EAT PRAY UBUD

If you are someone who has watched the film "Eat Pray Love" then you can see why Julia Roberts fell in love with/ in Ubud in the canonical and criminally underrated film "Eat, Pray, Love". In that film - or piece of art, as Mads and I prefer to think of it as,  Julia Roberts saves the best for last: Love ... and also Ubud.

In the movie, which , full disclosure I haven't seen - I have watched the trailer and some selected scenes on the internet on this low-resolution slow but free wifi in Amed- but deeply want to, Ubud is made out to be this unblemished wonderland. But in our special trip to Ubud, while it was undeniably beautiful with narrow streets of shrines and streams, it was, like much of Bali that we have seen, also littered with litter. In the movie, they must have really gone to town both in the location scouting and also getting some street sweepers to make Ubud as beautiful as it could be.

Pamper Time

On our first night in Ubud, in our luxurious villa, we welcomed our friend Amelia to our holiday. She had booked the accomodation, so, perhaps she had invited us. Much like Julia Roberts, she wanted to go for a trip by herself. In the movie Julia Roberts, apparently, says "everyone falls in love in Bali". And we all did.

Outside our luxury accomodation, had an infinity pool with
view of tropical plants

In the trailer which I have seen, Julia Roberts cycles through the fields. We didn't do this. She walks past some open market with delectable fruit and Jackfruit, the closest we got to this was this endless calvacade of shops selling Bintang singlets and penis themed bottle openers. She meditated, we snapchatted. She meets some hot Brazilian dude, played by a Spanish actor. At our accomodation we met some English lads who wanted to get "inked". She also hired some sort of Jeep, full disclosure haven't seen a Jeep in the week we have been in Bali.1

Trying hard to act cool around the monkeys, but inside both of
us were screaming.

But most of all we wanted to meet people. Julia Roberts meets the love of her life in Ubud. Unfortunately I was fifty years too late for Mama, this incredible seventy one year old babe we met on our entry into the rice fields of Ubud. We, like Julia Roberts, wanted to see the rice terraces that are dotted through the villages that make up Ubud. In the film, she seems to hire some bourgeois hipster bicycle (most tourists seem to make do with mountain bikes) and then does what is actually impossible to do, which is to ride it past the terraces and through the monkey forest. 2

We went without the bicycles and instead walked into Mama, who was out on the road offering us some coconuts. She was full of life and laughter, delivering her story in a combination of English and Bahasa and lots of giggles. She had five children and twelve grandchildren, and about five teeth with which she beamed with irrepressible glee. She was full of jokes about Amelia, Madeleine and I being in a sexy menage a trois . She loved Madeleine, and was very impressed with her extensive knowledge of Bahasa Indonesian. As we entered her bamboo shack she made us smell her exotic plants, cinnamon, vanilla, lemongrass. We drank coconut under the shade and she laughed and hugged and spoiled us. Grabbing a spoon, she fed Amelia the gelatinous interior of the coconut. She filled our bags with treats like the doting grandmother she was, and we hugged her goodbye and laughed and it was so genuinely nice, it was almost like falling in love.

Hanging with Mama

Bit of Banter with Mama

Mads unimpressed with moustache, frangipani in hair a beautiful gift from Mama

Blurry but beautiful

No need for a caption here, a picture says a thousands words... about friendship.

1. But we definitely have seen the beach she went swimming in, Padangpadang Beach, because on our way to the Uluwatu Temple our driver stopped in the middle of the road and said "that is the beach from "Eat Pray Love", do you want to take a photograph?" Of course we wanted to take a photograph. Of course stopping in the middle of a road is unsettling, and in fairness the photograph was through the window of the metal barrier on the bridge 50m above the beach,  rather than a charming photograph of the beach itself. But definitely captured something special at that beach.

So in Eat Pray Love Julia Roberts is depicted riding a vintage

bicycle through the Monkey forest, to get to this point. Unless she got off

and pushed the bicycle through the hundreds of tourists, down the flights of stairs,

 to get to the sacred water temple bit that she cycles past and then

pushes it back up some more stairs, it seems sort of pointless. Although, in saying

that, it would be more enjoyable than riding the main street of Ubud which was

amazingly hectic and busy. 

2. At the monkey forest, which was eerie and unsettling, we saw some sights. Dotted throughout the forest were stalls selling bananas, which must be a pretty unenjoyable job as the monkeys are in a sort of Planet of the Apes type environment of control and I can sort of imagine them ganging up and just taking all of the bananas from the stall. One Australian woman was trying to hang onto her bunch of bananas while a monkey grasped her bunch and the monkey was getting "greedy". She loudly berated the monkey, like you if you were a frustrated Australian mother with a child who doesn't want to leave the Dreamworld Giftshop without a present. Like you would if the monkey was sentient and understood human speech patterns. It was awkward. There are signs everywhere that basically say don't threaten the monkeys. I am pretty sure from some alarming and continuing shrieks in the forest and also an overheard conversation from some English tourists, that someone got attacked by a monkey while we are there. There is something that definitely doesn't happen to Julia Roberts.