Yes, we’re still alive, we’re just living a regular day-to-day life in Ubud. We’re not sightseeing or doing any tours, we’re just living life as we would if we actually lived here. Our first 12 days in Ubud were mostly for some personal downtime.

I’ve done some Yoga, and I think I have a few new tools to help with various ailments. I’m still at the gym everyday and it’s sort of like Owen Sound, I keep running into the same people. We’re doing a lot of exploration of food and social settings. This is a great place for food tourism, and we’ve enjoyed various French, Indonesian, Balinese and fusion restaurants. Caellum has tried a few more new things, and he especially liked escargot.

I absolutely love all of the juice bars in the city. Tamarind and ginger anything is good, I’m not sure if it’s going to make me live 20 years longer, look 20 years younger or raise my IQ 20 points, but it sure tastes good.

In Ubud there is a crazy “park” called The Monkey Forest. It’s a tropical park in the middle of the city where a few hundred monkeys call home. Monkeys are basically rodents in a lot of countries, especially when they become used to people. These Ubud monkeys are famous for pick-pocketing, opening bags and taking the contents, stealing your camera, jumping on your head and all sorts of other mischief. It’s a must see if you’re in Ubud, more for watching peoples reactions to the monkeys than the monkeys themselves.

As I was sitting here writing this, there was a loud bang and a scream. It seems a transformer outside of the cafe I’m in has exploded and is lighting the building on fire. I packed up pretty quickly, but then couldn’t find my scooter, as people were moving them out of the way of the fire. There was another bang and I happened to look right at my scooter, helmet on and gone! It was funny to watch people taking pictures of the fire as power lines were breaking and dropping. There could be some Darwin award winners today in Ubud.

I think the most fun Theresa and Caellum had was on the scooters. Caellum couldn’t wait to get bomb around town. Theresa was quietly giddy as she tried to keep up to the two speed demons. Why scooters haven’t taken off in North America is beyond me, they’re such a great way to get around.

Ubud is a lively little city, with so much to see and take in. I didn’t tour the rice fields for photography, but we’re back here for another 4 days before we head home, and I’ll do some more exploring with the camera,

There will be a lot more adventure in our lives next week, as we head to Gili Air for some diving. Theresa has only been diving once and it was bad, so she’s in for something amazing. She’ll likely get her advanced open water certifications. I’m hoping I can get my side tank certification so I can use two air tanks at the same time. I burn through air due to my size and lack of breathing skill.

Caellum and I are going to do a joint post about our boys night out… we’ll get that up as soon as we’re motivated to do so.