Ubud Monkey Forest

We did a lot of fun things in Bali, thanks to the Dibbs... they travel different than us and I loved it. There was a lot to see and not enough days, but we saw most of it. One of my favorite destinations was the Ubud (pronounced Oo-bood) sacred monkey forest. It was just a forest near the center of the island where a few "troops" of long tailed macaques live. The people of Bali recognize that it is a special place so they have built several temples in the area. The forest is not fenced, although there is an entrance fee of about $3 US. The monkeys were very abundant and very used to interacting with humans, very different than when we see them at the zoo. You could buy some bananas at the entrance to feed the monkeys. If you weren't careful, they would jump on you to get the bananas. In fact, Kim had a whole bunch of them and they jumped at her and she dropped them right away. It was neat to be so close to them.

This picture just shows how many monkeys there were. If you enlarge this picture by clicking on it, you can count 17 monkeys.

Since it is a sacred place, there were several temples there. They had really neat sculptures, and since it is so warm and humid, the sculptures were often covered in moss.

Joe and a wild boar....he thinks he relates well to a wild boar.

One of the bigger male monkey had a dead kitten it was playing with. I don't know where it got it and if it was planning to eat it, but if he saw you looking at it, he threatened to jump on you.

Some more monkey pictures. We didn't want to get too close since we heard a story of someone's child startling one of the monkeys which then bit them, and he had to have rabies shots when he got home.

Joe sat down for a couple minutes once and a monkey decided to check out if he had anything good in his backpack.

He didn't get into the backpack, but he found Joe had a water bottle he really wanted. They would bite the lids off and then drink the water out. Then they would chew on the plastic, which isn't so good.

There was a large hindu temple there. They had a outer wall and then a big facade with doors in the middle that usually led to the more sacred inner court. In the inner court would be several alters with ornate sculptures around them each for a different god. This is the special doors leading to the inner court. Usually if we were allowed into the temple, we couldn't go through the special doors, but there would be more doors off to the side.

This is outside on the outer wall.
One of the alters inside. The temples had many ornate wood carvings, showcasing the talents of the people.

In this forest, some of the larger trees did not have one large trunk, but instead were anchored to the ground by a bunch of vines that together made a trunk.

Such a beautiful place.