Ubud: Shopping and Monkeys

I took the bus up to Ubud and stayed 3 days this year; last year I only came for the afternoon. It was such an odd feeling walking down the street and saying "I've eaten hear before," or "I bought a necklace here before." The town was as I remembered it, only there are more tourists this time around. I had high hopes of sitting at the pool each day and taking cooking classes. It turned into long, drawn out mornings recouporating from the previous evening ending in day-long shopping trips around the area. I realized its not such a good idea to do all your shopping mid trip, but I just couldn't help myself.

I did make it back to the monkey forest. They were just a mean and scarry as ever. One man got pick-pocketed by a monkey. By this I mean, a larger male monkey reached into this guys pocket and took his wallet. He then began to take out and taste each credit card and all the cash. The man started shouting, "he's got my driver's liscence!! I don't care about the money, I just want my credit cards." Onlookers replied "give him some food in trade," and "I guess the monkey wants a tip," as he was chewing on 50,000 rp bills and sicarding them casually to the ground. No one had a banana and he and his wife causally began to yell for help. The wife then ran to get a handler (men trained to deal with the monkeys). The monkey started backing further and further away, randomly dropping items from the wallet, as the crowd grew, laughed, and followed behind. All the while, the man continued to call out obsenities and "give me my wallet," directly to the monkey. The handler came and retrieved about half of the man's things. Then the monkey ran off the path into the forest. The handler followed and returned with all the possessions about 5 minutes later.

I also cam to a small pool of water, with a few flimsy braches about. Here there were monkeys jumping off the branches into the water and swimming around. It look like they were palying "King of the raft" on the branch, fighting to stay on the longgest. It also appeared that they would use the branch as a diving board. When the hit the water they would swim, face in the water, like an otter to the other side. About 7-9 monkeys were swimming in total, and a few more were just wading around the edges, washing their faces and drinking.

I also came across many, many mothers nursing. All the babies in the area seemed to be about the same size and age. I think only a few months. It was so nice to see the family habbits and culture amongst these animals. Brothers and sisters would play and "ruff house" together. Moms and dads would dutifully pick insects off each other and their children. Some famillies seemed closer than others.

My trip to Ubud this year was even better than last. I had tradditional Balinese raost duck dinner and learned the propper way to barter. I stocked up on goodies and hopefully got a few good pictures as well.