After a Christmas morning lie-in and some carols sung in bed (!) to get us in the Christmas spirit, we went out to explore around Ubud. We hired a motorbike (sorry parentals – we know we promised we wouldn’t do that again, but it’s very cheap and the roads aren’t too crazy here!) and buzzed off to see the nearby sights. The countryside here is much more lush than anywhere else we’ve been so far, mainly because it’s Bali’s wet season, so everything is growing – including rice paddy after rice paddy! Rice paddies and terraces do make for beautiful scenery, especially when filled with beautiful bright green rice shoots.
Then it was time for lunch! The day before, we had spotted a restaurant offering Christmas dinner, so we sought this out and gave it a go. We had the traditional turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, but all with a unique twist and accompanied by some new bits like sharon fruit and purple potatoes (we think!). For dessert, we just couldn’t choose, so we had one of everything on the menu – each! 5 puddings later (green tea ice crean, apple & cinamon crumble, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and black sticky rice pudding *) and we were ready to roll back to our hotel for a nap.
We managed to speak to both our families and watch them open a few presents that we’d managed to send them from Vietnam and Amazon – it was really lovely to be able to share a bit of their Christmas 😀
In the evening, we decided we would pamper ourselves with a Royal Javanese Massage – a wonderufl 2-hour indulgence! We had a long oil massage, followed by a salt body scrub which was left to dry out on our skin. Once this had been brushed off, we had another new experience – being covered head to toe in yoghurt! (We assume this was to rehydrate our skin after the salt). Finally we showered off and stepped into a warm bath with a complete layer of fresh flowers floating on the top. We came out feeling very lovely indeed.
What a lovely way to experience Christmas – not as good as being with family, but a strong second 🙂
* -OK, so the 5 desserts were a selection platter and they were all really tiny
