Bali - Ubud - Monkey Forest

On our first full day in Ubud, we wandered around a bit in town to do some shopping but quickly realized that it was way too hot for us. It was impossible to stop sweating so we quickly gave up and went back to the hotel and back into the pool. However we did manage to spend some time in the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary first.

The monkeys there are long-tailed macaques. Here are a couple of paragraphs I found giving the reasoning for the monkey forest's existence:

The presence of sacred forest is a demonstration of the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature. In Bali, sanctuaries such as the Monkey Forest are usually in sacred village areas, often surrounded by temples. These cultural sanctuaries are not only an important part of Balinese heritage, but also an important part of everyday life. Temple festivals are regularly held for the villagers and the gods in such areas.

A Balinese temple is more than just a collection of pagodas and pavilions. The area enclosed by temple walls and the forest area surrounding it is sacred. These temples and the forest are essential for renewing contact with the spiritual world. The activities associated with these areas are essential in maintaining harmony between humans, nature and the cosmos. Not only are ancestral spirits and gods given offerings and prayers, but also the spirits of trees and statues in the Monkey Forest are given offerings and prayers by the Pemangku and local villagers.


As soon as you start to get near the entrance of the forest, which is right in the heart of town and also nestled amongst some extremely busy roads, you start seeing monkeys hanging around. They were everywhere! And quite tame and friendly too. You could buy bananas at the entrance but that only guaranteed that the monkeys would jump on you and climb all over you to get at the bananas. I was too hot and not in the mood to get myself covered in monkey poo so I avoided the bananas and ensured that I did not have any food in my bag.

Here's one monkey hanging out on the sign at the front of the forest:



Mom and babies:



A little grooming:



Taking a breather:



Posing:



Having a snack:



When Martin sat down to take a breather at one point one of the monkeys came and sat on his lap for awhile. It was really cute, the monkey kept making Martin open his hands to prove he didn't have any food. However since Martin had the camera at the time I couldn't get a picture of the monkey on his lap.

And let's not forget that there is also a temple in the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, so there are many detailed sculptures around as well:







And the temple itself:









We took a lot of pictures of the monkeys and sculptures and temple and they're all pretty neat so I'll post them in their entirety on Facebook and Kodak for people to look at. It was a really neat place to hang out in for an hour or two. Just watching all the stupid people buying bananas who thought the monkeys weren't going to climb all over them was pretty funny.

Bali - Ubud - The Komaneka at Bisma Hotel

Our first stop in Bali was in the town of Ubud, which is known as the cultural center of Bali. This is where you find about a million shops selling all the different crafts created around Bali like dresses, sarongs, paintings, wood carvings, and stone sculptures. You can also enjoy fine Asian dining or a dance performance - there are 7-8 different types of dance performances to choose from every evening.

I will tell you more about Ubud in future blog posts but this one is just about the hotel we stayed at, called the Komaneka at Bisma. In short, it was a wonderful experience. The Balinese people are overly friendly and eager to please and no exercise was too big or too small for them to perform with a smile. We managed to eat two meals per day free here because breakfast was included with our room price and it was 4 courses and absolutely enormous so then we didn't have to eat again until they had complimentary afternoon tea from 3-6 every day when we'd have some little snacks to tide us over until dinner. Not a bad deal.

Here are the flowers on our bed upon arrival:



The white flowers smelled amazing. I'm still not sure what they're called even though we asked somebody and they told us but we had never heard of it.

And every night we got the softest nightgowns to wear to bed, free of charge ... we should have bought some but we didn't. They probably sell them online somewhere.

Here are some views from our balcony:



There were rice paddies right on the hillside outside of our room. They were not fully grown yet and still just little tufts of grass sticking out of little ponds.



We didn't spend much time on our balcony though because there were enormous bees outside - I called them wasp hawks and bee hawks - not many of them but every once in awhile one would fly by and I had forgotten to bring my epipen with me so I avoided the balcony the entire time. Since the entire wall of our suite was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, it was no big deal to sit inside and enjoy the view instead of outside.

And the pool! 32 meters long, perfect for some nice long laps though we did more relaxing in it than lap swimming.

This view of the pool is taken from the lobby, which is on the top of the hill while the rest of the hotel sits below the lobby on the way down to the pool:



There is another level to the pool, down another story, but we didn't get any pictures of that level because we always sat at the longer lap pool. The other pool snaked around in a circle.



See the little baskets of flowers on the deck in front of the pool in the picture above? Those are offerings, placed in every place of business every single morning in hopes that everybody will have a good and prosperous day doing whatever they're doing. These little baskets are even put in taxi cabs and tour buses. Everywhere.

And here's the lobby, with a nice view of the forest beyond. There was a bar here as well and you could sit and look out over the forest (and the pool) and have yourself a nice chilled beverage of your choice.



