Ignoring the phone ringing constantly, we started packing for our trip to Ubud. My packing was easy. I grabbed a spare pair of undies in case we had a pool and somebody needed rescuing, a picture of my favourite sheep, and a dog I had grabbed from outside the hotel in case my eyesight got worse. We went down to the pool and found a coupla spare towels lying on the loungers and basically were ready.
Gusti was early as usual and looked quite smart with his new jeans and big sunglasses. The 4 of us loaded into the Kijang, and with the tooting of horns were off, outa the big smoke and into the countyside. Ahh, blurred visions of drains full of plastic bags, mangy dogs wandering the streets, and crashed kites in coconut trees and power-lines stirred my soul and I felt the anticipation of being hot on the trail of the Real Bali.
With an entourage of 10,000 scooters we whizzed through to Denpasar, locked and loaded and then headed deeper into tiger country. The usual banter from us sat comfortably on my ears. Statements like, Christ, look at that. 5 people on a scooter. So what, that's normal. Yeah I know but which ones holding the fridge, and how did they get that 42 inch tv on their head?
It wasn't long and we were in Ubud, wow, Legian without the beach, and S & S. We stopped at Ubud Inn and leapt out of the van. The dogs lead tangled around my ankles and I crashed to the ground. After cocking his leg on me, I decided that he wasn't going to work out and released him. I knew he was a good looking dog as he had only gone 10 paces and was walking past a restaurant when a shifty looking guy whips out, glances around like a massage sheila offering salted bananas and drags him growling into the back of the restaurant. That was nice and I am sure that he has found a nice home. Its funny but that guy must have been a good all round bloke, because later that arvo when we were going past the restaurant, he was advertising a one day offer of special beef sate at a really good price. So there, good Karma all round.
Asking could we look around the Ubud Inn, we were blown away with all the plants and trees throughout the place. I saw a gardener and asked him why the hell didn't he get stuck in with a chainsaw and clean the place up.
On the way back to the reception, Emms stopped and started taking a picture of a red big leaved plant, saying wow look at this. I said there were heaps of them, but she pointed out a foot long green lizard with spines and spindly legs on the leaf. Man that was exciting.
Pocketing the lizard I wandered up the stairs and had a broken English chat to the receptionist. For the price they were quoting, I had to explain that I didn't want to buy the joint, and only wanted 2 rooms for the night. They wouldn't move on the price so we asked to see the rooms. Now I admitted that they were quite nice, except that they seemed to have a lizard infestation, as I showed them a foot long green lizard with spines and spindly legs on the wall. Ha, didn't work but what the hell, its only money. Although at this rate the hundy will disappear quicker than the dog from Legian.
Ianz