I love Seminyak!

It was such a welcome break after 2 weeks of full-on itinerary in having to do something and be somewhere to get to some place. It was such an absolute bliss to have no planned activities whatsoever and just go with the flow; whatever and whenever we feel like it. Not to mention that we went a little decadent in booking ourselves into a rather luxurious pool villa and hence, I am ever so glad that we decided to do Seminyak last. The villa aside, Seminyak itself is really one of the better places in Bali to chill out.

Of course it rained like the first 2 days we were there, rendering us helpless and the private pool villa we had useless. So when the sun started shining on the last 2 days, we were happy like pigs in shit!

The only weird thing though, we were greeted with some form of towelled-origami found on the bed or on the laundry line right next to the bed on every single night after our dinner outside their premises. The first night we got was a pair of swans which was oh-so-romantic nice and the next 2 nights were these:

I have no idea what they were supposed to represent, but they did look disturbing. They kinda looked like suckling pig on a grill or something. We had only one on the second night and they upped the ante to 2 on the 3rd night. It was not only weird, it was macabre! Who would want to see suckling pig being hung next to the bed?

The last day in Seminyak was pretty much spent lounging around and watching Channel NewsAsia to catch up on news in Bangkok from our little pool. We were almost sad to leave the glistening waters and pure hedonism behind!

Full of tourists, no doubt, Ubud is a rather idyllic place mainly focuses on culture and arts. The sheer number of shops that are full of paintings or stone carvings are simply too many to count! The roads around Ubud are generally small and narrow, but never lacking of the odd shops you can find along the way for miles and miles on end.

It is also a place to watch the world go by or go exploring to the padi fields, the mountains and also a little bit of nature. We had stayed somewhere along Jalan Monkey Forest, surrounded by all the different types of shops. Prices are generally also a little bit more expensive here, and food as we found out, tend to cater mostly to the taste of foreigners which can be a little bland and less spicy. It rained pretty much the whole time we were there, so our mobility around Ubud was pretty much limited.

For some reason though, there seemed to be a lot of French tourists in and around Ubud as compared to other areas. Strange that!

The landscape out of the main town of Ubud is simply breathtaking. A real sight for sore-eyes.

@ Kintamani having lunch amidst a lush landscape of padi fields and volcanic mountain

The Barong dance that was available as a tourist attraction somewhere in Ubud

@ Ubud’s Bird Park: Bird of Paradise, a Hornbill and a very affectionate Senegal parrot which offered its head for a scratch!