This was an enormous table in the lobby that Martin was really impressed by:



And another view from the lobby level, looking out over the rice paddies:



Such a gorgeous view. I was sad when we had to leave here and move on after 4 nights. I realize this is basically an advert for the Komaneka. There was nothing lacking in our experience here though so if any of you ever go to Bali, you should definitely consider this hotel.

Spring

This past week all of these flowers have come up in the grassy areas around Zürich and I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of them. There are yellow, white, and purple flowers that have appeared much like dandelions would do back in the US ... they're probably related somehow but it's not so bad to look at a field with purple, white, and yellow flowers in it even if they are most likely some sort of invasive weed:



We had a fairly mild winter in Switzerland, which was very bad for ski resorts but not so bad for those of us who were tired of walking around on snow and ice by December (okay it snowed a lot in November and December here and then didn't snow again the rest of the winter). So maybe that's why bushes have been blooming here since January. I was nervous for them, thinking it'd get cold and snowy again, but it didn't (or, it hasn't yet, I suppose it still could).



I will leave you with these warm thoughts of Spring while I go off to Bali for 8 days.

Zermatt Skiing

Martin and I spent this past weekend skiing/snowboarding in Zermatt. We couldn't afford a hotel in Zermatt so we stayed in a little town called Randa two stops up the train line from Zermatt. Zermatt is a pedestrian-only town so you have to take the train to get there anyway.

While Zermatt is supposedly pedestrian-only, it does still have buses and taxis in it. Funny how that works. Each hotel there has its own shuttle from the train station to the hotel (all quarter mile of the distance to each hotel) and a few of the hotels had horse-drawn carriages as their shuttles. I found it rather humorous. That being said, Zermatt was still much less ritzy than St Moritz. I don't know how else to describe it but the town was more down to earth, more cozy, not filled with designer stores, and nobody was wearing fur coats/mittens/boots/hats there. It's more all about skiing than about wandering around showing off your money.

I regret to say that I did not get any pictures of Zermatt itself. Since we had to take the train into Zermatt every morning wearing all of our ski clothing and carrying nothing on our backs except what we were skiing in that day, we did not bring the nice big camera either day as we don't want to have to ski with it. All the pictures we took on the mountain were taken with the cell phone. And since Martin had the cell phone the day I wandered around town a bit, I was unable to get any pictures.

But boy did we ever get a million pictures of the Matterhorn! You can't get away from it while you're skiing. I was a little disappointed in that you can't easily see the Matterhorn from the town of Zermatt itself ... I mean you can if you crane your neck around some buildings in just the right way but it's not as prominent and easy to find as I thought it would be. But as soon as you get up onto the ski trails above the town it's around every single turn.

Here's the Matterhorn from the top of the Gornergrat bahn, or the train that takes you up to one of the peaks you can ski down from. This train has *amazing* views of the surrounding mountains and the Matterhorn and it's a 30-minute ride so you get to really sit and admire it all. It's worth the $79 roundtrip ticket just for the views, even if you're not going to ski.



Martin with the Matterhorn behind him:



I even got to eat lunch with the Matterhorn:



I had the traditional Swiss dish of Rösti, which is potatoes topped with a fried egg. Perfect fuel for a day of snowboarding:



On Sunday, Martin skied a different area of the resort called Plateau Rosa. The Zermatt ski resort is enormous, it's actually 4 separate areas/peaks, and it is split into two sides that are not connected so you can't ski between them (but you could go all the way to the bottom again and then take a bus to the other base and then ski over there). And this other side that Martin skied on is half in Italy (Cervinia resort) and half in Switzerland (Plateau Rosa). I didn't go with him because I had heard that it was really flat in this area and it's hard to snowboard on flat terrain - you just end up walking over it all. Which, to me, is not worth the trouble. And neither of us went into Italy - the lift ticket was more expensive to add on Italy. But there were a lot of trails over there I would have liked to have tried out, if we had had another day (and $200 extra).

Here's the trail map for those of you who are having issues visualizing what I'm talking about. Plateau Rosa is the blue shaded area center right. Where you see the Swiss/Italian flags is where the resort continues over the other side in Italy. The mountain named Monte Rosa is, I believe, the tallest in Switzerland (center left background):



Anyway, all the following pictures were taken by Martin from this other side of the resort, which is higher than the Gornergrat part and therefore has great views of snow-covered mountain peaks.





The Matterhorn also looked very different from this part of the resort:



Some snowy areas that I'm sure had a high avalanche danger:



And the usual crevasses sign (the Plateau Rosa area is all on a glacier, I believe):



Some more mountains:



And one final look at the Matterhorn on the way back down to Zermatt:



And not a cloud in the sky the entire time! So we got our sunshine to last us through the next few weeks until we get to Bali.

Another Walk and Where Martin Works

Yesterday we took a stroll up and over the big hill behind our apartment. On the top of the hill is the science campus of the ETH, where Martin works. We took a few pics of it because I've been meaning to blog about it since I arrived in Zürich:



He works in this huge building with five "fingers" to it. You can't tell but you can see the mountains (on rare clear days) from these buildings and they all have balconies outside of their labs so you can wander outside and get some fresh air whenever you want to.

