Our first stop in Bali was Ubud.

After about an hour car ride, we arrived at our resort, Pramana Watu Kurung. Situated on a mountaintop overlooking part of Bali’s vast rainforest, the resort was picture-perfect. The hotel was great - breakfast was included and we booked a few add-on services including the airport transfer and flower bath.

TRAVEL TIP: On TripAdvisor and other review websites, people often leave detailed information and photos about good rooms and bad rooms. You can search reviews for the word “room” to narrow results. Then, when making your booking, you can reach out to your resort and make specific requests based on what information you gathered from your research. For example, some rooms with views (e.g. east facing) might have better views than others, so you could ask for an east-facing room specifically. The worst that can happen is the hotel is unable to accommodate your request. I do this for hotels that have villas especially, or when it’s a more expensive accommodation and we expect a perfect stay.

*The grounds of the hotel were stunning.*

*The restaurant overlooked the pool, as well as lots of rainforest.*

One of the great things about Bali is that many resorts offer affordable villas (as opposed to rooms), and there are also a ton of amazing AirBNBs to choose from. At Pramana Watu Kurung, we stayed in one of their wooden pool villas. It wasn’t the one I asked for, but it was still beautiful. The room had two floors, and a private deck that overlooked some of the hotel, as well as our private pool. I will say that Ubud is very much in the rainforest, as I previously mentioned, and with that, one can expect to see lizards, exotic insects, etc. We did not see any reptiles or amphibians inside our room, but an extremely large and angry hornet did make its way into our room at one point and it was quite the debacle.

*We really enjoyed the private pool, as well as the swing chair in our villa.*

*The walk from our villa to the restaurant.*

We tried lots of typical Balinese/Indonesian food at the hotel. These are some of the dishes we enjoyed at the hotel’s restaurant, as well as in our room.

*We also enjoyed floating breakfast in the pool in our villa.*

In Ubud, we ate at Uma Cucina which was a beautiful restaurant that I’d highly recommend, as well as Hujan Locale and Milk Madu (both of those were just ok). Other than that we ate at the hotel, as we were really trying to take it easy.

*We did experience a few rainy drives to and from the hotel, including a minor flash flood!*

*Not the best photo but the restaurant was open-air and it was quite grand.*

*Squid ink pasta at Uma Cucina. It was better than it looked and the restaurant was beautiful.*

While in Ubud, we visited the famed Monkey forest, and also considered visiting other tourist attractions including the the popular water temple and the beautiful rice paddies, but decided to spend our days enjoying the hotel’s main pool, as well as the pool in our villa. If you decide to visit the monkey forest, I highly recommend doing your research before so that you are adequately prepared.

You should not bring flashy items (jewelry, sunglasses, etc.) or food, and make sure that if you bring a bag you have, it is closed securely. We saw a monkey steal a water bottle from a person and drop it into a ravine, and also saw monkeys go in people’s backpacks. I cannot overstate how hot and humid it was in there. I am not a sweaty person and I was practically drenched when we left. I would take that into consideration and make sure you wear a light and airy outfit, if possible.

The flower bath was beautiful, but I don’t need to do it again. They use a green mossy-like plant to hold up the flowers and that gets… everywhere. It was relaxing, just a little messier than I expected.

In my opinion, time in Ubud is best spent relaxing, taking it easy, and getting to know the more spiritual aspects of Bali. After Ubud, we made our way via taxi down to Seminyak, which I will talk about in my next post! Until next time….