Ubud… Spoiler Alert!!! Snake!!!!!!

Ubud (Pronounced like EW-bood) is a tropical yet culturally reflective town at the center of Bali. If that sounds like a little BS, that’s because it is. There’s no beach, so they make up for it with spiritually. Its one of those places where the crafts are all hand made (at one point we physically confirmed this) but they also all look the same. Silver crafts made by jailed ex-pat cocaine smugglers on death row, wooden carved masks, batik sarongs for days… etc. But here’s the good news. The people are friendly, the food is great, it’s close to several great day trips, and it’s quite affordable.

We did a home stay in Ubud, living in a spare room with a wealthy family with lots of kids from toddlers to teenagers. As we were in and out each day, they scanned us with supreme indifference, raising their gaze slightly before refocusing their attention back to video games. “Have fun with the monkeys dudes, I’ll be chilling in the AC on the couch.” For the record, while we saw several monkeys, under no circumstances did we consider entering the monkey forest.

As the only Hindu majority island in largely Muslim Indonesia, Bali does not take their temples lightly. We spent much of the first day reviewing two, while taking a short hike through a rice paddy. Gorgeous scenery.

Swatting a pesky mosquito… Action shot… Really capturing the drama here.

Two massages, a bottle of Bali wine before dinner, and day one was complete. Bali bliss.

The second day started at 2:30 AM, when we woke up to head to the base of Mount Batur, the smaller of the two largest active volanoes in Bali. Beginning our ascent with a trusty 23 year old guide, Kadek, who spoke little English, we summited before sunrise…

We then hiked along the crater to check out the steam pockets rising from the earth. Each time, Kadek reminded us we could use the steam pockets to cook an egg or a banana, if say, we happened to have some handy. We did not, to Alex’s disappointment.

Then we checked out some holy water springs which were really co— SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SNAKE!!!!!!!! SNAKE!!!!!!!!

Here’s the thing. It’s not the site of snakes that bother me. It’s when another group’s guide screams “SNAKE!!!!!!!!” and then points at me. I find that off-putting. I quickly scan the ground for a death cobra. No death cobra present. Still not moving, I notice the guide (now wielding a small lava rock) is looking at a vegetated wall behind me. I face my certain death and slowly turn around, assuming the death cobra will wait to strike me someplace gross, like in the eyeball. Ugh, that’s the worst. I turn, accepting my fate, but no serpent looms. At this point, I realize I might have a chance at surviving. I start to slowly back away from the wall and it’s precarious foliage, desperately scanning my eyes for the sinister brown monster that lurks in my adrenaline blinded vision, when Thud!

I flinch, but feel no bite from a jumping death cobra lunging for me. Nope, it’s just the other guide screaming “snake, very poisonous” throwing lava rocks at the wall using my tender flesh as the first line of human defense. Terrific. I am so pissed. Clarity somewhat restored, I reason he is trying to knock the snake (which I still can’t see) down from the wall so it angrily bites my foot, as opposed to un-angrily doing nothing at chest level. When he tries to throw a second larger rock, that zips just past my head, we share words. Despite, little language in common, he sees my side of the discussion, after I present an unbiased well articulated and logical construct. I may have suggested he would suffer a fate similar to the aforementioned egg and banana… Hard to recall.

Anyways, unclear whether the second lava rock knocked the snake down to the ground or whether it was there the whole time, but I finally found it.

Green???? I was looking for brown! No wonder I missed it. No one told me death cobras can be green! And as you can plainly see in the photo provided this one had clearly just consumed at least one hiker and was at least 12 feet.

In all seriousness it was a beautiful creature and I’m glad I saw it. Showing the picture to a local I confirmed the species name: “green snake, very poisonous”

The rest of the hike down was uneventful, save for the fact that I now had to look at all times in the path and rocks for brown death cobras and on the tropical shrubbery for green death cobras.

We were chaperoned on our day trip by our home stay’s private driver, so next he took us to a coffee plantation. I know nothing about coffee but when the plantation guide told us some people called his coffee “poop coffee,” we were very suspect. Turns out, there is a rodent, locally called the luwak, that is highly selective in it’s diet, eating only perfect red coffee berries. Special enzymes in it’s digestive process then help ferment the undigestible beans. So basically these farmers run around the forest scooping up luwak poop and then cleaning and extracting the intact beans from it to make the world’s best coffee, for $5 dollars a cup! Cue the story about the time Jesse paid 50,000 rupiah to drink luwak poop coffee. Its turkish style with the sludge in the bottom. We also tried all their other non-poop coffee and teas.

Next stop, temple of the holy water. Our host family gave us outfits. We were supposed to bathe in the water, but we felt it was a little crowded and we didn’t want to be too offensive to the local populous.