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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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| Pamper Time |
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| Outside our luxury accomodation, had an infinity pool with view of tropical plants |
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| Trying hard to act cool around the monkeys, but inside both of us were screaming. |
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.
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| Hanging with Mama |
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| Bit of Banter with Mama |
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| Mads unimpressed with moustache, frangipani in hair a beautiful gift from Mama |
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| Blurry but beautiful |
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| No need for a caption here, a picture says a thousands words... about friendship. |