On our second day in Ubud, we got up early to go for a 2-hour bike ride to see the countryside surrounding Ubud. The tour was led by a staff member of our hotel. I actually found the ride quite challenging. It wasn't like we climbed a mountain or anything (but the roads are very steep and hilly because that's just how Bali is) but the road conditions in Bali leave a lot to be desired. Meaning, they should be wider to allow for the huge volume of traffic that is always driving on them. Almost every road is only one lane wide (in some cases this is due to people parking, completely randomly, on different sides of the street in different areas) and every time a car comes in the opposite direction you both have to lean off the edge of the road a bit to pass each other ... I honestly can't believe any cars in Bali still have their side mirrors attached. And there are dogs everywhere! Just wandering around thinking they own the streets. We had little bells on our bikes we were supposed to ring every time a dog got too close or in our way and I found that hilarious. I mean, like a tiny little bell sound is going to make a barking dog coming towards me just go the other way. But ... they worked.
So the roads in Bali can be a little scary when you're on a bike or on foot. But we survived. We were not on main roads for very much of the ride, we were mostly on little back roads that travel through the rice fields. Here are some rice field pictures:
Mountains in the distance:
There was a temple in the middle of some rice fields:
Here I am wandering through the rice fields. It requires a good amount of balance because there is only a high thin strip of grass separating each field from its neighbor and if you fall off of it you go down into the rice, which basically grows in a pond of water about knee-deep.
We passed a field with some women harvesting the rice:
This was the closest picture we took of them. We walked all the way over to them and watched them as they worked but it seemed rude to me to be snapping pictures of them while they toiled in the hot sun. Of course Bali relies very heavily on tourism and the people there are well aware of that and very friendly to all tourists and we were told to take all the pictures we wanted but I still didn't.
The women always do the rice harvest. I asked our guide, Wayan, what the men do and he said "other things". I asked him what sort of other things and he said "special projects". Ha. The men might do the planting and the women the harvesting but I'm not sure ... I kind of got that impression though. At least that's fair.
A glimpse of some houses and hotels across a river from us:
This is the trail we biked on for a little while. Narrow, uneven, with a steep dropoff to a river on either side.
We definitely earned the 4-course breakfast we ate when we got back to the hotel that morning.
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