Here's a sign for the campus:



The same big building but from a different angle (Martin works in the middle one). There are other buildings on this campus as well but this is the biggest:



Sometimes there are cows in the fields around the buildings but when we took these pics they were in their barn across the street mooing at us instead.

We kept wandering over the hill and down the other side where you get a great view of Zürich (and the mountains, when it's clear but today it was very hazy). You can barely make out the lake in the picture below but on really clear days this view is amazing:



There are lots of benches up at the top and a nice restaurant that we keep meaning to go to but never do ... the weather has to be nice so you have a good view or it's not worth it.



The two pictures above show a path with some hedges and buildings on either side of it. We should have taken pictures of these areas because they're garden plots. They're all over Zürich but up on this hill there are a few hundred and they have a killer view. Each plot has a shed, which some people use as a kitchen, and a small amount of land where you can garden and grow things. Some people were having barbecues while we were walking by ... you can set up a little table and chairs on your plot too and have friends over and eat all the things you've grown. And look at the view these plots have!! I'd love to have one but Martin and I think these plots must be impossible to get and are just handed down from generation to generation within a family.

There are also deer up at the top ... I'm not sure why but there's a fenced in area filled with deer. Here I am entranced by them:



And here's the resident buck. They're not quite like the deer from the US but definitely very similar.



And that was our walk yesterday.

Cat Grass

I bought something called "Cat Grass" at the grocery store yesterday which I thought was catnip but I brought it home and fully read the tag (when I realized Onyx wasn't all that excited by it) and it's actually just grass with "healthy necessary minerals" in it that cats need. It also somehow helps with hairball digestion. So, I tried to buy Onyx catnip for Valentine's day but failed. He is now in his fifth month without catnip here but I'll find some eventually!

I learned this past week that there are 1 million cats in Switzerland. 8 million people and 1 million cats ... that are registered. Plenty more feral cats in the barns in the mountains for sure. In my mind, this means that almost everybody here owns a cat since most households have more than one person in them and many cats are not registered.

Anyway here are some pics of Onyx with his cat grass, which he thankfully did eat a little of so I didn't waste $2.90 buying it.





And here he is enjoying his mid-morning patch of sunshine in the living room:



On sunny days that's where he sits from 10-11 in the morning because that's when the sun comes in through the balcony door.

That's the Onyx update for now.

Corviglia and Diavolezza

Corviglia and Diavolezza are the ski resorts we went to in St. Moritz. I think there are 5 ski resorts in the St. Moritz area, though one is just for sledding which is pretty neat. This southeastern area of the Alps, which includes St. Moritz, is known as the Engadin and it is known for sunshine (it has 322 sunny days per year which is more than Colorado) and plentiful outdoor activities.

We went to Corviglia on Saturday and I really liked it there. It was easy to get around, it was sunny, the trails were nice and wide and not too steep, and the snow was packed but not icy. I took some pics of the clouds starting to roll in from below:





And some more mountains from the top ... I was sitting on my butt to take this picture and nowhere near the edge so it's not the best view but you get the idea.



On Sunday we went to Diavolezza. We really liked it there. It has one really long run that covers 1,000 meters of vertical and a couple of shorter runs you can do on a small lift at the top and that's it. But that's all you need! I was nervous going here because there are no easy trails, it's all intermediate or advanced and the shorter trails at the top should be labeled as advanced, no joke, but they're not. Intermediate trails here range from somewhat flat to terrifyingly steep ... which ain't right. You never know what you're going to get until you try it. Thankfully the long run at Diavolezza had an advanced route and an intermediate route and the intermediate route was just right for me ... wide open trails. It had a few flat areas one of which I (along with all the other snowboarders and some skiers) ended up hiking every single time.

The views at Diavolezza were breathtaking. They rivaled the views we had while skiing at Lake Louise or Sunshine in Banff. But, enough words, here are the pictures:

These two I took from the top:





Here I am resting on my butt again:



In the afternoon Martin skied down a glacier. Instead of doing the long run down the front, you could go over the back of the mountain and ski over a glacier. The down side was that you had to wait at the bottom for a train to get back to the base of the mountain. Since Martin had no idea when the trains ran he of course just missed one when he got to the bottom and had to wait for an hour for the next one. But he got some great pictures on his way down!





You had to stay between the poles on this run to avoid falling to your death but thankfully the trail was well marked. I'm glad I didn't try it in the end because Martin said it had a lot of flat spots that I would have had to hike through.











Just look at all those glaciers ... global warming can't possibly exist. :)

Here are some pics we took from the car on the drive home ...





The Engadin is absolutely gorgeous ... I highly recommend making a trip there, if you have the time and the money. Martin and I decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, until we get rich and can afford to get back there again.