Sure, you could spend a whole week in the lush rainforest region of Ubud in Bali, but sometimes you are just wanting to see everything else on the island, Seminyak, Uluwatu, Nusa Dua, the list goes on. I recently spent two weeks in Bali, and if I had to narrow it down for you and distill Ubud into one day, these are it!
MONKEY FOREST
You’ve heard of this one before, and there’s a lot of youtube videos regarding the monkey forest, but here are the tips you’ll need.
- Be sure to NOT buy bananas at the sanctuary, and do not come with food anywhere on you. This includes drinks in cans or bottles. These monkeys have a sixth sense. They will come up and bite or scratch you if you have any food or drinks. Now, if you REALLY must have a picture of a monkey on you, then go ahead and buy some bananas and feed them, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!
- Be sure to keep everything buttoned up, or hidden in a backpack/purse. These monkeys will hop around and go through your stuff. I saw more than one person get robbed by these funny little guys monkeying around.
RICE FIELDS OF UBUD
There’s something deeply satisfying about rice fields terraced just perfectly. They’re infinitesimally green and well manicured, and they’re just plain cool to look at.
- There’s a lot of peddlers who set up shop in the middle of these rice fields trying to charge you just to walk around them, you don’t have to pay them, but bring a few small coins with you just in case. It’s not worth an argument over a few cents.
- Bring your walking (or hiking shoes), because walking up and down these terraces can be relatively slippery and the last thing you want to do is fall into a rice paddy.
- There’s quite a few nice restaurants up overlooking the rice paddy’s. It gets really hot in the fields so i’d recommend having one of the many refreshing Balinese drink concoctions. These are pretty unique, and are made of local herbs and young coconut water blended up
KANTO LAMPO WATERFALL
Sure, there are a LOT of waterfalls to check out in Bali, and around Ubud, but the problem is the majority of them have become so touristy that it’s hard to get a good photograph of just you and the waterfall unless you plan on going there at 4AM. Furthermore, if you just want to enjoy yourself, instead of hanging out with 300 other people, this is THE waterfall to go to. Now, I know that by telling people on the internet about this place i’m going to inevitably make it busier, but hey, you heard it here first!
- This is a VERY easy waterfall to get to, so unlike many of the other ones, its a short three minute walk from your car or motorbike to the falls
- There’s also another fall that is not too far down the river from the main Kanto Lampo waterfall, check it out!
So there you go! Three things you can do in Ubud, Bali, in less than a day. There are tons more things to do in Bali, so if you want to check out 22 Awesome things click on that link and check out my friend’s blog!
