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Bali: Ubud and the mountainous north


Finishing up my summary of my Indonesian trip, which took place in October 2018.


We spent about 8 days in Bali, but didn't go to any of the beaches in the south, heading instead for Ubud and the north of the island. Ubud was bustling, and we started out by just renting a motorbike and driving around the city. We first stopped at the Agung Rai Museum of Art, which had some truly excellent modern pieces as well as some very interesting classical Balinese work. Perhaps most lovely, though, were the grounds, both at the museum and around the attached resort. None of my photos do it justice, it was likely the most beautiful and peaceful place I've ever been.


I bullied Luke into going to a couple of classes on the second day -- a cooking class and a batik painting class. The former was delicious as well as scenic, and the latter was held at the house of the painter himself, again beautiful. The Balinese style of laying out a household and gardens is very aesthetically pleasing.


After our cultural experiences we headed north, first staying in Munduk, where we did an extremely long and hilly waterfall hike. We saw three very impressive waterfalls, and managed to miss a fourth. We finished the day by hiking along a road to Lake Tamblingan, passing the most impressive set of valley views I've ever seen. We camped at Lake Tamblingan for one astonishingly cold night, then hiked the next morning to an excellent hotel. We finished our journey with one more hike, around the enormous basin of Gunung Lesung The trees were dense so it was difficult to get a sense of the size of the basin, but the walk was interesting nonetheless, and parts of it involved negotiating fairly dense brush. After our outdoorsy days we headed back to Denpasar for our flights out: me to Cairns and Luke back to Thailand.


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