Why is it that the day trips I remember most fondly involve us at some point having no idea where we are in relation to our intended (hoped-for ) destination?
One such walk from Ubud saw us about 4 km south of the turn-off we had missed. No worries, an old lady takes us to the rice fields and points to the tree in the distance to aim for to get to the next village 9are you sure you want to go through the sawah? Yes, we're sure).
It is so much fun going across the sawah because it's like doing a hedge maze without the hedge. The kids love it and the farmers' expressions are priceless. Well, at the end of this maze we found an undercover market at the edge of a village. We weren't all that far from Ubud, but it seemed a million miles away. Our kids loved the vendors selling tropical fish from Javanese rivers to the local kids. We sat and I chatted to some of the locals whilst hubby took photos of thousands of ducks and the locals exhausted my kids' Indonesian, each asking the same polite questions. About an hour later, we left, aiming for the mythical river and bridge marked on the lonely planet map (yeah, right!).
It doesn't matter if the food or drink run out, as there is always a warung nearby, and we love pointing at the snacks hanging up. They are all 500 rp and full of salt, sugar, dubious artificial colour and flavour and oil. Yum. Something to munch on as we get a little less lost
We never found the bridge over the big river, and we didn't reach our intended destination but we did cross one over a tributary to get to the big river and saw some white water rafters. And the views were awesome and the kids saw a badminton stadium and learnt again that it is ok to not know exactly where you are in bali, that the locals are friendly and there's a delicious mango juice waiting for you at the Sari Bambu when you finally do get back. Valuable life lessons, I reckon.
Finally, logistics: eat at the sari bambu, or at least drink the mango juice. We were really disappointed by the food at the casa luna. We ate much better Indonesian food at every warung and the western food was dull (except for the cookie monster ice cream-yummmo). The ambience was nice, though.
We stayed at the sri ratih (see the previous jbr) and recommend it and it's close to the sari bambu. If you are budget travelling, check out the accommodation before hand and bargain, some places are getting long in the tooth ( I looked at a lot of them).I've left my email open.
Next stop : well it was meant to be sideman, but wait till you read what happened!