Ubud – Travels with Ali

The Story of Agung Rai

Agung Rai was born into a poor family which led to a difficult upbringing. Even so he loved art and found a job selling paintings to foreign tourists on the beach. It took a while but he eventually managed to accumulate enough money to convert three rooms of his home into a homestay. This allowed him to offer rooms to tourists in Ubud. In 1978 he was able to open the Agung Rai Fine Art Gallery. ARMA was opened in 1996 and has many paintings not just by Balinese painters but also famous foreign artists.

A literal work of art that has been two years in the making. It will soon be ready to hang and view. The artist showed me minute details in the painting of weddings, funerals and other kinds of ceremonies.

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James McNeill Whistler

I enjoyed our visit to this museum, it’s a wonderful place to escape the noisy streets of Ubud.

First Night

Setting off from Perth to Ubud, we caught an afternoon flight to Denpasar on Batik Air at 2.15 pm. We arrived at 6 pm but didn’t reach our destination until 9.30 pm. I had booked a driver with Booking.Com who had waited for over an hour for our appearance. There was an extremely long wait to disembark before boarding a bus to the terminal, then the wait for visas and our luggage to arrive, so we didn’t meet June, a very lovely man, until 7.30 pm. The traffic in Bali is notorious and doesn’t seem to get better over the years. I’m sure the drive to Ubud would have been even longer if it wasn’t for June’s incredible prowess in driving, formula one style. I closed my eyes many times as he overtook cars and trucks, I’m not sure how this would have helped in any way!

Finally arriving at 9.30 pm, we told the reception staff that we would have dinner immediately. They were extremely helpful and we did our check in while eating a most delicious dinner overlooking one of the beautiful pools and under the magnificent “Strawberry Moon”. We were staying in the middle of rice fields in Ubud, something I have wanted to do for a while, for four nights at The Plataran Ubud Hotel and Spa.

Slipped behind a cloud, the second I pulled out the camera

After dinner we were shown to our villa, which we had been told was a free upgrade!

On first appearance our room seemed incredible, but after an almost sleepless night due to noisy people staying in a house overlooking our villa but not connected to the hotel, we decided otherwise. First thing the next morning we asked the reception staff if we could move to our original room. Just after breakfast we packed up and moved on.

Day Two – Exploring the hotel grounds

The Plataran Hotel is surrounded by beautiful lush gardens, situated minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the busy Ubud streets. The rooms look out onto bright green paddy fields of rice, where you can watch the women harvesting and whacking the rice.

You can walk through the paddy fields by following a path of stepping stones. We continued our walk around the rest of the grounds and found fish ponds and waterfalls and sheep, rabbits, chickens and ducks.

It was such a peaceful setting with only the noise of the birds and and the water gurgling along the little gullies.

We followed the route through to a small village just outside the hotel.

Breakfast is served at the same place we had dinner overlooking the pool.

Ubud’s Main Streets

Today we were just going to be tramping the busy streets of Ubud. Soaking up the atmosphere and trying to keep dry.

Ubud is a town in the uplands of Bali, surrounded by rice paddies and steep ravines. It’s also a popular destination for arts and crafts and made famous after the film and book “Eat, Love, Pray”. Home to shrines, temples, yoga barns and warungs (small cafes and restaurants). Also nearby is the famous Monkey Forest, which we would not be visiting!

It’s hard to work up any pace walking along these pavements, the paving stones are generally sticking up at odd angles and then there are the ubiquitous motor bikes and scooters parked haphazardly. Anthony was constantly telling me to “be careful” as he knows my predicament of footcidents over the years.

I had time to have a pedicure and foot massage in one of the many spas along the roads and have to say it was most relaxing, although she could have gone easier with the pressure!

We eventually headed back to the hotel to have a shower before dinner, but disaster was awaiting us. After having a rain shower I noticed that the bath was black! I ran the water again and sure enough there was black silt coming through. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice, maybe because I had my eyes shut. Anyway a long story short, we had to move rooms once more until the problem was fixed.