Ubud Food, Art and Chillout

Ubud is the artistic capital of Bali. People come for the art, the cuisine, the yoga, to get away from it all. Its located a hellish 1.5 hour or so drive north of Kuta through very narrow roads with all kinds of village and transportation en-route.

Hotels in Ubud are usually of a homestay variety, and the rooms are usually spacious, cheap and with no a/c. You can pay more for a/c if you really need it though. It seems everyone in Ubud has their own family temple on site so chances are your hotel will have their own temple in the back yard.

Venturing out of the hotel you will find a maze of narrow streets full of souvenir shops, restaurants and art galleries, inlcluding a large central market where you are likely to get the best deal on any kind of Bali souvenir you can think of.

Also in the center of Ubud is Monkey Forest, where you can pay to go have your things stolen by monkeys. If you don’t want to pay the entrance fee, you will find trees on the streets near the forest are full of monkeys anyway. I think they are the marketing department for the park itself.

In the Ubud suburbs you will find plenty of artist studios who quietly work away on their pieces and sell them at the side of the road. Paintings, sculpture, installation, you name it. For less than a few hundred dollars you could take home a real bargain.

There must be hundreds of restaurants in Ubud and almost all are pretty high quality and low price. You could eat 3 meals a day for 2 weeks at a different one each time. Amazingly you will not find any fast food chain here. Although I personally love McDonalds, this actually is a good thing, and I hope it stays that way. Ubud is a great place to try out all the Indonesian specialties.

Ubud is full of green forests, insect life and plenty of lizards on every illuminated sign. A refreshing change from the noisy Kuta city life.

The only downside to Ubud, and true of Bali in general, is the lack of pavements to safely walk in comfort. The pavements/sidewalks in Ubud are a disgrace, one minute there, next minute gone, next minute a four foot deep hole. If I was in Ubud city council or tourist board, I would make this my top priority. As of March 2013 it is safer to rent and ride a motorcycle everywhere than to walk the streets of Ubud.