Christmas in Ubud

Our first morning, Christmas Eve, started with a 4.30am wake up call from Leo soon followed by Eleanor - Bali is five hours behind New Zealand. While Leo and I continued to doze, Eleanor and Adrian decided to go for a wander around Ubud. 

Adrian: We found the area we were in (a kilometre or so away from centre of the Monkey Forest) had many lovely restaurants, cafes, health and wellbeing spas and street dogs. We had our first “dumb tourist” moment - a street still doing a brisk trade to motorbike riders for breakfast bakery type items caught our eye, so we gave Eleanor a 50,000 rupiah note (NZD $5 or so) to buy a little slice of carrot cake she’d admired. Eleanor waited very patiently for her turn, asked the lady for her item, said thank you in Bahasa Indonesia (the common language) and got a smile in return, then handed over the note. The smile turned into a sigh and an eye roll and after some fossicking about in the cash box, Eleanor was given 48,000 in change! Turns out the going rate for a slice of cake is 20 cents. We learned our lesson though so on the way home we bought 4 more for the other kids and this time we had the right change.

Once we were all up and about, the kids and various parents had what became a daily pre-breakfast swim. We had three full days in Ubud and hadn’t talked much about what we wanted to do. Adrian had done a bit of reading and had some ideas so over breakfast we came up with a plan. We decided to do the longer trips to temples and rice fields on the first couple of days and stick around Ubud on the third, thinking drivers might be harder to come by as they’d be busy celebrating Galungan. 

So, we called Topan and found another driver, Scooby, to take us all to Pura Besikih temple an hour or so up Mount Agung volcano. Our temple tickets included a motorbike ride up the hill to the gates so on we jumped on in ones and twos for a ride up the hill. Leo and Griffyn were a little nervous about the idea, but later decided that they’d quite like a job ferrying passengers up to the temple. An option for their OE’s perhaps!

Stepping off the bikes was quite an experience. We were immediately mobbed by women selling offerings for the temple. It always takes a day or two to find our feet somewhere new and even when I have some idea of what to expect, moments like these take me by surprise. Still, they’re the first steps  though in getting ourselves acclimatised. Eventually we beat them off by buying ridiculously overpriced postcards and offerings for the temple statues.

Eventually we all arrived and managed to find our way through the crowd and up to the temple where we took Topan’s advice on how to politely refuse a guide. The temples themselves are a complex of steps and buildings winding up the volcano. It was warm and overcast, and felt like it might rain which added to the atmosphere. We found some amusement in watching people doing their Instagram photo shoots on the temple steps. Turns out getting the right shot can be a time consuming activity. So often children are left to fend for themselves while Dad gets the perfect shot of Mum looking fabulous!

On the way to our lunch stop, we saw a gathering of motorbikes and circle of men. Topan told us it was cockfighting, which is apparently a popular pastime on Bali. Lunch was at a buffet restaurant overlooking picturesque rice fields. In the afternoon we popped into the Klungkung palace for a quick look around. My favourite was the 1970s or 80s dioramas depicting the history of Bali and the musty-smelling museum containing all sorts of weapons and treasure. It was raining by then so the kids had a damp game of human chess on the pavers. 

That evening we’d arranged for someone to come in and make us cocktails for a couple of hours in the joglo. What a fantastic idea that was!! The pina coladas were absolutely delicious and an accidental rum-instead-of-gin and tonic opened our eyes to a whole new drink we’ll look forward to perfecting at home. 

Christmas morning brought great excitement to the Parker and Lewis families. Father Christmas managed to find us in Indonesia so there were presents in stockings and a couple more under the tree. Father Christmas brought some (fairly forgettable but useful!) clothes and a card game each, Loot and Five Crowns, which have provided hours of entertainment. Team ‘loot’ - Bethan and Jo - were pretty formidable so the cry of ‘loooot’ was often heard as we claimed more merchant ships. In fact we’ve adopted it as a part of the game, so  continue to call ‘loooot’ when claiming our gold. 

The Lewis’s gave Eleanor and Leo an inflatable dolphin and orca, named Durpy Dolphin and Grey Sea, which proved incredibly popular in the pool.

That morning we visited Jatuliweh rice fields. They’re a World Heritage site and are still operating. They’re truly amazing. We walked the trail through the fields and watched people working on the rice at various points in its lifecycle. It’s a really stunning spot. Our kids found the heat a bit hard going but everyone enjoyed it. 

Our afternoon stop was a butterfly park where we saw lots of bright coloured butterflies and duller moths. The highlight was the hatchery where we watched a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. Centres like this probably do make a big difference to the populations of endangered species, but they definitely allow more human intervention - from helping them to hatch (ours wasn’t hanging so didn’t have the benefit of gravity to help it to emerge) to giving the newly hatched butterflies to people to hold. 

That afternoon we returned to the villa for more swimming and a delicious three-course Christmas meal cooked for us at the villa by a wonderful freelance chef named Hani. A really special way to spend Christmas Day - good friends, memorable things to do and a really yummy meal. 

Watching the kids connect and reconnect has been wonderful. Griffyn and Leo in particular are sharing a room and barely leave each other’s side from morning to night. They’ve even started ordering the same food at meal times. The girls are a little less overtly smitten but enjoy each other’s company nonetheless.