From Sanur beach up to Ubud was through endless arraay of small villages that almost seemed to be joined together, and we soon found ourselves in Ubud.
We drove through the very busy centres, which is full of art shops, small restaurants and the like.
The town looks quite prosperous and clean and seems to cover quite a large area.
Soon we escaped this and headed out on the road North of Ubud to find the place we were going to stay in Petulu village. Somehow we found the very snmall road hat was tucked in between two of the endless stream of small roadside shops along the main road.
Instructions were to find a small bike shelter with a green flag, There seemed to be many that closely fitted that description, so after going up and down the road we finally got someone to show us where it was by following him on his bike.
'Rama Sony' as it is known, is up some steps and along a thin path between small houses, with chickens and chicks running around, and to my surprise a large rabbit! Still don't know how that come to be there? Through a bamboo gate at the end we entered what could be described as the compound of a very large brick built house, nothing like others in the village. There was even a fountain in the courtyard.
Inside the house it was covered in very bright colours and patterns. Many shoes lined the steps indicating a few people were staying there already.
We were greeted by Petra, a Finnish lady, and her son Roni who was around 6 years old.
He and the kids immediately began to play while we sorted out if there was room available, which there was, so we got the gear and dropped it in the dorm room.
There was about 6 big double bunks and we had two a the top ones. We joined a group of younger people lounging around on a veranda at the back, a mix of German, Danish, Fin and some local Indonesians, and an English guy who'd been living in NZ for 10 years or so.
Later in the evening we decided it was time for something to eat, so I decided to go down to town and find something to bring back.
I offered to take the young German guy with me as he'd arranged to meet someone downtown to retrieve his card that had been eaten by the ATM in Ubud. He'd been without it for several days because the bank card had mucked him about.
I partly offered to take him because I knew it would be difficult to find my way back in the dark, and as he'd been there longer I expected he would be helpful.
We arrived at the pre-arranged meeting spot outside a circle K shop in Central Ubud. What was supposed to be a 20 min waited eventually extended to more like 1 hr 20 mins of course. He did eventually got his card though, after paying 50k to the guys that delivered it on a motorbike.
We then walked around nearby streets trying to find somewhere to get some takeaway food, but it was mainly either shut, too expensive or didn't do takeaways. I decided we should do it in the car to save time because it was getting late and the kids would be starving.
Good choices, found a Warung on the road out of town that had good chicken, fish, insects, eggs etc, so ended up with a feast of chicken fish and rice for around 84k.
As predicted, even with help we overshot the turn-off road and had to back track, and then still struggled to find the house as well, but get there in the end.
Kids fed and happily playing with Roni, we variously had conversations with the other guests or watch a bunch of local Indonesian artists making jewelry etc in another room. They were using recycled material such as car tyres and inner tubes but they looked really good.
After a couple of the beers I'd bought I was starting to flag a bit, and to be honest most of the conversation with the younger people seemed very superficial and boring.
Petra had a somewhat interesting back story, her having moved from Finland to Estonia, when she was 13, having then left home to travel at a very young age and having Roni, etc. She explained she was also into some sort of frequency or rythme therapy, and use of some halluciugencue which was actually a bit interesting, but I was too tired to really contribute much amonst the seemingly inane questions and exchanges from the other younger people there.
Seemed like Eunmi was feeling a bit the same way, so some time after midnight we managed to get the kids into bed to sleep. The beds smelt like the bedding hadn't been washed for months so we went to sleep in a fog a sweat and a possibly a hint of urine.
Nice!
The kids and I actually slept reasonably well but Eunmi woke up a bit, I still felt pretty blasted and vacant though, and the glazed eyes of the girls indicated they felt the same.
By this stage we'd all decided we didn't want to stay any longer, so until Petra woke up, we decided to go down to Ubud town and have some breakfast, we walked down to entered to beautiful old original forest in the gully below.
By the time we got back to Rama Soni, Petra still wasn't awake(it was after 12) so we just left 100k with Petra's friend and left. Roni was really upset that the girls were leaving, poor thing.
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