by John & Alma, my brother and sister-in-law, who lived in Australia at that time. We stayed in Ubud town then and were charmed by everything.
The next day our research led us to a lunch restaurant a 20-minute walk from our hotel. The walk took us across rice paddies, through real villages, and down temple-lined streets, to an unassuming place with good food and views of rice fields and people working and kids playing. That’s the Ubud area we love. You just need to keep a distance from the town itself.
Walkng through rice fields toward a lunch spot…
…and then through the village…
…and rewarded by lunch overlooking rice fields…
…where local farmers were working
The architecture and design in Balinese villages is so ornate that it’s hard to tell where the temples end and the houses begin
Heading back home after lunch
It’s worth noting the peculiarities of the weather here. This is generally the dry season in Bali, with little rain, low humidity, and very pleasant temperatures. But up here in the highlands of central Bali, little micro-climates seem to vary quite a bit. We’ve had clouds and rain move in for a while, then dissipate when they feel like it. It’s been pretty unpredictable these last couple weeks. But I rather like this moody weather.
One evening we took a Grab (the ride-sharing equivalent to Uber, ubuiquitous in much of Southeast Asia) to a nice restaurant 10 minutes away. Out of nowhere, a wind picked up and a torrential rainfall began. We couldn’t believe how hard it rained and for how long. It reminded us of a memorable rain in Kampot, Cambodia 13 years ago, the kind we’ve only ever experienced in this part of the world. It was still pouring something terrible when we called for a Grab to get back to our hotel. After just a few minutes our driver said, “No more raining,” and I was surprised to see that, indeed, the rain had let up entirely. In fact, the road was bone dry. There hadn’t been a drop of rain just a few minutes from one of the hardest rains I’d ever witnessed.
After 16 days in this area, we are now ready to head back to coastal Bali for our final 10 days. We’ll head south to Uluwatu for our a clifftop stay and then finally to Nusa Dua for a proper beach break.
A wonderful dinner at Upper Deck, a 10-minute drive from our hotel. At this point we had no idea about the unbelievable rain storm that was about to move in.
The pathways through the jungle at our hotel
Dinner at our hotel one night featured a Japanese egg custard dish with some kind of dramatic smoking jasmine tea. A little Swedish kid nearby, who’d been bored by the dinner up to that point, shouted, “Can I get more of that?!”
We loved the “gym tent” decorated with Balinese wood carvings and fabric
A small temple on the hotel grounds