Purple fig: Finding Ubud again

It's been four years since we’ve been in Bali. With all the challenges we’ve had making travel plans in Australia over those years: fires, border closures, floods, Covid outbreaks etc, it was quite stressful preparing for this our first OS adventure in quite a long time.

We flew out of Melbourne on Monday night and arrived in Denpasar, bang on time at 10.00pm Bali time with no hold ups, no baggage lost and a super efficient reception at Ngurah Rai Airport. We were out of the airport in 30 minutes after touchdown and in Ubud less than an hour later. We thought our whole Qantas flight experience was excellent (unlike most other peoples’ reviews of its performance over the past year and a half), a wonderful start to a holiday we’ve been looking forward to (but oddly stressed about it some ways too).

This was the view from the balcony of our room 303 at the Cendana Resort (and Spa) on the first morning we were in Ubud.

We had a big warm, genuine welcome from the staff at breakfast. They remembered us from previous visits and seemed so happy we’d returned. They remembered J & J and the girls too. No wonder this place keeps calling us back!

This is breakfast with the best view ever! …...

….. including the morning offering ceremony to bring a peaceful, mindful blessing to the start of a beautiful day in Ubud.

We spent most of the morning walking the busy nearby streets of Ubud trying to get our bearings in amongst all the changes that have happened over the past four challenging years in Bali. We were thankful to find some things the same: Café Wayan, Cinta Grill, Ibu Rai, Casa Luna, the Laughing Buddha, Tutmak, the Pondok Library, but Sri Bungalows has new owners and a new name. So many of the little shops and cafes have disappeared and new ones built in their place – and usually more glitzy and “contemporary” than the older versions. There's even a fancy new Starbucks on Monkey Forest Road now! But Cafe Wayan and Cinta Grill are old faves that are still here and still going strong .....

The traffic is as wild as ever and horror upon horrors the central football field is now a dusty carpark!! This really upset me as that football field had a real sense of community, being the only open green space in town and a visual reminder that locals (especially the young locals) were an important part of Ubud life. Big community events (ie Independence Day celebrations etc were staged on the field too…. Now it's just a dustbowl full of cars and scooters!!!

Jalan Raya Ubud was more crowded than I’ve ever seen and I was a bit shocked to see the open air community centre is now closed off to the public and the beautiful adjacent Water Palace (Pura Taman Kemuda Saraswati) at the back of the iconic Lotus Café (still there) now charges an entry fee!!

The central Ubud Art Market is unrecognizable now in its freshly minted (newly built) condition – all white tiles and neat rows of little shops but I have heard that what's on offer hasn’t changed much at all from the old days.

Ubud is fighting the good fight however and trying to keep the old ways around hiring drivers. It might be swimming against a very strong tide I am afraid - but hopefully it will work.

Monkey Forest Road up near the Art Market end.....

And across the road from the primary school at school pick up time .....

Me walking along Jalan Dewi Sitra (and noting the closure of the beautiful Locavore Restaurant and other changes - sigh!) ......

Everywhere there were crowds of tourists and so much to buy buy buy – it's like everyone in Ubud is in a frenzy to make up for lost time. We were so relieved to stop for a sanity break at our all time fave 3 Monkeys Café – still as refined and aesthetically beautiful as it ever was. We thought our amazing drinks and fresh Vietnamese spring rolls lunchtime snack were very restorative.

Our hotel is very much unchanged: same beautiful setting and perfect location in central Ubud, carefully tended gardens, same wonderful caring friendly staff, same outdated rooms and furniture but now with much better WiFi, very good quality bedding and tea making in every room now!

The entrance to Cendana has unfortunately been really compromised by the demise of the glamorous Lamak Restaurant. The architecture and gardens opening up to this laneway really provided a lovely entry way to the hotel. Lamak has just been abandoned and four years in the tropics, open to the elements, does a lot of damage. There's now an ugly big metal fence, all askew, to hide the mess that is the old Lamak. The new entry to Cendana takes a bit of getting used to - sigh!

The hotel's smaller pool is being renovated, ready for the Christmas holiday period.

The view from the back of our unit to the empty block next door.......this land used to be kept cleared and there'd often be cows and ducks etc roaming here...