Ubud – Bali, Indonesia
The second stop on our month-long tour through Bali was the town of Ubud. We weren’t near the beach for this part of the trip – Ubud is located in Bali’s uplands and is surrounded by native rainforest and terraced rice paddies. The town is famous for its landscapes, as well as countless Hindu temples and waterfalls dotting the regional area.
Ubud is also famous for the Sacred Monkey Forest, a sanctuary for the Balinese long-tailed macaque located in the town of Ubud. There are about 1,300 monkeys freely roaming throughout the grounds, which are maintained as a natural habitat and dotted with statues/temples throughout.
The monkeys are “semi-free” which means they aren’t caged up and live naturally; however they are fed daily by sanctuary staff and can’t really go far outside the property as the town surrounds the sanctuary. You do occasionally see one climbing a lamppost or crossing a telephone wire in the town itself though!
For a cheap entrance fee ($50K Rupiah, or about $3.50 USD) you can explore the grounds yourself. We couldn’t resist, and after the experience have to say this is an absolute must-do if you ever make a trip to Bali. Seriously there are so many, and they don’t really fear humans so you get a very close encounter. You can even pay to have one take a selfie with you for another $50K Rupiah – well worth the money!
Enjoy this video of our visit to the Sacred Monkey Forest – we start off in town but the first monkey appears at 0:25; then non-stop monkey activity kicks in around the 2 minute mark. Also, at 7:54 about 30 monkeys follow Kaitlin up a staircase. Seriously can’t stress how many monkeys there were here – we couldn’t get enough, hopefully you can see why!
