A giggly breakfast followed whilst showing off some bling ring action to the hotel staff, who seemed chuffed we had done it here. one guy told us how he had heard us on the balcony late last night celebrating- oops! So what does one do the day after getting engaged? Why, go hang out with a few hundred monkeys in the forest, that's what! We headed back through town to get there, going in and out of some of the most interesting shops we have come across and a few purchases were made, although we would have loved to buy a whole heap more! If we had to choose one place to spend a fortune on decorating our house this would be it.
We arrived at the ticket box for the forest where there was a huge table full of bananas and a path full of long tailed Balinese macaques up ahead looking rather hungry. feeding time soon followed with the incredibly hairy ones, with males biting in with their large canine teeth alongside the amusingly bearded females. With 95 adult females to just 35 males here, someone is getting their fair share of loving in, and with about 170 infants they must be constantly at it! The young males seem to start their sexual interest early as Laura was forever walking away from them trying to lift up her dress. Who wouldn't though? I had a bit of luck too, when on several occasions I sat amongst them and one would slyly out his hand deep into my pocket to see what he might grab a hold of. It was all very funny until one macaque used his teeth on my leg instead, followed by him pouncing on me which was a little too much for my liking but pretty hilarious for the camera footage!
We eventually left the forest which would have been a beautiful walk even without the monkeys. The surroundings were full of house-sized trees with huge twisting vines dangling over bridges and rivers. Passing endless rice paddies and finally spotting some ducks (we have been hearing at loud volumes fro the last couple of nights but been unable to see) we reached our hotel again where it was time to use he swimming pool at last! Although a slightly colder than expected dip resulted in a quick drying session a few minutes afterwards.
Evening was approaching fast so I walked into town to find us a big bottle of champagne (which has been quite hard out here, no-one seems to even know what it is) whilst Laura typed up three lengthy emails home so our families could read how our recent marriage news came about!
Two hours later I returned with a bottle in hand to Laura who was just finishing typing. The bubbles on the balcony flowed fast and it wasn't long until we realised we were getting trashed, the last three months have been the longest we've gone without drink since we knew what alcohol was! Out came the camcorder, which is never a great idea at times like this, and we both made lengthy slurred toasts to our friends and family back home and then continued bu making up some truly awful melodies with lyrics along the lines of "we're getting Maar-ied, we're getting maaar-ied!" over and over, which we sang out loud to the probable enjoyment of the other people staying in the hotel and the slightly confused ducks below us. At the point Laura started taking pictures of me as I believed I was a monkey we prudently moved inside, but from the video footage after that it looked like things got even more wild and noisy- you will just have to see the video when we get back!
Well,. someone woke up this morning with an even muzzier champagne brained hangover alongside an excitable bride to be prodding me to quickly get dressed so we could check what new people had commented on our facebook news. If I'd known getting married meant getting wasted and partying all night long I would have asked Laura years ago!
A lovely response yet again on the Internet with a tasty-yet-not-sure-if-I-should-have-eaten-it-yet scrambled egg sandwich later we spent the next few hours completely relaxing. Laura played DS sudoku, cracking puzzles at alarming speed considering the night before and wrote yesterday's blog and edited down the video footage of the last week in which so blooming much has happened!
We then went back into town for a meal at a tasty restaurant we just can't get enough of, it's all so damned tasty but it does come at a price- although we're on our engagement honeymoon so everything goes, right?! So I then sent Laura off to get a Balinese massage and pampering for the next two hours and headed back to a shop we'd seen on the first day to buy myself a mask! With hundreds of the most intriguing carved faces I've ever seen made by tribes in Timur, each one look like i could possess some kind of spiritual power, it made deciding somewhat tricky and I came away with three- oops! But I got a cracking deal and like i said, honeymoon, yeh?!!
Later Laura came back glowing and even more beautiful and we got ready for our last evening here in Ubud. At home it was bonfire night so we celebrated the event by going to the Taman Sari temple to watch a Kecak and Fire Dance performance. neither of us knew what to expect other than snapshots we had seen on postcards. We arrived to the small temple and sat ourselves down on chairs arranged in a small semi-circle with just a handful of other people joining us. There was no actual stage or orchestra here, simply a large candelabra with around 50 flames blazing upon it in front of a set of stone steps flanked by a decorative archway. At this point I wasn't expecting much, but suddenly a choir of a hundred bare-chested men appeared dancing with their hands in the air, using rhythmic vocal noises as the instrumentation. It became very apparent we were about to see something truly unique! The hundred man band with their fascinating "Cha cha chiki cha ki" chants then sat down to form a mass circle three men deep around the flaming centre piece. With our feet touching the backs of some of the dancers this was one seriously close and personal performance!
The first dance was a rendition of the Ramayana story which we have seen a couple of times already since starting our travels, but yet again this was a totally different visual experience to the others and possibly by favourite so far. Awesome costumes elaborately decorated on some of the most impressive dancers I have ever seen telling the story with exquisite detail down to what each little finger was doing. The story is epic and the dance suitably long, but never once did I stop feeling that initial sense of amazement.
Next out were a female choir who sang beautiful melodies over a smaller chanting male chorus. This time two child dancers performed the Sanghyang Dedari dance, moving like two little caterpillars with fans becoming more and more frantic until they eventually burned out and laid down, at which point the women cradled them and a holy man blessed them with water. The dance is said to rid a village of evil spirits.
Finally was the Sanghyang Jaran dance. We knew this was going to be spectacular when a huge mound of coconut husks were covered in petrol and lit. Next out came a man riding a wooden horse, circling the flames. After a few minutes of dancing around the fire he suddenly kicked the flaming embers across the floor sending them in all directions, including directly at the audience! A huge piece of red hot coconut shell flew towards us and hit Laura's shoe. Kicking it aside it smoked under the adjacent chair for the rest of the performance. It was quite a shock to the audience and unsurprisingly a father flew from his seat to lift his young daughter out of harms way. As dangerous as it seemed the spectacle of it all left the audience buzzing and the performance ended to huge applause. It was one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed.
After the show we went to a perfect restaurant and reflected on our time in Ubud. With a beautiful wife to be in front of me, without whom none of this would have ever happened, and the last few months crammed full of the most breath taking memories, I couldn't help but feel like the happiest man alive.
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