by Mark Butland | 02/08/2019 | Bali
On our final day we packed up and took a quiet moment to look back on the holiday, from the beach clubs of Seminyak to the volcano and rice terraces inland. Then our private driver took us down to the airport, which is a long drive from Ubud in the traffic. We loved...
by Mark Butland | 01/08/2019 | Bali
We spent our second-to-last day at the Tegalalang Rice Terraces. The terraces are cut step by step into the hillsides and go back a long way in Bali’s farming history. The island’s traditional way of sharing water between rice fields, the subak system, is on UNESCO’s...
by Mark Butland | 31/07/2019 | Bali
We got up well before dawn to trek to the summit of Mount Batur, an active volcano that rises to 1,717m. The Batur caldera has been a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2012, and it gets cold at the top in the hours before sunrise. Reaching the top just as the sun lit up the...
by Mark Butland | 30/07/2019 | Bali
We rode the winding roads by moped to reach the Monkey Forest in Ubud. The forest is laid out according to Hindu principles and is home to a huge number of monkeys, most of them very playful. They’re long-tailed macaques, and the sanctuary now counts more than a...
by Mark Butland | 29/07/2019 | Bali
We had another busy day out with Bali Customized Tours, this time to seven waterfalls tucked away in the jungle. The paths down to them are often steep steps, and at one of the falls two streams of water pour side by side through thick green jungle. Between the falls...
by Mark Butland | 28/07/2019 | Bali
We spent the morning at Mason Elephant Park, learning about the work there and how the elephants spend their days. The park is in the village of Taro, in the Tegallalang district, and covers four and a half hectares. Nigel Mason and his wife Yanie started it in 1997,...
