Day 14, Bali: Bintang and binge shopping

We tried a few new things for breakfast, including the Balinese pancake with lemon and honey and the black rice porridge. There's been a tour group staying here for the past few days, and the hotel was doing some special catering. That meant Balinese cakes with our breakfast.

Special treats for breakfast: Balinese cakes

There's not much to write about today, to be honest. We reserved today for the few things we hadn't seen in central Ubud, like the palace and the water temple (only the gardens were open). That didn't take long. Afterwards, we split up: Chris went to the Sacred Monkey Forest and Allie and I went shopping.

A few more random photos around Ubud

Palace 

Water temple 

Water temple

I'm definitely not a shopper, at home or abroad. I've come home from some trips with absolutely nothing. But I do have a few weaknesses, one of which is interesting textiles or textile-based products, and trips to Southeast Asia do kind of tempt me a bit. All told, we didn't do that much damage: Our total "haul" for this trip probably is less than $250 among the three of us. But I am coming home with some batik fabric, a few scarves, a couple of batik bags, and a few other spices and goodies. Importantly, I shifted all purchases from their plastic bags into a purchased batik tote before navigating around the monkey forest and back to the hotel. Fool me once...

Actually, my favorite store of all turned out to be just down the street from the hotel. Tradisi has some lovely fabrics from villages around Bali and other parts of Indonesia, and sales support good works in those communities. I'm sorry I hadn't stopped in here earlier (although my wallet probably isn't sorry).

Meanwhile, Chris enjoyed his trip to the Monkey Forest.

In between those activities, we had several stops for favorite beverages, including ginger squash, Bintang, iced coffee and others.

Dinner was rather unremarkable. We were overcharged (half slab of ribs for the price of a full slab; promised happy hour rate on first round of drinks not honored). And my head cold was so bad that I couldn't taste anything.