Virtually every guidebook will describe Ubud as Bali’s cultural center. And virtually every person we spoke to who had previously been to the island recalled the town as their favorite stop. We will join the ranks.
Indeed, this popularity means congested roads as the city has experienced a huge growth in tourism (and commercialism) over the past decade, but away from the main roads we were still able to find quiet on lush, terraced paddies. We, frankly, enjoyed the mix of easily accessible shops and restaurants and serene vistas.
One of Ubud’s best known attractions is its Monkey Forest Sanctuary. We passed through on a couple of occasions—it sits about 15 minutes down the road from Palace.
Last August, between moving from New York to California, we stopped for a month in Indonesia with our then 13-month-old. The movers came to pack up our apartment on the first of the month, and we boarded a plane on the fourth. We thought the promise of flying around the world to a beautiful place might dull the sting of leaving New York—and it did, especially the part where we slept on an air mattress in an empty apartment for three nights.
If you ever need a little extra encouragement to start a multi-leg, forty-hour stint of air travel with a toddler, just move everything practical out of your apartment for a few days.
I’ve been wanting to share a true, extensive (over-the-top, in typical fashion) travelogue from our month in Bali for, oh, almost a year now. And I think it’s time! Here’s the plan: I have multiple posts on where we stayed, what we saw, where we shopped and ate, for each of our destinations. There was just too much to tell for me to put everything into one long post this time.
I’ll spend the next week or so sharing different aspects of our trip, give each the tag “Bali Travelogue,” and you can see them all grouped once I’m done. I’ll start with Ubud next week, and then pause for a while to finish up posts on Permuteran, the Gilis, and Seminyak (see updated list below).
Those of you who have written me asking questions about traveling to Bali, often with young children: I’m sorry it took me so long! The rest of you with no plans to go there anytime soon: Um, sorry? Indulge me? And start saving your miles for a ticket! It was amazing!
First up, the 40-hour journey and arriving at our first destination, Ubud.
